From Dynamite to Diplomacy: The Story of Alfred Nobel

Most of us know Alfred Nobel because of the Nobel Prize awards given every year. If you win a Nobel Prize, you’re widely considered to be a success and role model. The story of how these prizes came to be is actually a lot darker than the ceremony itself.

It really starts with a massive identity crisis.

The “Merchant of Death”

Alfred Nobel was a Swedish chemist and engineer. You already know from this site that creativity is in all of us, and he readily used his. By the time he was done, he held over 350 patents (only some of which are easily found in Google Patents). But the big one, the one that cemented his fame and infamy, was dynamite.

Obviously, dynamite changed the game for construction and mining (tunneling through mountains became a lot easier), but it didn’t take long for military forces to realize just how effective it was at blowing things up in warfare. Nobel knew what he had built, but he probably didn’t expect the public to view him as a villain.

The Wake-Up Call

Here is where the story gets crazy. In 1888, Alfred’s brother, Ludvig, passed away. A French newspaper mixed up the brothers and accidentally published Alfred’s obituary instead (as it turns out, prematurely publishing an obituary happens with some frequency).

Imagine waking up, grabbing your morning coffee (in my case Chai tea, but you get the idea), and reading a headline that says you’re dead. Now imagine the headline reads: “The Merchant of Death is Dead.” That’s 100 pounds of motivation in a 20 pound bag.

The article went on to brutalize his life’s work, saying he became rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before. Publishing it prematurely was a mistake, but the content wasn’t a mistake. It was a preview of how the world would remember him. As much as he was a brilliant inventor, he article made clear he would be remembered not for his brilliance but for the countless people who would be killed at the hands of his lifes work.

That moment shook him, shocked him, scared him. He knew that if he died right then, that nasty headline would be his entire history.

Flipping the Script

Nobel decided he wasn’t okay with that being the final word. I mean, who would be okay with “Merchant of Death” as his legacy? He wanted to be remembered for helping people, not blowing them up.

In 1895, a year before he actually died (the reports of his earlier death were indeed exaggerated), he wrote a will that surprised everyone except perhaps his estate lawyer. He took the vast majority of his massive fortune (seriously, at 94% of it he could serve as inspiration to today’s moguls sitting on fortunes bigger than the GDP of many nations) and set it aside to help humanity via a series of annual prizes.

He wanted to reward people who did the “greatest good” for mankind in physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, and, perhaps most critically for his legacy, peace. Creating the Peace Prize was likely his way of balancing out the chaos his inventions had fueled.

The Unwritten Future

Since 1901, the Nobel Prizes have rewarded brilliance tempered in the forge of real world challenges. It’s a serious turnaround. Nobel would have been remembered as an uncaring merchant of war — or maybe not remembered at all. Instead, his name is forever affixed to a global symbol of human achievement.

There’s a solid lesson here for creators and innovators: what we build matters, and how we use it matters even more.

But on a personal level, Nobel’s story is a reminder that you aren’t stuck with your past. He literally read his own bad ending in the paper and decided to rewrite the book.

As Joe Strummer of The Clash once said, “The Future is Unwritten.”

It’s never too late to change the story’s tone, direction, wording, and meaning.

Lessons from Nobel’s Story

Alfred Nobel’s story is more than a personal redemption story. It’s an inspiration that reminds us that our legacies are not fixed. Even in the face of good intentions with evil results, we have the power to redefine our impact on the world. Nobel could have hoarded his modey, creating a modern, multi-billion dollar fortune for his progeny. Instead, he used the fruits of his mind to encourage progress, peace and improve human prosperity. What better ending to the creation of a weapon of war than using the profits to supercharge human reinvention.

Say together: “So long as I draw breath, I can make the world better”. Actually, Joe Strummer of The Clash put it: The Future is Unwritten.

Image Credit: https://www.flickr.com/people/trailerfullofpix/

Stay creative, stay innovative, and work as if your professional legacy is defined by your choice between greed and good — a choice you make every day.