Nobel Legacy

Alfred Nobel's life story mirrors a Zen parable or a Charles Dickens narrative, without the festive context, showcasing how facing mortality can spark profound transformation. Renowned for creating the Nobel Prize, Nobel navigated through success, reflection, and a yearning to atone. The Nobel Prize's inception is tied to his quest for redemption, marked by his achievements and the desire to leave a positive legacy.

Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times.

The Nobel Prize is awarded every year to scientists, writers, politicians, researchers, inventors, and people who have distinguished themselves with actions aimed at restoring or maintaining world peace. The criterion for its assignment is indeed that the person has distinguished himself in an area of human knowledge in such a way that he has brought considerable benefits to humanity.

Now, we must know that the Swede Alfred Nobel (1833-1896) was never considered a man of high civil and moral values during his life. His contemporaries considered him a terrible man. And why all this? Because he was a chemist, a successful industrialist, and an arms dealer. Furthermore, he invented dynamite, with which he made an immense fortune in money. This explosive, as always happens with such powerful inventions, was not considered evil in itself, but for the usefulness, it ended up having: not only in the mining industry for extraction or to build infrastructures facilitating excavations but above all - and unfortunately - in military actions. In fact, at the time, there was no more powerful and faster tool for killing such a large number of people in war. Now we understand why Alfred Nobel earned the reputation of "merchant of death".

At this point, with some perplexity, we ask ourselves: how come a man famous for dynamite, who enriched himself through wars, managed to link his name to recognition that exalts the best deeds of mankind? Let's not forget, then, that there is also the Nobel Peace Prize, awarded in Oslo every year.

To answer this question, we can say that chance played a fundamental role in this man's life, as in the best game of the absurd. In 1888 in Cannes, Alfred Nobel's brother Ludwig died. A French newspaper of the time accidentally published the funeral announcement with Alfred Nobel's name, instead of his brother Ludwig's name. The obituary bore these words: “The merchant of death is dead. Alfred Nobel, who became rich by finding ways to kill as many people in the world as fast as possible, died yesterday.” It was then that the famous industrialist, after reading these words, began to worry about how he would be remembered after his death. Thus, on November 27, 1895, he himself signed the creation of a commendation in his will, to be awarded in his name in Sweden to people capable of creating beautiful things and performing good deeds, instead of dangerous or potentially deadly inventions.

Even today, we can read in Alfred Nobel's will the list of assets he left for his family. At the same time, he instructed a faithful collaborator to invest the remaining part of his assets and donate the interest, in the form of prizes, to "those who, during the previous year, contributed most to the well-being of humanity". Thus the famous Nobel Prize was born. It was Alfred himself who decided to divide it into the five prizes corresponding to the five areas we know: physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, and peace. The latter was particularly important to him, as was his assignment criterion: to do the best work with the aim of maintaining and promoting peace. Nobel's desire to do something good for everyone, rehabilitating himself in the eyes of humanity, could not have been better expressed and organized, despite the fact that it is said that he wrote the will in one go; he arranged everything so quickly, in an inspired manner, that he even commissioned four unknown people to sign it as witnesses. A curiosity in this regard: does anyone notice the lack of an essential sector of human knowledge from the famous list? Math is missing! Alfred Nobel would in fact have purposely excluded this subject from the list of prizes, after the discovery that his lover had cheated on him with a Swedish mathematician. What can I say... we are human beings, capable of wonderful things but still imperfect! Furthermore, over time we noticed another great absence, this time not due to Nobel's antipathies but only because economics is a "younger" field of study compared to the others. It so happened that, in 1968, the Bank of Sweden created a further prize called "In memory of Nobel", officially included in the list and awarded to those who distinguish themselves in economic sciences. It was established by the famous industrialist that applications could not take place spontaneously, that is no person could apply directly. For this reason, the scientific community made up of academics, professors, and scientists, together with public institutions and former Nobel Prize winners, draws up a list of candidates.

Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden at Nobel Prize ceremonies via Getty Images

Cash prizes began to be awarded in 1901, and to date, the procedure has remained the same as it was then: the Nobel Committee of the Swedish Academy deals with it, and also the Nobel Committee of the Storting, the Norwegian unicameral parliament. The procedure also establishes that the names of the winners, referring to the past year, are announced as early as October of the same year. However, the delivery ceremony takes place in Stockholm on 10 December each year, a date that recalls that of Alfred Nobel's (real!) death, which occurred on 10 December 1896 in Sanremo, Italy. Regarding the amount of the premium, it should be noted that the figure varies from year to year, depending on the evaluation of the interest on the still existing capital. For 2023, the amount has been set at 11 million SEK for each full Nobel Prize. The latter is an important clarification, given that the amount of the prize can be equally divided between two deserving works, or assigned to a single work created by no more than three people. From 1901 to today, the Nobel Prize has always had great value, having been awarded to personalities such as Marie Curie, Rita Levi Montalcini, Boris Pasternak, Ernest Hemingway, Aung San Suu Kyi, Barack Obama, Giosuè Carducci, Guglielmo Marconi, Luigi Pirandello, Albert Einstein, and John Bardeen. We can therefore lift ourselves up by thinking of Alfred Nobel: a man who, despite his personal choices during much of his life, left us as a legacy the most important recognition of human value, respected and coveted by the entire cultural community of the world. Thanks to him, every year we can have an idea of which stars brighten the future of humanity, which epochal turning points we can witness. And thanks to him, again, we can remember that it is never too late to change.