![]() Sobrero had made it by reacting a mixture of nitric and sulfuric acids with glycerine, a substance readily available by treating fats with sodium hydroxide. "Pyroglycerine," Nobel learned, was an oily liquid that exploded with great vigour when detonated. It was here that he met Ascanio Sobrero, an Italian chemist, who told him about a fascinating substance he had discovered. ![]() So he sent sixteen-year-old Alfred to apprentice in the laboratory of the noted French chemist Theophile Pelouze. ![]() Young Alfred had ambitions of becoming a writer but his father thought that a scientific career would be more practical. Petersburg in Russia where his inventor father had set up a small business developing sea mines for the Russian government. Nobel was born in Sweden but spent his early years in St. Indeed, he had spoken of producing a substance of "such frightful efficacy for wholesale destruction that it would make wars impossible." Unfortunately, he was wrong. Yes, he had invented dynamite and gelignite, the most powerful explosives known at the time, but he had always envisaged that they would be used to the benefit of mankind. Alfred was deeply disturbed by this chance preview of how the world would remember him. It was actually Alfred's older brother Ludvig who had died while vacationing in Cannes but a reporter had gotten the brothers mixed up. To make matters worse, not only had the newspaper killed him off prematurely, it had described him as a man who "became rich by finding a way to kill more people faster than ever before." The French press service that provided the story had made a mistake. ![]() Yet, there was his obituary, prominently featured in the morning newspaper. Alfred Nobel wasn't in the best of health but he knew he wasn't dead. ![]()
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