Nobel Prize

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 Sven Tägil When Alfred Nobel’s will was made known after his death in San Remo on 10 December 1896, and when it was disclosed that he had established a special peace prize, this immediately created a great international sensation. The name Nobel was connected with explosives and with inventions useful to the art of…

The sulfuric acid factory before it was renovated. Copyright © Nitro Nobel Workers outside the factory. Copyright © Nitro Nobel   The sulfuric acid factory. Drawing by Olle Rydberg Copyright © Nitro Nobel  

The factory at Vinterviken was destroyed more than once by terrible explosions. Sketch by R. Haglund.

A captain in the Naval Engineering Corps, engineer and businessman. Together with , he put up the capital for the formation of Nitroglycerin Aktiebolaget. He and Captain J. A. Berg were owners of Wennerström & Berg, engaged in stonecutting and similar operations “for which prisoners assigned to hard labor may be used, in accordance with…

Alfred Nobel’s youngest brother Emil, killed in the explosion at Heleneborg in 1864.

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 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…