October 25, 2025 • 22 mins
This is an episode of the podcast English Learning for Curious Minds.
If you enjoy this episode you can find English Learning for Curious Minds in your podcast app, or at leonardoenglish.com
Transcript / Study pack : https://bit.ly/474GafO
-------------------
Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, was shocked to read his own obituary branding him the "merchant of death. While the story might not be entirely true, it pushed him to reconsider his legacy. His fortune went on to establish the Nobel Prizes, honouring achievements in physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, and peace, ensuring his name is remembered for contributions to humanity.
This episodes looks at;
If you enjoy this episode you can find English Learning for Curious Minds in your podcast app, or at leonardoenglish.com
Transcript / Study pack : https://bit.ly/474GafO
-------------------
Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, was shocked to read his own obituary branding him the "merchant of death. While the story might not be entirely true, it pushed him to reconsider his legacy. His fortune went on to establish the Nobel Prizes, honouring achievements in physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, and peace, ensuring his name is remembered for contributions to humanity.
This episodes looks at;
- Overview of the Nobel Prize
- Alfred Nobel's mistaken obituary
- Nobel's early life and education
- Invention of dynamite and its impacts
- Nobel's relationship with Bertha von Suttner
- Creation of the Nobel Prize in his will
- Outcomes and controversies of the Nobel Prize
- Notable Nobel laureates
- Controversial Nobel Peace Prize awards
- Legacy of Alfred Nobel
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, This is Stephen. Today I'm sharing with you an
episode of another great podcast called English Learning for Curious Minds.
The host Alistair talks about a variety of interesting topics
in clear British English, aimed at intermediate to advanced learners.
(00:20):
Today's episode is about the curious origins of the Nobel Prize.
You can find a link to the transcript of this
episode in the show notes, and if you enjoy the episode,
you can search in your podcast app and follow English
Learning for Curious Minds or follow the link in the
show notes. Now Here is Alistair.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Hello, Hello, Hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious
Minds by Leonardo English, the show where you can listen
to fascinating stories and learn weird and wonderful things about
the world at the same time as improving your English.
I'm Alistair Budge and today we are going to be
talking about the Nobel Prize. For over one hundred years,
(01:11):
prizes have been awarded each year to men and women
for their contributions to the fields of physics, chemistry, medicine, literature,
and perhaps most famously peace. The man behind the prize
is Alfred Nobel, and in today's episode, we are going
to hear his fantastic story. Okay, then let's get right
(01:34):
into it and talk about Alfred Nobel and the Nobel Prize.
What would someone write about your life when you die,
If you had some magical power to see into the
future to after you had taken your last breath, and
you were the sort of person about whom obituaries might
(01:55):
be written, what would it say. Would it say that
you'd lived a good, honest life, being a good parent, brother, sister, son,
or daughter, that you had made the world a better place. However,
that might have been for one man in eighteen eighty eight,
so the perhaps apocryphal legend goes, this was not a
(02:19):
fantasy but a reality. In eighteen eighty eight, the Swedish
businessman and inventor Ludvik Nobel died. News of his death
was sent by telegram, but one French newspaper seemed to
have gone a bit mixed up. Instead of writing the
(02:40):
obituary for the recently deceased Ludvig Nobelle, it published the
obituary of his very much still breathing younger brother, Alfred.
It was not a glowing report on Alfred Nobel's life. Instead,
it described him as the merchant of Death, a man
(03:00):
who became rich by finding ways to kill more people
faster than ever before. Don't worry, will come to why
they might have called him this. In a minute, Alfred
Nobel read his obituary, presumably pinched himself to confirm that
he wasn't in fact dead, and must have decided that
(03:20):
he didn't like the idea of being remembered in this way.
He couldn't change his past, but he could change his
future and importantly, how he would be remembered after his death.
So in his last will and testament, he declared that
his considerable fortune would go towards the establishment of a
(03:42):
prize for outstanding achievements in five fields physics, chemistry, medicine,
literature and peace. Now Ludfit Nobel did die in eighteen
eighty eight, and his brother Alfred did leave his fortune
for the establishment of the Nobel Prize, but there are
some questions about the truthfulness of this obituary mix up story.
(04:07):
It is often reported, but it doesn't appear on the
official Nobel Prize website and is dismissed as a myth
by many historians. And like many legends, this one is
no doubt retold because it sounds like it could be true.
An elderly man sees how he will be remembered and
(04:28):
wants to do something to change it. As to whether
it is true, I will leave you to come to
your own conclusions. But to understand why this then fifty
four year old Swedish businessman might have found himself described
as a merchant of death, and why he might have
decided he wanted to do something about it, we need
(04:49):
to go right back to the starts. He was born
in eighteen thirty three in Stockholm, Sweden. He came from
a middle class family, but one that found itself perpetually
short on cash. His father, Immanuel Nobelle, was an inventor
(05:09):
and engineer, a clever man, clearly, and one full of ideas,
but not always the best businessman. Like many inventors and engineers,
he had grand dreams and a habit of pursuing ambitious
projects that didn't always work out. As a result, the
(05:29):
family struggled financially in Alfred's early years. When he was
just five years old, his father was forced to declare bankruptcy.
The family had to leave their comfortable home in Stockholm
and start anew his father, however, didn't give up. He
moved to Russia to seek new opportunities, leaving his family
(05:52):
behind in Sweden. It was a bold move, but it
paid off. In Saint Petersburg, he managed to convince the
Russian military to invest in his inventions, particularly underwater minds
and underwater explosives. Before long, he was running a successful
(06:12):
armaments factory and had made enough money to bring the
whole family over to join him. So Alfred Nobelle, at
the age of nine, moved to Russia. There, he and
his brothers were given a private education that was far
better than what they would have received in Sweden. They
studied science, literature, and languages, and the young Alfred turned
(06:38):
out to be a gifted student. By the time he
was a teenager, he could speak five languages fluently, Swedish, Russian, French, English,
and German. He had a particular interest in literature and poetry,
which led to tensions with his father, who wanted his
(06:58):
sons to follow in his foot steps and become engineers,
not poets or writers. Eventually, the young boy was sent
abroad to complete his education. He traveled around Europe and
studied chemistry in Paris, where he was taught by some
of the leading scientists of the day, and it was
(07:19):
in Paris that he met a man who would change
the course of his life. The Italian chemists Asciano Sobrero.
Sobrero had recently discovered a highly explosive substance called nitro glycerin.
It was far more powerful than gunpowder, but it was
also extremely unstable. For gunpowder to explode, you need some
(07:44):
kind of spark or flame. It won't just explode on
its own. Nitro Glycerin was far less predictable. Even the
smallest movement or change in temperature could cause it to explode.
Sorbrero saw its power, but believed it was too dangerous
and unstable to have any practical use. Alfred Nobelle disagreed.
(08:11):
He became fascinated with the idea of taming nitroglycerin, of
finding a way to make it stable enough for practical use.
And this wasn't, by the way, because he was fascinated
by weapons or he had some great desire to develop
military technology. His intended use for it, and where he
(08:31):
thought the biggest commercial opportunity lay was in construction or mining.
This was the second half of the nineteenth century. Roads
and railways were being laid across Europe and North America,
and mines were being dug. You could hire hundreds of
people to dig a tunnel through a mountain with pick
(08:53):
axes and shovels, or you could just blow it up
with explosives. It would be cheaper, quicker, and, perhaps unexpectedly,
given we're talking about blowing things up even safer. And
it's this obsession with explosives that would come to define
the next chapter of his life. Nobelle returned to Sweden
(09:17):
and threw himself into experiments. He set up a laboratory
in the back of his father's factory and spent countless
hours mixing chemicals, testing compounds, and trying to work out
how to make nitroglycerin safer to handle. The potential was enormous,
(09:38):
but so was the danger. As you might imagine, there
were frequent accidents, some small, others deadly. In eighteen sixty four,
a massive explosion at the factory killed five people, including
Alfred's younger brother Emil. It was a devastating blow personally,
(09:59):
of course, but also professionally. There were calls for his
experiments to be shut down. Local authorities banned the production
of nitroglycerin within the city limits, and clearly nobody wanted
to live next to the Nobel Exposes factory. But Nobelle
didn't stop. Instead, he moved the work onto a barge,
(10:23):
a boat anchored in the middle of a lake, far
from anyone who might be harmed if something went wrong.
And then, after years of experimentation, he made a breakthrough.
He discovered that if you mixed nitroglycerin with a kind
of absorbent clay called kissiger, it became far more stable.
(10:47):
You could shape it into sticks, transport it without fear
of accidental explosion, and control when and how it detonated.
He decided to name this new invention after the Greek
word dynamis, meaning power. It was, as you might have guessed, dynamite.
(11:10):
It was a revolution. Dynamite was cheaper, safer, and more
effective than anything that had come before. Within a few years,
Nobel had patented it across Europe and North America. It
was used to blast tunnels through mountains, build railways, dig
mines and clear canals. Bridges, dams, and entire cities were
(11:35):
constructed with the help of dynamite. But as became quickly apparent,
dynamite is also pretty handy for non peaceful purposes. Although
Nobelle had originally intended it for industrial use, people quickly
saw its military potential. It was more powerful than anything
(11:57):
they had worked with before, and much easier transport than
older explosives. Armies began to use it for demolition, sabotage,
and battlefield engineering. It also found its way into the
hands of anarchists and revolutionaries, who used it in political
assassinations and bombings. And Dynamite wasn't the end of it.
(12:21):
In the eighteen eighties, Nobelle developed another explosive compound called balastite,
which was one of the first smokeless gunpowders. It was
adopted by several European militaries and used in modern ammunition.
This invention brought him even closer to the world of
warfare and reinforced the image of him not just as
(12:45):
an inventor, but as an arms manufacturer. This left him
a conflicted man. Yes, his inventions had made him very wealthy.
He established factories and laboratory in over twenty countries. He
held more than three hundred and fifty patents. In his lifetime.
(13:05):
He was a chemist, an engineer, a businessman, and a
global industrialist, but his creations could and were being used
to kill. He was also increasingly a man alone. He
never married. He moved frequently, leading the French writer Victor
(13:27):
Lugeux to describe him as Europe's richest vagabond. He had
no permanent home and would typically live in hotels or
alone in large houses, surrounded by books and papers. He wasn't, however,
completely without friends or companionship. In the eighteen seventies, he
(13:48):
had placed an advert in a Viennese newspaper for a housekeeper.
It read wealthy, highly educated, elderly gentleman seeks lady of
mature age, first in languages as secretary and supervisor of household.
One of the applicants was a woman called Bertha Kinsky.
(14:09):
She was an Austrian aristocrat down on her luck, well
read and highly intelligent. Nobel hired her, but after only
a couple of years she left to marry a former lover.
That might have been the end of the story, but
the two kept in touch. They continued to write to
each other for decades. Bertha Kinski, who became Bertha von Sutner,
(14:34):
went on to become a leading figure in the peace movement.
Her eighteen eighty nine novel Laid Down Your Arms, became
an international best seller and helped spark a new wave
of passivist activism across Europe. In their letters, they exchanged
a healthy debate over the moral implications of Nobel's inventions.
(14:58):
This was clearly something that he was thinking deeply about,
but his conclusion, at least in one letter, was that
dynamite could act as a vehicle for peace, but just
in an unexpected way. To quote one letter directly, perhaps
my factories will put an end to war sooner than
(15:19):
your congresses. On the day that two army corps can
mutually annihilate each other in a second, all civilized nations
will surely recoil with horror and disband their troops. End quote. Now,
as to whether Nobelle truly believed that, or it was
his way of legitimizing his inventions and making himself feel better,
(15:43):
I will let you be the judge of that. What
is not up for debate is that when Nobelle was
drafting his will and deciding how best to use his
considerable fortune. Alongside the prizes for the sciences and medicine,
he included an award for the person who shall had
done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations,
(16:06):
for the abolition or reduction of standing armies, and for
the holding and promotion of peace congresses. That became the
Nobel Peace Prize. And when Alfred Nobel died alone and
without any direct heirs, in eighteen ninety six in Sandernemo
in Italy, his fortune went to the establishment of this
(16:30):
collection of five prizes physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, and of
course peace. The sixth prize, by the way, the one
in economics, was only added much later in nineteen sixty eight.
This fortune, by the way, was vast, equivalent to three
hundred million dollars in today's money. It has since been
(16:52):
well invested, and the Nobel Foundation now has assets of
around seven hundred million dollars, more than enough to continue
dishing out prizes until the end of time. Now. Interestingly enough,
when his dying wish was first revealed, there were not
rounds of applause and clapse of joy. The first reaction
(17:14):
was confusion. He hadn't told anyone about this wish, and
after having had numerous bad experiences with lawyers in his
business career, he had drafted the will without one. As such,
there were a bunch of questions to be resolved, and
the organizations that he had named to administer the prize
(17:38):
had been given no idea of the plan. His extended
family fought the will too. After all, a huge fortune
was at stake and he had pledged it all to this,
then theoretical prize. It took a while, but after five
years and endless back and forth negotiations, the Nobel Prize
(18:01):
Foundation was established. Since the first prizes were awarded in
nineteen oh one, they have been awarded more than six
hundred times to over one thousand individuals and organizations. Some
are names you'll recognize instantly Married Curie, the first woman
to win a Nobel Prize and indeed the only person
(18:24):
to win one in two different sciences, physics and chemistry.
Martin Luther King Jr. For his non violent fight for
civil rights in the United States. Malala Yusufsi, the youngest
ever laureate who stood up for the rights of girls
to receive an education. Nelson, Mandela Albert Einstein, Ernest Hemickway,
(18:46):
mother Theresa. It is in many ways a role call
of human achievement, a celebration of the best that people
can do, but not all laureates are remembered so fondly.
Some choices, with the benefit of hindsight are harder to justify.
In nineteen forty nine, the Portuguese neurologist Antonio Egushmonniche was
(19:12):
awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine for developing the prefrontal lobotomy,
a procedure now widely condemned as brutal, ineffective and deeply damaging.
Thousands of patients were lobotomized across Europe and North America,
often without proper consents and often with disastrous consequences. The prize, however,
(19:35):
has never been revoked. And then there's the Peace Prize,
which is probably the most politically charged at them all.
It has been awarded to plenty of people, almost universally
recognized and agreed upon for their contributions, people like Mother
Theresa and Nelson Mandela. But in nineteen seventy three it
(19:57):
was awarded to Henry kiss and laid Doc Tau for
their efforts to end the war in Vietnam. Laidoc Tao
declined the prize, citing the ongoing conflict. Kissinger, on the
other hand, accepted it, despite the fact that the bombing
of Cambodia and Laos continued under his watch, and Kissinger
(20:21):
and peace were not two words that many people put
in the same sentence. The choice was so controversial that
two members of the Nobel Committee resigned in protest. So
to wrap things up. Like anything, the Nobel Prize is
not perfect and not without its contradictions. It has been
(20:41):
awarded to people now criticized as cruel and inhumane. It
has been accused of being used to make political points.
It is a prize made possible by dynamite. But for
all its flaws, the Nobel Prize still holds enormous symbolic power.
It can shine a light on discoveries no one had
(21:04):
heard of, lift unknown writers out of obscurity, or bring
global attention to a political cause that are gone unnoticed.
It's a prize that rewards ideas, ideas that push humanity forward,
even if progress itself is messy, uneven, and imperfect. And
(21:26):
perhaps that's what Alfred Debelle had hoped for. Not to
erase the past, but to influence the future, not to
rewrite his life, but to shape how it might be remembered.
And more than a century later, his name is still
spoken every year in connection with some of the most
important breakthroughs in science, literature, and peace, and at least
(21:52):
in my book, that isn't such a bad way to
be remembered. Okay, then that is it for today's episode
on Alfred Nobelle and the Nobel Prize. I hope it's
been an interesting one and that you've learned something new.
As always, I would love to know what you thought
of this episode. Did you know the story about the
Nobel Prize? Is there someone you think is deserving of
(22:14):
it who hasn't won, or someone undeserving who has. You
can head right into our community forum, which is at
community dot Leonardoenglish dot com and get chatting away to
other curious minds. You've been listening to English Learning for
Curious Minds by Leonardo English. I'm Alistair Budge. You stay
safe and I'll catch you in the next episode.
Hi, This is Stephen. Today I'm sharing with you an
episode of another great podcast called English Learning for Curious Minds.
The host Alistair talks about a variety of interesting topics
in clear British English, aimed at intermediate to advanced learners.
(00:20):
Today's episode is about the curious origins of the Nobel Prize.
You can find a link to the transcript of this
episode in the show notes, and if you enjoy the episode,
you can search in your podcast app and follow English
Learning for Curious Minds or follow the link in the
show notes. Now Here is Alistair.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Hello, Hello, Hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious
Minds by Leonardo English, the show where you can listen
to fascinating stories and learn weird and wonderful things about
the world at the same time as improving your English.
I'm Alistair Budge and today we are going to be
talking about the Nobel Prize. For over one hundred years,
(01:11):
prizes have been awarded each year to men and women
for their contributions to the fields of physics, chemistry, medicine, literature,
and perhaps most famously peace. The man behind the prize
is Alfred Nobel, and in today's episode, we are going
to hear his fantastic story. Okay, then let's get right
(01:34):
into it and talk about Alfred Nobel and the Nobel Prize.
What would someone write about your life when you die,
If you had some magical power to see into the
future to after you had taken your last breath, and
you were the sort of person about whom obituaries might
(01:55):
be written, what would it say. Would it say that
you'd lived a good, honest life, being a good parent, brother, sister, son,
or daughter, that you had made the world a better place. However,
that might have been for one man in eighteen eighty eight,
so the perhaps apocryphal legend goes, this was not a
(02:19):
fantasy but a reality. In eighteen eighty eight, the Swedish
businessman and inventor Ludvik Nobel died. News of his death
was sent by telegram, but one French newspaper seemed to
have gone a bit mixed up. Instead of writing the
(02:40):
obituary for the recently deceased Ludvig Nobelle, it published the
obituary of his very much still breathing younger brother, Alfred.
It was not a glowing report on Alfred Nobel's life. Instead,
it described him as the merchant of Death, a man
(03:00):
who became rich by finding ways to kill more people
faster than ever before. Don't worry, will come to why
they might have called him this. In a minute, Alfred
Nobel read his obituary, presumably pinched himself to confirm that
he wasn't in fact dead, and must have decided that
(03:20):
he didn't like the idea of being remembered in this way.
He couldn't change his past, but he could change his
future and importantly, how he would be remembered after his death.
So in his last will and testament, he declared that
his considerable fortune would go towards the establishment of a
(03:42):
prize for outstanding achievements in five fields physics, chemistry, medicine,
literature and peace. Now Ludfit Nobel did die in eighteen
eighty eight, and his brother Alfred did leave his fortune
for the establishment of the Nobel Prize, but there are
some questions about the truthfulness of this obituary mix up story.
(04:07):
It is often reported, but it doesn't appear on the
official Nobel Prize website and is dismissed as a myth
by many historians. And like many legends, this one is
no doubt retold because it sounds like it could be true.
An elderly man sees how he will be remembered and
(04:28):
wants to do something to change it. As to whether
it is true, I will leave you to come to
your own conclusions. But to understand why this then fifty
four year old Swedish businessman might have found himself described
as a merchant of death, and why he might have
decided he wanted to do something about it, we need
(04:49):
to go right back to the starts. He was born
in eighteen thirty three in Stockholm, Sweden. He came from
a middle class family, but one that found itself perpetually
short on cash. His father, Immanuel Nobelle, was an inventor
(05:09):
and engineer, a clever man, clearly, and one full of ideas,
but not always the best businessman. Like many inventors and engineers,
he had grand dreams and a habit of pursuing ambitious
projects that didn't always work out. As a result, the
(05:29):
family struggled financially in Alfred's early years. When he was
just five years old, his father was forced to declare bankruptcy.
The family had to leave their comfortable home in Stockholm
and start anew his father, however, didn't give up. He
moved to Russia to seek new opportunities, leaving his family
(05:52):
behind in Sweden. It was a bold move, but it
paid off. In Saint Petersburg, he managed to convince the
Russian military to invest in his inventions, particularly underwater minds
and underwater explosives. Before long, he was running a successful
(06:12):
armaments factory and had made enough money to bring the
whole family over to join him. So Alfred Nobelle, at
the age of nine, moved to Russia. There, he and
his brothers were given a private education that was far
better than what they would have received in Sweden. They
studied science, literature, and languages, and the young Alfred turned
(06:38):
out to be a gifted student. By the time he
was a teenager, he could speak five languages fluently, Swedish, Russian, French, English,
and German. He had a particular interest in literature and poetry,
which led to tensions with his father, who wanted his
(06:58):
sons to follow in his foot steps and become engineers,
not poets or writers. Eventually, the young boy was sent
abroad to complete his education. He traveled around Europe and
studied chemistry in Paris, where he was taught by some
of the leading scientists of the day, and it was
(07:19):
in Paris that he met a man who would change
the course of his life. The Italian chemists Asciano Sobrero.
Sobrero had recently discovered a highly explosive substance called nitro glycerin.
It was far more powerful than gunpowder, but it was
also extremely unstable. For gunpowder to explode, you need some
(07:44):
kind of spark or flame. It won't just explode on
its own. Nitro Glycerin was far less predictable. Even the
smallest movement or change in temperature could cause it to explode.
Sorbrero saw its power, but believed it was too dangerous
and unstable to have any practical use. Alfred Nobelle disagreed.
(08:11):
He became fascinated with the idea of taming nitroglycerin, of
finding a way to make it stable enough for practical use.
And this wasn't, by the way, because he was fascinated
by weapons or he had some great desire to develop
military technology. His intended use for it, and where he
(08:31):
thought the biggest commercial opportunity lay was in construction or mining.
This was the second half of the nineteenth century. Roads
and railways were being laid across Europe and North America,
and mines were being dug. You could hire hundreds of
people to dig a tunnel through a mountain with pick
(08:53):
axes and shovels, or you could just blow it up
with explosives. It would be cheaper, quicker, and, perhaps unexpectedly,
given we're talking about blowing things up even safer. And
it's this obsession with explosives that would come to define
the next chapter of his life. Nobelle returned to Sweden
(09:17):
and threw himself into experiments. He set up a laboratory
in the back of his father's factory and spent countless
hours mixing chemicals, testing compounds, and trying to work out
how to make nitroglycerin safer to handle. The potential was enormous,
(09:38):
but so was the danger. As you might imagine, there
were frequent accidents, some small, others deadly. In eighteen sixty four,
a massive explosion at the factory killed five people, including
Alfred's younger brother Emil. It was a devastating blow personally,
(09:59):
of course, but also professionally. There were calls for his
experiments to be shut down. Local authorities banned the production
of nitroglycerin within the city limits, and clearly nobody wanted
to live next to the Nobel Exposes factory. But Nobelle
didn't stop. Instead, he moved the work onto a barge,
(10:23):
a boat anchored in the middle of a lake, far
from anyone who might be harmed if something went wrong.
And then, after years of experimentation, he made a breakthrough.
He discovered that if you mixed nitroglycerin with a kind
of absorbent clay called kissiger, it became far more stable.
(10:47):
You could shape it into sticks, transport it without fear
of accidental explosion, and control when and how it detonated.
He decided to name this new invention after the Greek
word dynamis, meaning power. It was, as you might have guessed, dynamite.
(11:10):
It was a revolution. Dynamite was cheaper, safer, and more
effective than anything that had come before. Within a few years,
Nobel had patented it across Europe and North America. It
was used to blast tunnels through mountains, build railways, dig
mines and clear canals. Bridges, dams, and entire cities were
(11:35):
constructed with the help of dynamite. But as became quickly apparent,
dynamite is also pretty handy for non peaceful purposes. Although
Nobelle had originally intended it for industrial use, people quickly
saw its military potential. It was more powerful than anything
(11:57):
they had worked with before, and much easier transport than
older explosives. Armies began to use it for demolition, sabotage,
and battlefield engineering. It also found its way into the
hands of anarchists and revolutionaries, who used it in political
assassinations and bombings. And Dynamite wasn't the end of it.
(12:21):
In the eighteen eighties, Nobelle developed another explosive compound called balastite,
which was one of the first smokeless gunpowders. It was
adopted by several European militaries and used in modern ammunition.
This invention brought him even closer to the world of
warfare and reinforced the image of him not just as
(12:45):
an inventor, but as an arms manufacturer. This left him
a conflicted man. Yes, his inventions had made him very wealthy.
He established factories and laboratory in over twenty countries. He
held more than three hundred and fifty patents. In his lifetime.
(13:05):
He was a chemist, an engineer, a businessman, and a
global industrialist, but his creations could and were being used
to kill. He was also increasingly a man alone. He
never married. He moved frequently, leading the French writer Victor
(13:27):
Lugeux to describe him as Europe's richest vagabond. He had
no permanent home and would typically live in hotels or
alone in large houses, surrounded by books and papers. He wasn't, however,
completely without friends or companionship. In the eighteen seventies, he
(13:48):
had placed an advert in a Viennese newspaper for a housekeeper.
It read wealthy, highly educated, elderly gentleman seeks lady of
mature age, first in languages as secretary and supervisor of household.
One of the applicants was a woman called Bertha Kinsky.
(14:09):
She was an Austrian aristocrat down on her luck, well
read and highly intelligent. Nobel hired her, but after only
a couple of years she left to marry a former lover.
That might have been the end of the story, but
the two kept in touch. They continued to write to
each other for decades. Bertha Kinski, who became Bertha von Sutner,
(14:34):
went on to become a leading figure in the peace movement.
Her eighteen eighty nine novel Laid Down Your Arms, became
an international best seller and helped spark a new wave
of passivist activism across Europe. In their letters, they exchanged
a healthy debate over the moral implications of Nobel's inventions.
(14:58):
This was clearly something that he was thinking deeply about,
but his conclusion, at least in one letter, was that
dynamite could act as a vehicle for peace, but just
in an unexpected way. To quote one letter directly, perhaps
my factories will put an end to war sooner than
(15:19):
your congresses. On the day that two army corps can
mutually annihilate each other in a second, all civilized nations
will surely recoil with horror and disband their troops. End quote. Now,
as to whether Nobelle truly believed that, or it was
his way of legitimizing his inventions and making himself feel better,
(15:43):
I will let you be the judge of that. What
is not up for debate is that when Nobelle was
drafting his will and deciding how best to use his
considerable fortune. Alongside the prizes for the sciences and medicine,
he included an award for the person who shall had
done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations,
(16:06):
for the abolition or reduction of standing armies, and for
the holding and promotion of peace congresses. That became the
Nobel Peace Prize. And when Alfred Nobel died alone and
without any direct heirs, in eighteen ninety six in Sandernemo
in Italy, his fortune went to the establishment of this
(16:30):
collection of five prizes physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, and of
course peace. The sixth prize, by the way, the one
in economics, was only added much later in nineteen sixty eight.
This fortune, by the way, was vast, equivalent to three
hundred million dollars in today's money. It has since been
(16:52):
well invested, and the Nobel Foundation now has assets of
around seven hundred million dollars, more than enough to continue
dishing out prizes until the end of time. Now. Interestingly enough,
when his dying wish was first revealed, there were not
rounds of applause and clapse of joy. The first reaction
(17:14):
was confusion. He hadn't told anyone about this wish, and
after having had numerous bad experiences with lawyers in his
business career, he had drafted the will without one. As such,
there were a bunch of questions to be resolved, and
the organizations that he had named to administer the prize
(17:38):
had been given no idea of the plan. His extended
family fought the will too. After all, a huge fortune
was at stake and he had pledged it all to this,
then theoretical prize. It took a while, but after five
years and endless back and forth negotiations, the Nobel Prize
(18:01):
Foundation was established. Since the first prizes were awarded in
nineteen oh one, they have been awarded more than six
hundred times to over one thousand individuals and organizations. Some
are names you'll recognize instantly Married Curie, the first woman
to win a Nobel Prize and indeed the only person
(18:24):
to win one in two different sciences, physics and chemistry.
Martin Luther King Jr. For his non violent fight for
civil rights in the United States. Malala Yusufsi, the youngest
ever laureate who stood up for the rights of girls
to receive an education. Nelson, Mandela Albert Einstein, Ernest Hemickway,
(18:46):
mother Theresa. It is in many ways a role call
of human achievement, a celebration of the best that people
can do, but not all laureates are remembered so fondly.
Some choices, with the benefit of hindsight are harder to justify.
In nineteen forty nine, the Portuguese neurologist Antonio Egushmonniche was
(19:12):
awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine for developing the prefrontal lobotomy,
a procedure now widely condemned as brutal, ineffective and deeply damaging.
Thousands of patients were lobotomized across Europe and North America,
often without proper consents and often with disastrous consequences. The prize, however,
(19:35):
has never been revoked. And then there's the Peace Prize,
which is probably the most politically charged at them all.
It has been awarded to plenty of people, almost universally
recognized and agreed upon for their contributions, people like Mother
Theresa and Nelson Mandela. But in nineteen seventy three it
(19:57):
was awarded to Henry kiss and laid Doc Tau for
their efforts to end the war in Vietnam. Laidoc Tao
declined the prize, citing the ongoing conflict. Kissinger, on the
other hand, accepted it, despite the fact that the bombing
of Cambodia and Laos continued under his watch, and Kissinger
(20:21):
and peace were not two words that many people put
in the same sentence. The choice was so controversial that
two members of the Nobel Committee resigned in protest. So
to wrap things up. Like anything, the Nobel Prize is
not perfect and not without its contradictions. It has been
(20:41):
awarded to people now criticized as cruel and inhumane. It
has been accused of being used to make political points.
It is a prize made possible by dynamite. But for
all its flaws, the Nobel Prize still holds enormous symbolic power.
It can shine a light on discoveries no one had
(21:04):
heard of, lift unknown writers out of obscurity, or bring
global attention to a political cause that are gone unnoticed.
It's a prize that rewards ideas, ideas that push humanity forward,
even if progress itself is messy, uneven, and imperfect. And
(21:26):
perhaps that's what Alfred Debelle had hoped for. Not to
erase the past, but to influence the future, not to
rewrite his life, but to shape how it might be remembered.
And more than a century later, his name is still
spoken every year in connection with some of the most
important breakthroughs in science, literature, and peace, and at least
(21:52):
in my book, that isn't such a bad way to
be remembered. Okay, then that is it for today's episode
on Alfred Nobelle and the Nobel Prize. I hope it's
been an interesting one and that you've learned something new.
As always, I would love to know what you thought
of this episode. Did you know the story about the
Nobel Prize? Is there someone you think is deserving of
(22:14):
it who hasn't won, or someone undeserving who has. You
can head right into our community forum, which is at
community dot Leonardoenglish dot com and get chatting away to
other curious minds. You've been listening to English Learning for
Curious Minds by Leonardo English. I'm Alistair Budge. You stay
safe and I'll catch you in the next episode.
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