Alfred Nobel: the Man Behind the Prize
             The great Alfred Nobel was born in Stockholm, Sweden on the 21st day of October,1833. His family was one of engineers who had descended from one of the 17th century's greatest technical geniuses who goes by the name of Olof Rudbeck. At the young age of nine, he and his family moved to St. Petersburg, Russia in order to start a new life after becoming bankrupt. There he would then obtain an education from private instructors. His studies ranged in several different areas, including poetry, sciences, and he became fluent in five different languages, including English, French, Swedish, German, and Russian all by the age of 17. By this time, Nobel had begun to travel to several places around the world and began his study and work at several world renowned laboratories.
             The first, and major contribution towards chemistry that was made by Alfred Nobel was his creation of the highly explosive dynamite. The idea of creating this product was "sparked" (no pun intended) during his work with the chemist who is credited with the creation of nitroglycerine, Ascanio Sobrero. Nobel was fascinated with this incredible substance that was so incredibly powerful that it put all forms of modern gunpowder to shame. He was, however, disappointed with its lack of stability. Even still, Nobel set out to find a way that nitroglycerine could be useful in the construction industry. There were many obstacles to overcome, including the safety hazards and they were forced to find a means to control detonation. He and his father worked long and hard to find a way to make nitroglycerine more practical to use. About this time, the war in Russia was ending, and due to yet another bankruptcy, Alfred returned to Stockholm with his father and his brother Emil.
             Upon returning to Sweden, Alfred began to work long and hard at his work of using nitroglycerine as an explosive. Several experiments were...