Website design By BotEap.comAlfred Bernhard Nobel was a man of great contrasts. Swedish born in Stockholm in 1833, he spent most of his life abroad. The inventor of dynamite and other explosives was even called a ‘merchant of death’, but his goal was to promote world peace. A skilled chemist, he wrote poetry in both Swedish and English, as well as prose in other languages. The son of a man who went bankrupt twice, he became one of the richest people in the Western world.

Website design By BotEap.comHowever, his great wealth did not bring him happiness. He never married, suffered from loneliness and had poor health since childhood. Only in the last three years of his life did he have his own home in Sweden, where he had bought the Bofors arms factory (pr. ‘Boo-fosh’). However, he died in the Italian resort town of San Remo on December 10, 1896. And December 10 is the day that each year the Nobel Prizes, the Peace Prize are ceremonially awarded in Oslo and the others in the Stockholm Concert Hall.

Website design By BotEap.comHis will was written in Swedish without legal guidance, which caused a long delay in its implementation. It stipulated that most of his patrimony should be invested and the income distributed annually in the form of prizes to those who granted the greatest benefit to humanity during the previous year in the fields of physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature and what he called ‘brotherhood between nations’, but which we know as the Peace Prize.

Website design By BotEap.comSwedish institutions would award the first four prizes: the Royal Academy of Sciences (physics and chemistry), the Royal Caroline Institute (physiology or medicine), and the Swedish Academy (literature). The Peace Prize would be awarded by a committee of the Norwegian Storting, or Parliament, as Norway joined Sweden in a union under the Swedish crown during Nobel’s lifetime. A sixth prize, the Prize for Economics, was added in 1968 by the Bank of Sweden in his memory.

Website design By BotEap.comThere is no doubt that Nobel had a great interest in each of the fields he mentioned. The Peace Prize is the one that intrigues the most. Nobel fondly believed that when the great power of explosives was understood, no one would use them for military purposes. He knew from personal experience the devastation they could cause. In 1864, the factory where he had been studying nitroglycerin exploded and killed everyone, including his 21-year-old brother Emil. However, he argued that his factories might well put an end to wars before all the peace congresses that were held.

Website design By BotEap.comHe was also influenced by his friendship with the Austrian Baroness von Sutter, a pioneer in the peace movement. She herself received the Peace Prize in 1905. But as with the Prize for Literature, some of the laureates selected in Oslo, such as Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho in 1973, and Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat in 1978, have been very controversial. while others generally considered worthy of the award, such as Mahatma Gandhi, have not been recognized. And when the first Prize for Literature was awarded to Sully Proudhomme in 1901, Sweden’s leading author August Strindberg, who never received the prize, and more than forty other prominent Swedes wrote a letter of apology to Tolstoy.

Website design By BotEap.comThe stipulation of bestowing the greatest benefit to humanity in the previous year has been observed more closely for the Peace Prize than for others, and juries tend to look back on what candidates have accomplished during their careers in as a whole and not just in the same stage. recent past.