Alfred Bernhard Nobel ( , ; 21 October 1833 – 10 December 1896) was a Swedish chemist, engineer, inventor, businessman, and philanthropist. He held 355 different patents, dynamite being the most famous. The synthetic element nobelium was named after him. He owned Bofors, which he redirected from its previous role as primarily an iron and steel producer to a major manufacturer of cannon and other armaments. Having read a premature obituary which condemned him for profiting from the sales of arms, he bequeathed his fortune to institute the Nobel Prize. His name also survives in companies such as Dynamit Nobel and AkzoNobel, which are descendants of mergers with companies that Nobel established.
Introduction
Alfred Nobel
Alfred Nobel | Introduction
Yes, he was condemned for profiting from the sales of arms. Yes, for his leading role in weapons manufacturing and sales, and some question his motives in creating his prizes, suggesting they are intended to improve his reputation. Yes, Criticism of Nobel focuses on his leading role in weapons manufacturing and sales, and some question his motives in creating his prizes, suggesting they are intended to improve his reputation. Criticism of Nobel focuses on his leading role in weapons manufacturing and sales, and some question his motives in creating his prizes, suggesting they are intended to improve his reputation.
name the fields in which nobel prize is given
user
Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature, and Peace.
assistant
why is this prize given?
user
To those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind
assistant
which organization gives away the prizes?
user
The Nobel Foundation.
assistant
when was this formed?
user
29 June 1900.
assistant
are nominations after death allowed?
user
No.
assistant
how are people nominated for this?
user
Nomination forms are sent by the Nobel Committee.
assistant
by whom was the concept of these prizes first created?
user
Alfred Nobel.
assistant
who was he?
user
He was a Swedish chemist, engineer, inventor, businessman, and philanthropist.
assistant
where was he born?
user
Stockholm.
assistant
what did he invent?
user
He held 355 different patents, dynamite being the most famous.
assistant
what is this patented thing that you just mentioned?
user
It is an explosive made of nitroglycerin, sorbents (such as powdered shells or clay) and stabilizers.
assistant
how can it be stored?
user
Modern packaging places dynamite into sealed plastic bags, and using wax-coated cardboard.
assistant
what are a few rules regarding this explosive?
user
Explosive manuals recommend repeated turning over of boxes of dynamite in storage as sticks of dynamite will "weep" or "sweat" nitroglycerin, which can then pool in the bottom of the box or storage area.
assistant
did the scientist, who is credited with the invention of this thing face any criticism?
user
Nobel found that when nitroglycerin was incorporated in an absorbent inert substance like "kieselguhr" (diatomaceous earth) it became safer and more convenient to handle, and this mixture he patented in 1867 as "dynamite". Nobel demonstrated his explosive for the first time that year, at a quarry in Redhill, Surrey, England. In order to help reestablish his name and improve the image of his business from the earlier controversies associated with the dangerous explosives, Nobel had also considered naming the highly powerful substance "Nobel's Safety Powder", but settled with Dynamite instead, referring to the Greek word for "power" (). Nobel later combined nitroglycerin with various nitrocellulose compounds, similar to collodion, but settled on a more efficient recipe combining another nitrate explosive, and obtained a transparent, jelly-like substance, which was a more powerful explosive than dynamite.
Alfred Nobel | Inventions
It was in France that Nobel first encountered nitroglycerin, which Pelouze cautioned against using as a commercial explosive because of its great sensitivity to shock. In 1857, Nobel filed the first of several hundred patents, mostly concerning air pressure, gas and fluid gauges, but remained fascinated with nitroglycerin's potential as an explosive. Nobel, along with his father and brother Emil, experimented with various combinations of nitroglycerin and black powder. Nobel came up with a solution of how to safely detonate nitroglycerin by inventing the detonator, or blasting cap, that allowed a controlled explosion set off from a distance using a fuse.
Dynamite | History
Criticism of Nobel focuses on his leading role in weapons manufacturing and sales, and some question his motives in creating his prizes, suggesting they are intended to improve his reputation.
Alfred Nobel | Criticism
Gelignite, or blasting gelatine, as it was named, was patented in 1876; and was followed by a host of similar combinations, modified by the addition of potassium nitrate and various other substances. Gelignite was more stable, transportable and conveniently formed to fit into bored holes, like those used in drilling and mining, than the previously used compounds. It was adopted as the standard technology for mining in the "Age of Engineering", bringing Nobel a great amount of financial success, though at a significant cost to his health. An offshoot of this research resulted in Nobel's invention of ballistite, the precursor of many modern smokeless powder explosives and still used as a rocket propellant.
Alfred Nobel | Inventions
As a young man, Nobel studied with chemist Nikolai Zinin; then, in 1850, went to Paris to further the work. There he met Ascanio Sobrero, who had invented nitroglycerin three years before. Sobrero strongly opposed the use of nitroglycerin, as it was unpredictable, exploding when subjected to heat or pressure. But Nobel became interested in finding a way to control and use nitroglycerin as a commercially usable explosive, as it had much more power than gunpowder. At age 18, he went to the United States for one year to study, working for a short period under Swedish-American inventor John Ericsson, who designed the American Civil War ironclad USS "Monitor".
Alfred Nobel | Life and career
No one objected. However, no one supported him, no one helped to realize the idea. G. Askaryan then was inexperienced in forms and methods of scientific investigation. He even did not publish his proposal. Several years later, in 1952, the same idea was set forth independently by an American physicist Donald Arthur Glaser. He put the idea into practice having assembled the device known now as bubble chamber. This instrument proved to be so useful in high energy physics that D. A. Glazer was awarded with the Nobel Prize in 1960. This event gave rise to Askaryan's deep concern. Of course, he was shaken that Nobel Prize was so near and, so to say, he let it slip.
Gurgen Askaryan | Missed Nobel Prize
In the summer of 1863, Nobel performed his first successful detonation of pure nitroglycerin, using a blasting cap made of a copper percussion cap and mercury fulminate. In 1864, Alfred Nobel filed patents for both the blasting cap and his method of synthesizing nitroglycerin, using sulfuric acid, nitric acid and glycerin. On 3 September 1864, while experimenting with nitroglycerin, Emil and several others were killed in an explosion at the factory at Immanuel Nobel's estate at Heleneborg. After this, Alfred founded the company Nitroglycerin Aktiebolaget AB in Vinterviken to continue work in a more isolated area and the following year moved to Germany, where he founded another company, Dynamit Nobel.
Dynamite | History
In April 1866, the company shipped three unmarked crates of nitroglycerin to California for the Central Pacific Railroad, who wished to experiment with its blasting capability to speed the construction of a tunnel through the Sierra Nevada for the First Transcontinental Railroad. One of the crates exploded, destroying a Wells Fargo office in San Francisco and killing fifteen people, leading to a complete ban on the transport of liquid nitroglycerin in California. Liquid nitroglycerin was widely banned elsewhere as well, and this finally led to Alfred Nobel & Company's development of dynamite in 1867, made by mixing the nitroglycerin with the diatomaceous earth ("kieselguhr") found in the Krümmel hills.
Dynamit Nobel | Creation
During the experimental stage, a very severe explosion occurred in 1866 within the Krümmel factory which was nearly destroyed. He was successful in mixing nitroglycerine with Kieselgur which made it less sensitive to shocks. In October 1867, Nobel filed a patent for this new explosive in Sweden, the United States of America and in the United Kingdom (the patent was not filed in Germany before 1877). The new explosive was marketed under the name of security powder. In 1874, in order to ensure a better supply of the main buyers, the mines of the region of Ruhr, the company took over the Schlebusch factory in Manfort (since 1930 a district of Leverkusen; Nobel was involved in its construction since 1872 and supervised the production on a temporary basis.
Dynamit Nobel | From 1865 to 1918
At the time, Nobel was a student in Uppsala, but also helped in the factory. After the explosion, production of nitroglycerin was banned in the factory, but continued next to Heleneborg on an anchored barge in a bay of Lake Mälaren. His brother Alfred was not in the factory at the time of Emil’s death but later managed to stabilize dynamite with a diatomaceous earth called kieselguhr.
Emil Oskar Nobel | Biography
Dynamit Nobel AG originates from the company Alfred Nobel & Co., founded on 21 June 1865 in Hamburg by the Swedish chemist and industrialist Alfred Nobel. At the beginning, the company was manufacturing nitroglycerin explosives in the dynamite factory of Krümmel located in Geesthacht, near Hamburg. This factory was the first one to be located outside of Sweden. Nobel wanted to produce nitroglycerine on several sites in Europe because the transportation of explosives was very dangerous due to its well-known sensitivity to shocks. Because of the danger associated with handling nitroglycerine, Nobel started to develop a more secure explosive commonly known as dynamite.
Dynamit Nobel | From 1865 to 1918
Alfred Nobel patented Ballistite in 1887 while he was living in Paris. His formulation was composed of 10% camphor and equal parts nitroglycerine and collodion. The camphor reacted with any acidic products of the chemical breakdown of the two explosives. This both stabilized the explosive against further decomposition and prevented spontaneous explosions. However, camphor tends to evaporate over time, leaving a potentially unstable mixture. Nobel's patent specified that the nitrocellulose should be "of the well-known soluble kind". He offered to sell the rights of the new explosive to the French government, but they declined, largely because they had just adopted Poudre B for military use.
Ballistite | Military adoption
According to Roberts, the common story that Alfred Nobel's discovery of dynamite was an accident may not be true. On the other hand, Roberts says, Nobel did make a discovery with the help of luck soon after that. Nobel cut his finger on a piece of glass one day at work and subsequently applied collodion in order to form a protective layer over the wound (similar in principle to liquid bandage). Nobel was kept up at night by the pain in his finger, so he started to think about a problem he was having back at work: Nobel was trying to create a powerful explosive using nitrocellulose and nitroglycerine, but the two would not combine.
List of discoveries influenced by chance circumstances | Nobel and blasting gelatin
In 1888, Alfred's brother, Ludvig, died while visiting Cannes, and a French newspaper mistakenly published Alfred's obituary. It condemned him for his invention of military explosives (not, as is commonly quoted, dynamite, which was mainly used for civilian applications) and is said to have brought about his decision to leave a better legacy after his death. The obituary stated, "" ("The merchant of death is dead") and went on to say, "Dr. Alfred Nobel, who became rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before, died yesterday." Alfred (who never had a wife or children) was disappointed with what he read and concerned with how he would be remembered.
Alfred Nobel | Nobel Prizes
Nitroglycerin was the first practical explosive produced that was stronger than black powder. It was first synthesized by the Italian chemist Ascanio Sobrero in 1847, working under Théophile-Jules Pelouze at the University of Turin. Sobrero initially called his discovery "pyroglycerine" and warned vigorously against its use as an explosive. Nitroglycerin was later adopted as a commercially useful explosive by Alfred Nobel, who experimented with safer ways to handle the dangerous compound after his younger brother, Emil Oskar Nobel, and several factory workers were killed in an explosion at the Nobels' armaments factory in 1864 in Heleneborg, Sweden. One year later, Nobel founded Alfred Nobel and Company in Germany and built an isolated factory in the Krümmel hills of Geesthacht near Hamburg.
Nitroglycerin | History
Dynamite was invented by Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel in the 1860s and was the first safely manageable explosive stronger than black powder. Alfred Nobel's father, Immanuel Nobel, was an industrialist, engineer, and inventor. He built bridges and buildings in Stockholm and founded Sweden's first rubber factory. His construction work inspired him to research new methods of blasting rock that were more effective than black powder. After some bad business deals in Sweden, in 1838 Immanuel moved his family to Saint Petersburg, where Alfred and his brothers were educated privately under Swedish and Russian tutors. At age 17, Alfred was sent abroad for two years; in the United States he met Swedish engineer John Ericsson and in France studied under famed chemist Théophile-Jules Pelouze and his pupil Ascanio Sobrero who had first synthesized nitroglycerin in 1847.
Dynamite | History
The first plastic explosive was gelignite, invented by Alfred Nobel in 1875. Prior to World War I, the British explosives chemist Oswald Silberrad obtained British and U.S. patents for a series of plastic explosives called "Nitrols", composed of nitrated aromatics, collodion, and oxidising inorganic salts. The language of the patents indicate that at this time, Silberrad saw no need to explain to "those versed in the art" either what he meant by plasticity or why it may be advantageous, as he only explains why his plastic explosive is superior to others of that type. One of the simplest plastic explosives was Nobel's Explosive No.
Plastic explosive | History
The character of Roch and his revolutionary powerful explosive might also have been inspired by the real-life Alfred Nobel who invented dynamite and later reportedly regretted having introduced such a destructive force into the world.
Facing the Flag | Response
Alfred Nobel () was born on 21 October 1833 in Stockholm, Sweden, into a family of engineers. He was a chemist, engineer, and inventor. In 1894, Nobel purchased the Bofors iron and steel mill, which he made into a major armaments manufacturer. Nobel also invented ballistite. This invention was a precursor to many smokeless military explosives, especially the British smokeless powder cordite. As a consequence of his patent claims, Nobel was eventually involved in a patent infringement lawsuit over cordite. Nobel amassed a fortune during his lifetime, with most of his wealth coming from his 355 inventions, of which dynamite is the most famous.
Nobel Prize | History
If you give a prize for a building, shouldn’t the fellow who built the first floor be given the prize before those who built the second floor?"
E. C. George Sudarshan | Controversy regarding Nobel Prize
Rutherford later described this as "almost as incredible as if you fired a 15-inch shell at a piece of tissue paper and it came back to hit you". The apparatus used in the experiment was an early version of what was to become the Geiger counter.
Ernest Marsden | Education
The second controversy came when the 1983 prize went in part to William Alfred Fowler "for his theoretical and experimental studies of the nuclear reactions of importance in the formation of the chemical elements in the universe." The controversy arose because Hoyle had been the inventor of the theory of nucleosynthesis in the stars with two research papers published shortly after WWII. So some suspicion arose that Hoyle was denied the third share of this prize because of his earlier public disagreement with the 1974 award. British scientist Harry Kroto later said that the Nobel Prize is not just an award for a piece of work, but a recognition of a scientist's overall reputation and Hoyle's championing many disreputable and disproven ideas may have invalidated him.
Fred Hoyle | Nobel Physics Prizes
The theory was criticised by Thorndike in a 1915 letter to "Science" and several books, a position joined by Muir, Stillman, Steele, and Sarton. Needham et al. concurred with these earlier critics that the additional passage did not originate with Bacon and further showed that the proportions supposedly deciphered (a 7:5:5 ratio of saltpetre to charcoal to sulphur) as not even useful for firecrackers, burning slowly with a great deal of smoke and failing to ignite inside a gun barrel. The ~41% nitrate content is too low to have explosive properties.
Roger Bacon | Gunpowder
Competitors tried to mix nitroglycerin with other inert absorbents in many different combinations to get around Nobel's tightly controlled patents.
Dynamit Nobel | Creation
The editorial deems this to be worthy of a Nobel prize even though it states clearly in Alfred Nobel's will that prizes are not to be given out solely on the basis of improving an existing technology for commercial use. The newspaper then points out a few cases in which precursor discoveries had been awarded with a Nobel, along with a few deserving cases in which it had not, such as Rosalind Franklin, Oswald Avery, .
Paul Lauterbur | Nobel Prize
He resigned all his public positions in 1852. After the coup d'état in 1851 he resigned his appointments, but continued to conduct an experimental laboratory-school he had started in 1846. There he worked with the explosive material guncotton and other nitrosulphates. His student Ascanio Sobrero was the discoverer of nitroglycerin (1847), and another student, Alfred Nobel, was to take that discovery on to great heights in the form of commercial explosives including dynamite. He was a major inspiration for both students.
Théophile-Jules Pelouze | Life
It then went to the Court of Appeal and the House of Lords in 1895 where he also lost the two appeals and the Nobel's Explosives Company had to pay the costs. The claim was lost because the words "of the well-known soluble kind" in his patent were taken to mean soluble collodion, and to specifically exclude the ether-alcohol-insoluble guncotton.
Ballistite | Development of cordite and unsuccessful claim by Nobel of patent infringement
There is evidence that he used the Nobel nominating and reporting procedures to block a Nobel Prize for Lewis in thermodynamics by nominating Lewis for the prize three times, and then using his position as a committee member to write negative reports.
Nobel Prize controversies | Chemistry
The invention that brought Lawrence to international fame started out as a sketch on a scrap of a paper napkin. While sitting in the library one evening in 1929, Lawrence glanced over a journal article by Rolf Widerøe, and was intrigued by one of the diagrams. This depicted a device that produced high-energy particles by means of a succession of small "pushes". The device depicted was laid out in a straight line using increasingly longer electrodes. At the time, physicists were beginning to explore the atomic nucleus. In 1919, the New Zealand physicist Ernest Rutherford had fired alpha particles into nitrogen and had succeeded in knocking protons out of some of the nuclei.
Ernest Lawrence | Invention
For the most part, though, Mr. Gervais prefers to shock us with our own brutality...[with] unvarnished truths [that] begin to feel heavy, cruel."
The Invention of Lying | Critical reception
In October 2019, his co-invention of the lithium-ion battery was honored with the 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. However, Yazami himself was omitted from the award, which was instead given to Stanley Whittingham, John Goodenough and Akira Yoshino. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded Goodenough and Whittigham for their cathodes, and Yoshino for the first working prototype, but omitted the importance of the working graphite anode invented by Yazami. Due to the Nobel Prize's limitation of up to three recipients, Yazami believes the committee had to make "a very hard decision" between Whittingham and himself. He nevertheless congratulated the three recipients of the prize.
Rachid Yazami | Nobel Prize omission
Meanwhile, a government committee in Great Britain, called the "Explosives Committee" and chaired by Sir Frederick Abel, monitored foreign developments in explosives. Abel and Sir James Dewar, who was also on the committee, jointly patented a modified form of ballistite in 1889. This consisted of 58% nitroglycerin by weight, 37% guncotton and 5% petroleum jelly. Using acetone as a solvent, it was extruded as spaghetti-like rods initially called "cord powder" or "the committee's modification of ballistite", but this was soon abbreviated to cordite. After unsuccessful negotiations, in 1893, Nobel sued Abel and Dewar over patent infringement and lost the case.
Ballistite | Development of cordite and unsuccessful claim by Nobel of patent infringement
Å.G. Ekstrand meant that the idea probably came from the chemist Lars Fredrik Nilson.
Nobelinstitut | Introduction
After the death of his younger brother Emil in an 1864 nitroglycerin explosion at the family's armaments factory in Heleneborg, Stockholm, Nobel founded Nitroglycerin AB in Vinterviken, Stockholm. A year later, having found some German business partners, he launched the Alfred Nobel & Company in Germany, building an isolated factory in the Krümmel hills of Geesthacht near Hamburg. This business exported a liquid combination of nitroglycerin and gunpowder known as "Blasting Oil", but it was extremely unstable and difficult to transport, as shown in numerous catastrophes. The buildings of the Krümmel factory itself were destroyed in 1866 and again in 1870.
Dynamit Nobel | Creation
Alfred Bernhard Nobel ( , ; 21 October 1833 – 10 December 1896) was a Swedish chemist, engineer, inventor, businessman, and philanthropist. He held 355 different patents, dynamite being the most famous. The synthetic element nobelium was named after him. He owned Bofors, which he redirected from its previous role as primarily an iron and steel producer to a major manufacturer of cannon and other armaments. Having read a premature obituary which condemned him for profiting from the sales of arms, he bequeathed his fortune to institute the Nobel Prize. His name also survives in companies such as Dynamit Nobel and AkzoNobel, which are descendants of mergers with companies that Nobel established.
Alfred Nobel | Introduction
I've just about had it up to here!" Reaction from the English-speaking world was also particularly fierce, with representatives from many English-speaking countries regarding Fo's work as unfashionable and outdated, belonging to the 1970s and 1980s. U.S. playwright Tony Kushner, however, expressed his approval, writing: "[Fo] has dedicated his genius to making everything he touches debatable. [It] is brave and perhaps even reckless because it subjects Literature, and prizes, and Newspapers of Record, to the Fo effect".
Dario Fo | Nobel Prize
In the United States, in 1885, the chemist Russell S. Penniman invented "ammonium dynamite", a form of explosive that used ammonium nitrate as a substitute for the more costly nitroglycerin. Ammonium nitrate has only 85% of the chemical energy of nitroglycerin. It is rated by either "weight strength" (the amount of ammonium nitrate in the medium) or "cartridge strength" (the potential explosive strength generated by an amount of explosive of a certain density and grain size used in comparison to the explosive strength generated by an equivalent density and grain size of a standard explosive). For example, high-explosive "65% Extra Dynamite" has a weight strength of 65% ammonium nitrate and 35% "dope" (the absorbent medium mixed with the stabilizers and additives).
Dynamite | "Extra" dynamite
Gelignite (), also known as blasting gelatin or simply jelly, is an explosive material consisting of collodion-cotton (a type of nitrocellulose or guncotton) dissolved in either nitroglycerine or nitroglycol and mixed with wood pulp and saltpetre (sodium nitrate or potassium nitrate). It was invented in 1875, by Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, who also invented dynamite. It is more stable than dynamite, but can still suffer from "sweating" or leaching out nitroglycerine. Its composition makes it easily moldable and safe to handle without protection, as long as it is not near anything capable of detonating it. One of the cheapest explosives, it burns slowly and cannot explode without a detonator, so it can be stored safely.
Gelignite | Introduction
Fritze in "Invented Knowledge: False History, Fake Science and Pseudo-religions". Princeton historian Michael Gordin acknowledged "a special debt of gratitude" to Ellenberger for his contributions to "The Pseudoscience Wars".
C. Leroy Ellenberger | Velikovskian critic
In contrast, insoluble in alcohol, nitrocellulose was known as "gun cotton" and was used as an explosive. Nobel's patent refers to the production of Celluloid using camphor and soluble nitrocellulose; and this was taken to imply that Nobel was specifically distinguishing between the use of soluble and insoluble nitrocellulose. For a forensic analysis of the case see The History of Explosives Vol II; The Case for Cordite, John Williams (2014)
Cordite | Nobel and Abel patent dispute
"The New York Times" reviewer Mordaunt Hall had mixed feelings about DeMille's first talkie, calling it "an astonishing mixture, with artificiality vying with realism and comedy hanging on the heels of grim melodrama." "Even in the work of the performers, there are moments when they are human beings and then, at times, they become nothing more than Mr. De Mille's puppets", "behaving strangely and conversing in movie epigrams". Nonetheless, Hall approved of the efforts of Johnson ("an accomplished actress") and Bickford ("a splendid performance"), though he could not say the same of Nagel ("does not act up to his usual standard").
Dynamite (1929 film) | Reception
According to Samuel Brittan of the "Financial Times", both former Swedish minister of finance, Kjell-Olof Feldt, and Swedish former minister of commerce, Gunnar Myrdal, wanted the prize abolished, saying, "Myrdal rather less graciously wanted the prize abolished because it had been given to such reactionaries as Hayek (and afterwards Milton Friedman)." Relatedly, it has been noted that several members of the awarding committee have been affiliated with the Mont Pelerin Society. In his speech at the 1974 Nobel Prize banquet, Friedrich Hayek stated that had he been consulted on the establishment of a Nobel Prize in economics, he would "have decidedly advised against it" primarily because, "The Nobel Prize confers on an individual an authority which in economics no man ought to possess...
Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences | Controversies and criticisms
Albert A. Michelson, who won the Nobel Prize for Physics.
Nevile Gardiner | Introduction
Nobel filed his first patent, an English patent for a gas meter, in 1857, while his first Swedish patent, which he received in 1863, was on "ways to prepare gunpowder".
Alfred Nobel | Life and career
Wiener added benzene to the wedge after having been criticized for not considering the possibility of having photographed thin-film interference fringes rather than standing waves. His interpretation validated Fresnel's interpretation rather than Neumann's. Paul Drude criticized Wiener for this. With Nernst, he repeated Wiener's experiment using a fluorescent film as detector, in order to prove that the effect was due to electric fields.
Otto Wiener (physicist) | Drude's critique
The following are quotations from books and articles published by journalists, biographers, physicists, and historians, with sources below: From "Eva Perón" (Alicia Dujovne Ortiz, 1996): From Juan G. Roederer (2003):
Ronald Richter | Biographical publications
The prize has no connection to the Nobel Prize established by Alfred Nobel, with which it is often confused owing to the similarity of their names.
Alfred Noble Prize | Introduction
One of the most important of his investigations had to do with the manufacture of guncotton, and he developed a process, consisting essentially of reducing the nitrated cotton to fine pulp, which enabled it to be safely manufactured and at the same time yielded the product in a form that increased its usefulness. This work to an important extent prepared the way for the "smokeless powders" which came into general use towards the end of the 19th century; cordite, the type adopted by the British government in 1891, was invented jointly by him and Sir James Dewar. He and Dewar were unsuccessfully sued by Alfred Nobel over infringement of Nobel's patent for a similar explosive called ballistite, the case finally being resolved in the House of Lords in 1895.
Frederick Abel | Notable work
In another 2011 "Aftenposten" opinion article, the grandson of one of Nobel's two brothers, Michael Nobel, also criticised what he believed to be the politicisation of the award, claiming that the Nobel Committee has not always acted in accordance with Nobel's will. Norwegian lawyer Fredrik S. Heffermehl has criticized the management of the Peace Prize.
Nobel Peace Prize | Criticism
The 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov of the University of Manchester "for groundbreaking experiments regarding the two-dimensional material graphene". Several problems with the factual accuracy of the supporting documents issued by the Nobel committee have been pointed out, including that they seem to wrongly attribute the discovery of graphene to Geim and Novoselov, and they didn't take into account other contributions to graphene research.
Nobel Prize controversies | Physics
It had a microscope attached, giving it accuracy to six decimal places.. In the 1920s, the novelist and engineer Nevil Shute Norway (he called his autobiography ) was "Chief Calculator" on the design of the British R100 airship for Vickers Ltd. from 1924. The stress calculations for each transverse frame required computations by a pair of "calculators" (people) using Fuller cylindrical slide rules for two or three months. The simultaneous equation contained up to seven unknown quantities, took about a week to solve, and had to be repeated with a different selection of slack wires if the guess on which of the eight radial wires were slack was wrong and one of the wires guessed to be slack was not slack.
Slide rule | Modern form
Bickford's fuse not only dramatically improved the safety conditions of mines around the world, but also contributed to the development of dynamite. Alfred Nobel created dynamite in 1867, by moulding nitroglycerine and a mud-like compound found near his laboratories called kieselguhr into individual cylinders. At the end of each cylinder Nobel inserted a blast cap which could be ignited in one of two ways. First, by inserting a safety fuse into the blast cap and igniting the fuse, it will set the blast cap off and produce enough energy to detonate the dynamite. Second, it is possible to detonate dynamite by inserting a blast cap into the end of the cylinder and then by attaching an electrical wire into the blast cap and producing a current which will travel from the source to the blast cap will also set off the dynamite.
Safety fuse | Impact of the safety fuse
Glaser was awarded the 1960 Nobel Prize for Physics for the invention of the bubble chamber. His invention allowed scientists to observe what happens to high-energy beams from an accelerator, thus paving the way for many important discoveries.
Donald A. Glaser | Nobel Prize
In "Nature", editor John Maddox called it "shameful" that Fowler had been rewarded with a Nobel prize and Hoyle had not.
Fred Hoyle | Nobel Physics Prizes
Those hostile to the North and what they considered its deceptive practices during negotiations were deprived of a chance to criticise Lê Đức Thọ, as he declined the award. The satirist and musician Tom Lehrer has remarked that "political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize." Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres, and Yitzhak Rabin received the Peace Prize in 1994 for their efforts in making peace between Israel and Palestine. Immediately after the award was announced, one of the five Norwegian Nobel Committee members denounced Arafat as a terrorist and resigned. Additional misgivings about Arafat were widely expressed in various newspapers.
Nobel Prize | Controversial recipients
a giant with feet of clay."
William Randolph Hearst | Criticism
Since the first award in 1901, conferment of the Nobel Prize has occasionally engendered criticism and controversy. After his death in 1896, the will of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel established that an annual prize be awarded for service to humanity in the fields of physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, and peace. Similarly, the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel is awarded along with the Nobel Prizes. Nobel sought to reward "those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind". One prize, he stated, should be given "to the person who shall have made the most important 'discovery' or 'invention' within the field of physics".
Nobel Prize controversies | Introduction
Hoyle was also at the centre of two unrelated controversies involving the politics for selecting the winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics. The first came when the 1974 prize went, in part, to Antony Hewish for his leading role in the discovery of pulsars. Promptly Hoyle made an off-the-cuff remark to a reporter in Montreal that "Yes, Jocelyn Bell was the actual discoverer, not Hewish, who was her supervisor, so she should have been included." This remark received widespread international coverage. Worried about being misunderstood and by British libel laws, Hoyle carefully composed a letter of explanation to "The Times".
Fred Hoyle | Nobel Physics Prizes
At the sixth Congress of Solvay in 1930, the indeterminacy relation just discussed was Einstein's target of criticism. His idea contemplates the existence of an experimental apparatus which was subsequently designed by Bohr in such a way as to emphasize the essential elements and the key points which he would use in his response. Einstein considers a box (called Einstein's box; see figure) containing electromagnetic radiation and a clock which controls the opening of a shutter which covers a hole made in one of the walls of the box. The shutter uncovers the hole for a time formula_1 which can be chosen arbitrarily.
Bohr–Einstein debates | Einstein's second criticism
Agreeing with Greene's views, Jeffrey Archer more recently, echoed the view that R. K. Narayan should have indeed won the Nobel Prize. One of the jokes in the literary circles was that the Nobel Literary Committee ignored his books or was confused because of the misleading titles: many people supposedly thought that they were self-help books on various subjects – "The Guide", "The English Teacher", "The Painter of Signs", "The Vendor of Sweets", etc. Other humorous speculations on what might have tripped him, "His writing is too simple, and too readable, requiring no effort on the part of the reader.
Nobel Prize controversies | Literature
Awards committees have historically rewarded discoveries over inventions: 77% of Nobel Prizes in physics have been given to discoveries, compared with only 23% to inventions. In addition, the scientific prizes typically reward contributions over an entire career rather than a single year. No Nobel Prize was established for mathematics and many other scientific and cultural fields. An early theory that envy led Nobel to omit a prize to mathematician Gösta Mittag-Leffler was refuted because of timing inaccuracies. Another possibility is that Nobel did not consider mathematics as a practical discipline. Both the Fields Medal and the Abel Prize have been described as the "Nobel Prize of mathematics".
Nobel Prize controversies | Introduction
Nitroglycerine was synthesized by the Italian chemist Ascanio Sobrero in 1847. It was subsequently developed and manufactured by Alfred Nobel as an industrial explosive, but even then it was unsuitable as a propellant: despite its energetic and smokeless qualities, it detonates instead of deflagrating smoothly, making it more liable to shatter a gun, rather than propel a projectile out of it. Nitroglycerine is also highly sensitive, making it unfit to be carried in battlefield conditions. A major step forward was the invention of guncotton, a nitrocellulose-based material, by German chemist Christian Friedrich Schönbein in 1846. He promoted its use as a blasting explosive and sold manufacturing rights to the Austrian Empire.
Smokeless powder | Nitroglycerine and guncotton
Although his wife had forbidden him to do so, Schönbein occasionally experimented at home in the kitchen. One day in 1845, when his wife was away, he spilled a mixture of nitric acid and sulfuric acid. After using his wife's cotton apron to mop it up, he hung the apron over the stove to dry, only to find that the cloth spontaneously ignited and burned so quickly that it seemed to disappear. Schönbein, in fact, had converted the cellulose of the apron, with the nitro groups (added from the nitric acid) serving as an internal source of oxygen; when heated, the cellulose was completely and suddenly oxidized.
Christian Friedrich Schönbein | Explosives
Since August 2007 Heffermehl has marked himself as a staunch critic of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, which, according to Heffermehl, has failed to comply with the will of Alfred Nobel, thereby making several awards—45% of the awards after 1945—juridically illegal. Among the laureates perceived by Heffermehl as illegal are the more controversial laureates, such as Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho (1973) and Arafat, Peres and Rabin (1994), but also less controversial ones such as Mother Teresa (1979) and Elie Wiesel (1986). Although many laureates have done "commendable work", Heffermehl stresses that this is not good enough to receive a prize whose criteria explicitly pertain to disarmament and peace work.
Fredrik Heffermehl | Nobel Peace Prize criticism
6254 (8322) "Pancreina şi procedeul fabricaţiei ei"/"Pancrein and the process of making it", from the Romanian Ministry of Industry and Trade). The Spanish neurophysiologist Fernando de Castro (1896–1967) was the first to describe arterial chemoreceptors and circumscribe them to the carotid body for the respiratory reflexes in 1926–1928. For many experts, this direct disciple of Santiago Ramón y Cajal deserved to share the Nobel Prize 1938 with the awarded Corneille Heymans, but at that time Spain was immersed in the Spanish Civil War and it seems that the Nobel Board even doubted if he was alive or not, being at the front since almost the beginning of the conflict.
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine | Controversial inclusions and exclusions
Ballistite is a smokeless propellant made from two high explosives, nitrocellulose and nitroglycerine. It was developed and patented by Alfred Nobel in the late 19th century.
Ballistite | Introduction
"To his many detractors, (...) Lemelson's patents were in fact worthless. Lemelson, they say, was one of the great frauds of the 20th century". "Some people see life in terms of a photograph or a song or a short story; Lemelson sees it in terms of a patent. He thinks in patents, and sometimes he dreams in patents. Lemelson holds patents on machine-vision systems, an industrial robot, a fax machine, a copy machine, a tape-recorder drive, and a camcorder. It's hard to think of a technology he has not patented." "Flash of Genius" New Yorker, January 11, 1993. The sharpest criticism of Lemelson is that he engaged in unfair "submarine" patent filings.
Jerome H. Lemelson | Controversy
Justice Samuel Nelson argued that the principle was what the inventors contributed and the particular apparatus used was trivial and unimportant: [W]e see that the leading feature of the invention consists in the discovery of a new property in the article of lead and in the employment and adaptation of it, by means of the machinery described, to the production of a new article, wrought pipe, never before successfully made. Without the discovery of this new property in the metal, the machinery or apparatus would be useless, and not the subject of a patent. It is in connection with this property and the embodiment and adaptation of it to practical use that the machinery is described and the arrangement claimed.
Le Roy v. Tatham | Dissent
Several reviewers doubt the physical and mathematical correctness of Frieden's ideas; see, for example, Raymond F. Streater's Lost Causes in Theoretical Physics: Physics from Fisher Information, and Cosma Shalizi's review of "Physics from Fisher Information."
B. Roy Frieden | Criticism
Wijnand van der Sanden checked Dieck's reports of Dutch finds and reached the same result. Eisenbeiß and van der Sanden concluded that Dieck fabricated the findings in his publications.
Alfred Dieck | Criticism
The American release also replaced the original introductory segment with one by American television star Hugh Downs. Following the American release, the film won several additional high-profile admirers. "The New York Times" critic Howard Thompson found it "fresh, funny and highly imaginative," with "a marvelous eyeful of trick effects". Pauline Kael was similarly glowing, calling the film a "wonderful giddy science fantasy" and adding that Zeman "sustains the Victorian tone, with its delight in the magic of science, that makes Verne seem so playfully archaic". Charles Stinson of the "Los Angeles Times" began his highly positive film review by saying: ""The Fabulous World of Jules Verne" is precisely that.
Invention for Destruction | Release and reception
The 46-minute lecture was introduced on television by David Hare. Later, the text and streaming video formats (without Hare's introduction) were posted on the Nobel Prize and Swedish Academy official websites. It has since been released as a DVD. Pinter quoted Father John Metcalf speaking to Raymond Seitz, then Minister at the US Embassy in London, "My parishioners [in Nicaragua] built a school, a health centre, a cultural centre. We have lived in peace. A few months ago a Contra force attacked the parish. They destroyed everything: the school, the health centre, the cultural centre. They raped nurses and teachers, slaughtered doctors, in the most brutal manner.
Harold Pinter | Nobel Prize and Nobel Lecture
In November 2010, De Heer wrote to the Nobel prize committee criticising certain aspects of the Scientific Background document relating to the award of the Nobel Prize to Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov.
Walter de Heer | Letter to Nobel prize committee
Some anachronistic errors were also spotted, such as when Um Hārūn used disposable medical gloves that were not invented until 1965.
Um Harun | Criticism
However, McCloskey acknowledges the virtues as being born from each man's "genius", and rather blames the vices as being created not by these three Nobel economists, but by their students and their students' students, including herself.
McCloskey critique | Substance
Many people have opposed this expansion, including the Swedish human rights lawyer Peter Nobel, a great-grandnephew of Alfred Nobel. In his speech at the 1974 Nobel banquet, awardee Friedrich Hayek stated that had he been consulted whether to establish an economics prize, he would "have decidedly advised against it" primarily because "the Nobel Prize confers on an individual an authority which in economics no man ought to possess... This does not matter in the natural sciences. Here the influence exercised by an individual is chiefly an influence on his fellow experts; and they will soon cut him down to size if he exceeds his competence.
Nobel Prize controversies | Prizes in non-Nobel domains
After being awarded the Nobel Prize, Taube noticed a side benefit to the prestigious award - his students paid better attention in class.
Henry Taube | Nobel Prize
He was born in 1839 in central Scotland the son of John N McRoberts and his wife, Sarah Ogle. He was educated at Falkirk Grammar School. In 1870 he established a chemical factory at Westquarter in Falkirk, mainly producing sulphuric acid. Alfred Nobel bought the company in 1871 and started making detonators there, mainly for the Scottish coalfields. He was very impressed by McRoberts and in 1873 he moved him to the new British Dynamite Factory in Ardeer, North Ayrshire as its Manager, directly under Alfred Nobel, the first dynamite factory in the world. It was McRoberts and a partner John Downie who raised the £24,000 to build the factory rather than Nobel himself, who was yet to become rich from his invention.
George McRoberts | Life
The first public recognition of Feynman's work came in 1954, when Lewis Strauss, the chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) notified him that he had won the Albert Einstein Award, which was worth $15,000 and came with a gold medal. Because of Strauss's actions in stripping Oppenheimer of his security clearance, Feynman was reluctant to accept the award, but Isidor Isaac Rabi cautioned him: "You should never turn a man's generosity as a sword against him. Any virtue that a man has, even if he has many vices, should not be used as a tool against him." It was followed by the AEC's Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award in 1962.
Richard Feynman | Recognition and awards
Nobel Laureate I. I. Rabi, one of the prime participants in the dawn of the atomic age, called it "an epic worthy of Milton. No where else have I seen the whole story put down with such elegance and gusto and in such revealing detail and simple language which carries the reader through wonderful and profound scientific discoveries and their application."
The Making of the Atomic Bomb | Introduction
Darwin and Wallace would not be worthy of note were it not for the weight of authority of the names under whose auspices it has been brought forward. If it means what it says, it is a truism; if it means anything more, it is contrary to fact. Darwin later commented in his autobiography that this was the only response to the papers, summarising Haughton’s verdict as ‘all that [was] new in there was false, and what was true was old'."
Samuel Haughton | Criticism of Darwin
The Nobel Foundation declined to comment on the rumours other than saying, "Any rumor that a person has not been given a Nobel Prize because he has made known his intention to refuse the reward is ridiculous", further stating a recipient could only decline a Nobel Prize after he is announced a winner. Otto Heinrich Warburg, a German national who won the 1931 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine, was rumored to have been selected for the 1944 prize but forbidden to accept it. According to the Nobel Foundation, this story is not true.
Nobel Prize controversies | Nobel rumours
Or you can say, 'Well, I enjoy what I was doing, and I want to keep doing that.'"
Robert Curl | Nobel Prize
Dynamite is an explosive made of nitroglycerin, sorbents (such as powdered shells or clay) and stabilizers. It was invented by the Swedish chemist and engineer Alfred Nobel in Geesthacht, Northern Germany and patented in 1867. It rapidly gained wide-scale use as a more powerful alternative to black powder. Today, dynamite is mainly used in the mining, quarrying, construction, and demolition industries. Dynamite is still the product of choice for trenching applications, and as a cost-effective alternative to cast boosters. Dynamite is occasionally used as an initiator or booster for AN and ANFO explosive charges.
Dynamite | Introduction
There are several notable reasons described below why the "H"-theorem, at least in its original 1871 form, is not completely rigorous. As Boltzmann would eventually go on to admit, the arrow of time in the "H"-theorem is not in fact purely mechanical, but really a consequence of assumptions about initial conditions.
H-theorem | Criticism and exceptions
Lecture audiences are always intrigued when I display a slide showing the carefully dated and hand-written lab protocol of the very last step in that synthesis conducted by Miramontes, in which the elements of acetylene are added to impart oral activity." The scientific article reporting the synthesis of 19-nor-17α-ethynyltestosterone (norethisterone) has Miramontes as the second author. Finally, the very last step of the synthesis method was registered, on October 15, 1951, in page 114 of the Miramontes's personal laboratory notebook (signed). In a 2006 essay published in the "FASEB Journal", the director of the Worcester Foundation for Experimental Biology said: "Another aspect of the Nobel Prizes that is a perennial topic of discussion concerns those discoveries, inventions, or advances that go unrecognized altogether.
Luis E. Miramontes | Invention and synthesis of norethisterone
Some physicists had bitter feelings that the Nobel Prize committee failed to reward Cabibbo for his vital part. Asked for a reaction on the prize, Cabibbo preferred to give no comment. According to sources close to him, however, he was embittered.
Nicola Cabibbo | Work
For his work in discovering slurry explosives, Cook received a Nitro Nobel Gold Medal in 1968, only the second time the award had been given (and which has been awarded only once since). This award has sometimes been confused with the Nobel Prize conferred by the Nobel Foundation, but although it is given by the successor explosives company founded by Alfred Nobel, Nitro-Nobel AB (now a part of Dyno Nobel), it is not of the same stature or importance as the Nobel Prize. Although it has been claimed that Cook was at one time a Nobel Prize nominee, he was never nominated.
Melvin A. Cook | Awards and recognitions
The technique was known as malariotherapy; however, it was dangerous, killing about 15% of patients, so it is no longer in use.
Julius Wagner-Jauregg | Nobel prize
Nor is any kind of testable prediction ever made. No reason is offered as to why antibiotics, aspirin, steam engines, electricity, aircraft, or computers were not first invented by Muslims. But even to ask such questions is considered offensive.
Islamic attitudes towards science | Criticism
Lawrence Lidsky famously criticized the magnetic mirror machines by saying: "They kept adding one set of magnets a year until it collapsed under its own weight" and in his article "The Trouble With Fusion."
Tandem Mirror Experiment | Criticism
George Thomson, at that time leading the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (AEA), suggested it was simply exaggerated. This opinion was mirrored by Mark Oliphant in Australia, and Werner Heisenberg and Otto Hahn in Germany. Perhaps the most biting criticism came from Manfred von Ardenne, a German physicist now working in the Soviet Union. He advised that people should ignore Richter's claims, noting that he had worked with Richter during the war and said he confused fantasy with reality.
Huemul Project | Public reaction
On the 1st of June 1936 Tate, as the editor of the "Physical Review", received a submission from Albert Einstein and Nathan Rosen. Tate sent the submission to H.P. Robertson, who made an anonymous critical peer review, questioning the basic conclusion of the paper. On the 23rd of July, Tate returned the submission with the anonymous review. On the 27th of July, Einstein replied:
John Torrence Tate Sr. | Reviewing Einstein and Rosen
Viewers enter the Imagination Institute's theater for the Inventor of the Year Award Ceremony, in which professor Wayne Szalinski is receiving the award. Attendees are asked to don their "safety goggles" (3D glasses) in preparation for the scientific demonstrations. The show opens with the crew of the show searching for Wayne, when he suddenly flies on stage miniaturized and in a transportation device called a Hoverpod. He accidentally drops the control box which sends him and the machine flying off behind the stage out of control. Then the show starts with Christie Smithers introducing Dr. Nigel Channing. Dr. Channing welcomes the audience and introduces Wayne.
Honey, I Shrunk the Audience! | Synopsis
As mentioned by Hans Bethe, the invention of the explosive lens device was contributed and designed by John von Neumann
Explosive lens | Invention
The reasoning behind the peace prize is less clear. According to the Norwegian Nobel Committee, his friendship with Bertha von Suttner, a peace activist and later recipient of the prize, profoundly influenced his decision to include peace as a category. Some Nobel scholars suggest it was Nobel's way to compensate for developing destructive forces. His inventions included dynamite and ballistite, both of which were used violently during his lifetime. Ballistite was used in war and the Irish Republican Brotherhood, an Irish nationalist organization, carried out dynamite attacks in the 1880s. Nobel was also instrumental in turning Bofors from an iron and steel producer into an armaments company.
Nobel Peace Prize | Background
George McRoberts (1839–1896) was a Scottish chemist and early explosives expert. He assisted Alfred Nobel in establishing the original Nobel Enterprises dynamite factory at Ardeer. He was a close colleague of Nobel and probably a close friend.
George McRoberts | Introduction
He also developed sufficient literary skill to write poetry in English. His "Nemesis" is a prose tragedy in four acts about Beatrice Cenci. It was printed while he was dying, but the entire stock was destroyed immediately after his death except for three copies, being regarded as scandalous and blasphemous. It was published in Sweden in 2003 and has been translated into Slovenian and French.
Alfred Nobel | Personal life
The main use of nitroglycerin, by tonnage, is in explosives such as dynamite and in propellants. Nitroglycerin is an oily liquid that may explode when subjected to heat, shock, or flame. Alfred Nobel developed the use of nitroglycerin as a blasting explosive by mixing nitroglycerin with inert absorbents, particularly ""Kieselguhr"", or diatomaceous earth. He named this explosive dynamite and patented it in 1867. It was supplied ready for use in the form of sticks, individually wrapped in greased waterproof paper. Dynamite and similar explosives were widely adopted for civil engineering tasks, such as in drilling highway and railroad tunnels, for mining, for clearing farmland of stumps, in quarrying, and in demolition work.
Nitroglycerin | Use as an explosive and a propellant
The book and the theories it presents have been the subject of some controversy. Scientists such as Nobel Laureate Richard Smalley and renowned chemist George M. Whitesides have been particularly critical. Smalley has engaged in open debate with Drexler, attacking the views presented for what he considered both the dubious nature of the science behind them, and the misleading effect on the public's view of nanotechnology.
Engines of Creation | Reception