Alfred Nobel Signs Legacy: The Nobel Prize Is Born

Alfred Nobel sat in the Swedish-Norwegian Club in Paris on November 27, 1895, and signed a will that surprised everyone who knew him. The man who had built his fortune on dynamite and military explosives directed that his estate, roughly 31 million Swedish kronor, be used to establish annual prizes for outstanding contributions to physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, and peace. Nobel died the following year, and his family immediately contested the will. Nobel's motivations have been debated ever since. A popular story holds that a French newspaper mistakenly published his obituary when his brother Ludvig died in 1888, headlining it "The Merchant of Death Is Dead." Whether or not this incident occurred, Nobel was aware that his legacy was entangled with destruction. He held 355 patents and founded 90 factories, but his most profitable inventions were instruments of war. He was also a melancholy, literary man who corresponded with Bertha von Suttner, a leading pacifist who may have influenced the peace prize. The will was remarkably vague on logistics. Nobel specified the categories and that awards should go to those who conferred the "greatest benefit to humankind" but provided no selection mechanism. His executors spent five years battling Nobel's relatives and skeptical institutions. The Nobel Foundation was created in 1900, and the first prizes were awarded on December 10, 1901, the fifth anniversary of Nobel's death. The prizes became the world's most recognized measure of intellectual achievement. The Peace Prize, awarded in Oslo while the others are given in Stockholm, has been the most controversial. Nobel's fortune, converted to a managed endowment, has funded over 600 prizes. His name, once synonymous with explosives, now means excellence.