Nobel Prize

The Detonics Research Laboratory around 1963. Copyright © Nitro Nobel

Heleneborg – after the explosion in 1864.  

The Salpeter factory. A drawing by Olle Rydberg (above) and a recently taken picture (below).

by Birgitta Lemmel The explosives plant at Vinterviken (Winter Bay) just outside Stockholm, Nitroglycerin Aktiebolaget, was Alfred Nobel’s very first company. The manufacture of nitroglycerine on an industrial scale started there as early as 1865, and for more than fifty years the Vinterviken factory was to deliver Nobel explosives and blasting devices of various kinds…

An advertisement for Nitroglycerin Aktiebolaget after the company had started manufacturing Nobel’s Extra-Dynamite. It shows the working earlier and later methods used in producing dynamite.

Alfred Nobel’s eldest brother, Robert Nobel.

One of the founders of Nitroglycerin Aktiebolaget (later Nitro Nobel), Smitt was Chairman of the Board from 1864 to 1904. In the 1850s Smitt amassed a fortune in South America. He liquidated his assets in 1856 and returned to Stockholm. There, his prudent property investments, particularly in the Kungsholmen district, earned him the sobriquet “King…

by Birgitta Lemmel In 1873 Alfred Nobel settled in Paris and bought a magnificent house on He had a small laboratory in the yard, where he worked together with the young French chemist Georges D. Fehrenbach, who was to become Nobel’s faithful and trustworthy assistant behind the scenes during the nearly two decades that the…

by Birgitta Lemmel Between 1865 and 1873 Alfred Nobel’s home, laboratory, and the focal point of his business were in Hamburg. In 1873 he left Hamburg and moved to Paris. He had always had a great liking for Paris, which was the lively center of international business and had all cultural activities that he had…

(1812-1888) Ascanio Sobrero Italian chemist who discovered nitroglycerine. Ascanio Sobrero worked as an assistant to Professor J. T. Pelouze in Paris and then became professor of chemistry in Turino, Italy. His face was badly scarred as a result of an explosion in the 1840s. He considered nitroglycerine to be far too dangerous to be of…