The hammer dropped with a bang! Upon the anvil was a drop of liquid nitroglycerin.

Startled, Alfred Nobel began to think about the power of this liquid.

A liquid like this could cause enough force to blast away rock where bridges and roads and railways needed to be built. It could help militaries have safer weapons. Most often, gunpowder was used for these purposes, but it wasn’t very safe. Alfred’s love of poetry and literature was equal to his love of science and chemistry. Although he hoped to spend his life as a writer, he soon realized that writing and poetry would have to wait.

Alfred began trying different ways to ignite nitroglycerin safely. With the help of his father and his brothers Robert and Ludvig, he experimented day and night, sometimes mixing the liquid with gunpowder, which made it easier to handle.

Alfred kept testing until he came up with a wooden plug he could fill with gunpowder. He called the plug a blasting cap. It would help builders ignite the nitroglycerin safely. Alfred was pleased.

Not long after, Alfred and his brother Emil began to make and sell nitroglycerin in their homeland of Sweden. They called it blasting oil and orders came in from many places. Just as Alfred hoped, the blasting oil was used to build roads and railways, bridges, ports, and towns.

One day in the workshop, Emil and a partner were making some new oil when something went terribly wrong.

BOOM!

Everything exploded, and five people were dead, including Emil.

The tragedy proved one thing to Alfred. He must make nitroglycerin even safer yet. As the pain of his loss troubled him, Alfred worked day and night. Some days he would feel weak and ill, while others he felt lonely and sad, wanting nothing more than to escape into books or poetry.

Two years after Emil died, Alfred mixed nitroglycerin with sand. This made a paste he could roll into the shape of a rod. He realized such rods could be put into holes so builders could make blasts happen only where they wanted. The rods would ignite only if they had a blasting cap, making them unlikely to explode on their own. Finally, Alfred Nobel made nitroglycerin safe to use.

Alfred named his invention after the Greek word dynamis, which means power. But to the world, Alfred Nobel had invented something called dynamite.

This made Alfred wealthy and famous. Everybody knew about Alfred Nobel and his dynamite.

Alfred was happy with his success. Most of all, he hoped his inventions would prevent war. He thought that if people were afraid of the harm that explosions could cause, perhaps they would settle things peacefully first.

But Alfred was wrong.

In many countries, people began to use dynamite to solve problems by hurting others. This made Alfred very sad.

One morning in France, where Alfred was living, people woke to the newspaper headline, “Alfred Nobel is Dead!” It reported that Alfred Nobel, the dynamite king, had died of a heart attack. People everywhere were shocked by the news, but nobody was more shocked than Alfred Nobel.

His brother Ludvig had recently died. The newspaper had reported it wrong.

As Alfred read his own obituary, he realized that others saw him as a man who earned his wealth by inventing ways to injure and kill. For the rest of his days, this made him very sad.

On December 10, 1896, Alfred Nobel died a wealthy but lonely man at his home He was buried in Sweden.

His friends and family gathered to hear the reading of his will. After money had been given to a few close friends and relative; an announcement was made. The entire estate of Alfred Nobe one of the richest men in all of Europe, would be used to create yearly prizes for those who have rendered the greatest services to humankind.

There would be a prize for accomplishment in physics; another for chemical discovery or improvement; a prize for physiology or medicine; and a prize for literature.

And last was to be a special prize. It would be for peace.

So on that very day, Alfred Nobel, the man who loved literature and poetry and the art of discovery, left a legacy to be remembered for always—as the man who founded what became known throughout the world as The Nobel Prizes.