The Swedish scientist who tasted everything. Swedish chemist Nobel Alfred: biography, invention of dynamite, founder of the Nobel Prize

Academician, experimental chemist, PhD, academician, founder Nobel Prize, which brought him worldwide fame.

Childhood

Alfred Nobel, whose biography is of sincere interest to the modern generation, was born in Stockholm on October 21, 1833. He came from Swedish peasantry southern district Nobelef, which became the derivative of the surname known throughout the world. In addition to him, the family had three more sons.

Father Immanuel Nobel was an entrepreneur who, having gone bankrupt, dared to try his luck in Russia. He moved in 1837 to St. Petersburg, where he opened workshops. After 5 years, when things started to improve, he moved his family to live with him.

The first experiments of a Swedish chemist

Once in Russia, 9-year-old Nobel Alfred quickly mastered the Russian language, in addition to which he was fluent in English, Italian, German and French languages. The boy received his education at home. In 1849, his father sent him on a trip to America and Europe, which lasted two years. Alfred visited Italy, Denmark, Germany, France, America, but most The young man spent time in Paris. There he passed practical course physics and chemistry in the laboratory of the famous scientist Jules Pelouz, who studied oil and discovered nitriles.

Meanwhile, the affairs of Immanuel Nobel, a talented self-taught inventor, improved: in the Russian service he became rich and famous, especially during the Crimean War. His factory produced mines used in the defense of Kronstadt in Finland and Revel Harbor in Estonia. The merits of Nobel Sr. were rewarded with an imperial medal, which, as a rule, was not awarded to foreigners.

After the end of the war, orders stopped, the enterprise stood idle, and many workers were left out of work. This forced Immanuel Nobel to return back to Stockholm.

Alfred Nobel's first experiments

Alfred, who was in close contact with the famous Russian chemist Nikolai Zinin, meanwhile began to study the properties of nitroglycerin in earnest. In 1863, the young man returned to Sweden, where he continued his experiments. September 3, 1864 occurred terrible tragedy: during the experiments, the explosion of 100 kilograms of nitroglycerin killed several people, among whom was 20-year-old Emil, Alfred's younger brother. After the incident, Alfred's father became paralyzed, and for the last 8 years he remained bedridden. During this period, Immanuel continued to work actively: he wrote 3 books, for which he himself made illustrations. In 1870, he was excited by the issue of using waste from the wood industry, and Nobel Sr. came up with plywood, inventing a method of gluing using a pair of wooden plates.

Invention of dynamite

On October 14, 1864, the Swedish scientist took out a patent that allowed him to produce an explosive that contained nitroglycerin. Alfred Nobel invented dynamite in 1867; its production subsequently brought the scientist the main wealth. The press of that time wrote that the Swedish chemist made his discovery by accident: it was as if a bottle of nitroglycerin had broken during transportation. The liquid spilled, soaked the soil, resulting in the formation of dynamite. Alfred Nobel did not accept the above version and insisted that he was deliberately searching for a substance that, when mixed with nitroglycerin, would reduce the explosiveness. The desired neutralizer was kieselguhr - rock, also called tripol.

A Swedish chemist set up a laboratory for the production of dynamite in the middle of a lake on a barge, far from populated areas.

Two months after the floating laboratory began operating, Aunt Alfreda introduced him to a merchant from Stockholm, Johan Wilhelm Smith, the owner of a million-dollar fortune. Nobel managed to convince Smith and several other investors to team up and form a venture industrial production nitroglycerin, which began in 1865. Realizing that a Swedish patent would not protect his rights abroad, Nobel patented his own rights to it and sold it worldwide.

Alfred Nobel's discoveries

In 1876, the world learned about the scientist’s new invention - an “explosive mixture” - a compound of nitroglycerin with collodion, which had a stronger explosive. The following years were rich in discoveries of the combination of nitroglycerin with other substances: ballistite - first smokeless gunpowder, then cordite.

Nobel's interests were not limited only to working with explosive substances: the scientist was interested in optics, electrochemistry, medicine, biology, designed safe steam boilers and automatic brakes, tried to make artificial rubber, studied nitrocellulose and There are about 350 patents to which Alfred Nobel claimed rights: dynamite, detonator, smokeless powder, water meter, refrigeration apparatus, barometer, combat rocket design, gas burner,

Characteristics of a scientist

Nobel Alfred was one of the most educated people of its time. Scientist read a large number of books on technology, medicine, philosophy, history, fiction, giving preference to his contemporaries: Hugo, Turgenev, Balzac and Maupassant, he even tried to write himself. The bulk of Alfred Nobel's works (novels, plays, poems) were never published. Only the play about Beatrice Cenci has survived - “Nemisis”, completed at the time of her death. This tragedy in 4 acts was met with hostility by the clergy. Therefore, the entire published edition, released in 1896, was destroyed after the death of Alfred Nobel, with the exception of three copies. The world had the opportunity to meet this wonderful work in 2005; it was played in memory of the great scientist on the Stockholm stage.

Contemporaries describe Alfred Nobel as a gloomy man who preferred the bustle and fun companies calm solitude and constant immersion in work. The scientist led healthy image life, had a negative attitude towards smoking, alcohol and gambling.

Being quite wealthy, Nobel really gravitated towards the Spartan lifestyle. Working on explosive mixtures and substances, he was an opponent of violence and murder, carrying out colossal work in the name of peace on the planet.

Inventions for peace

Initially, explosives created by a Swedish chemist were used in for peaceful purposes: for laying roads and railways, mining, construction of canals and tunnels (using blasting). For military purposes, Nobel explosives began to be used only in Franco-Prussian War 1870-1871.

The scientist himself dreamed of inventing a substance or machine that had destructive power that made any war impossible. Nobel paid for congresses dedicated to issues of world peace, and he himself took part in them. The scientist was a member of the Paris Society of Civil Engineers, the Swedish Academy of Sciences, the London Royal Society. He had many awards, which he was very indifferent to.

Alfred Nobel: personal life

The great inventor - an attractive man - was never married and had no children. Closed, lonely, distrustful of people, he decided to find himself an assistant secretary and placed an advert in the newspaper. The 33-year-old Countess Bertha Sofia Felicita responded - an educated, well-mannered, multilingual girl who was without a dowry. She wrote to Nobel and received an answer from him; A correspondence ensued, arousing mutual sympathy on both sides. Soon there was a meeting between Albert and Bertha; The young people walked and talked a lot, and conversations with Nobel gave Bertha great pleasure.

Soon Albert left on business, and Bertha could not wait for him and returned home, where Count Arthur von Suttner was waiting for her - the sympathy and love of her life, with whom she started a family. Despite the fact that Bertha’s departure was a huge blow for Alfred, their warm and friendly correspondence continued until the end of Nobel’s days.

Alfred Nobel and Sophie Hess

And yet there was love in the life of Alfred Nobel. At the age of 43, the scientist fell in love with 20-year-old Sophie Hess, a flower shop saleswoman, moved her from Vienna to Paris, rented an apartment next to his house and allowed her to spend as much as she wanted. Sophie was only interested in money. The beautiful and graceful “Madame Nobel” (as she called herself), unfortunately, was a lazy person without any education. She refused to study with the teachers whom Nobel hired her.

The relationship between the scientist and Sophie Hess lasted 15 years, until 1891, when Sophie gave birth to a child from a Hungarian officer. Alfred Nobel parted peacefully with his young girlfriend and even assigned her a very decent allowance. Sophie married the father of her daughter, but constantly pestered Alfred with requests for an increase in support; after his death, she began to insist on this, threatening to publish his intimate letters if he refused. The executors, who did not want their client’s name to be splashed around in newspapers, made concessions: they bought Nobel’s letters and telegrams from Sophie and increased her annuity.

From childhood, Nobel Alfred was characterized by poor health and was constantly ill; V last years he was tormented by heart pain. Doctors prescribed nitroglycerin to the scientist - this circumstance (a kind of irony of fate) amused Alfred, who devoted his life to working with this substance. Alfred Nobel died on December 10, 1896 at his villa in San Remo from a cerebral hemorrhage. The grave of the great scientist is located in the Stockholm cemetery.

Alfred Nobel and his prize

When Nobel invented dynamite, he saw its use in helping to promote human progress, not murderous wars. But the persecution that began over such a dangerous discovery pushed Nobel to the idea that he needed to leave behind another, more significant trace. Thus, the Swedish inventor decided to establish a personal prize after his death, writing a will in 1895, according to which the bulk of his acquired fortune - 31 million crowns - goes to a specially created fund. Income from investments must be distributed every year in the form of bonuses to people who have brought within previous year greatest benefit to humanity. The interest is divided into 5 parts and is intended for a scientist who has made an important discovery in the field of chemistry, physics, literature, medicine and physiology, and has also made a significant contribution to maintaining peace on the planet.

Alfred Nobel's special wish was that the nationality of candidates not be taken into account.

The first Alfred Nobel Prize was awarded in 1901 to the physicist Roentgen Conrad for the discovery of the rays that bear his name. The Nobel Prizes, which are the most authoritative and honorable international awards, have had a huge impact for the development of world science and literature.

also in scientific history Alfred Nobel, whose bequest amazed many scientists with its generosity, went down as the discoverer of “Nobelium,” the chemical element named after him. The Stockholm Institute of Physics and Technology and Dnepropetrovsk University are named after the outstanding scientist.

Among the many professions related to the outside world, special place occupies the profession of chemist. Perhaps more often than other researchers, it is chemists who expose themselves to danger when making discoveries. Such is the specificity of chemistry that people involved in it have to deal with a wide range of substances, including highly toxic ones.

It is clear that inhaling toxic gases does not promote health, causing a wide variety of diseases, sometimes even leading to death. Sulfur dioxide and carbon monoxide, chlorine, hydrogen sulfide, nitrogen oxides, arsine, phosphine, methane, hydrogen chloride, as well as vapors of mercury, bromine, benzene, carbon tetrachloride and other substances are toxic.
Let's add here the likelihood of chemical burns if reagents get on the skin, eyes or inside the body. Let's not forget about the possibility of explosions and fires during experiments. Let us mention injuries caused by glass cuts. As a result, a very solid (although not complete) list of dangers that threaten chemists when producing new substances is compiled.
However, it is easy to talk about the dangers listed above from the standpoint of knowledge today, taking into account centuries of experience in the study of chemical compounds. For the chemist of the past, who first received a new substance, it was completely unknown whether it would be flammable or not, whether it would prove poisonous or harmless to living beings, whether it would be explosive or not. He had to find out all this after conducting many experiments.
But nature is reluctant to reveal its secrets. It often happens that you have to pay a fairly high price for the truth.

The history of science is replete with examples of accidents, often fatal, as a result of explosions, fires and poisonings that occurred in chemical laboratories and chemical plants. Dangers awaited researchers literally from the very first steps of the birth of science studying chemical substances. One of the ancient manuscripts mentions how an Arab alchemist lost his sight after tasting an unknown liquid he obtained by heating pieces of wood in a retort without access to air. As we now know, this process produces wood, or methyl, alcohol - a strong poison.
And how many alchemists’ lives were shortened by their work with mercury, a substance that in the Middle Ages was considered the mother of all metals. The ability of mercury to dissolve other metals in itself amazed the imagination of alchemists. They believed that mercury is part of any metal. Conducting countless experiments with mercury, in fruitless attempts to obtain gold, alchemists systematically inhaled air saturated with mercury vapor. We now know that mercury vapor is very poisonous. Mercury poisoning leads to headaches, stomach upsets, fatigue, weakening of memory, drowsiness and apathy.
Apparently, one of the most famous victims of systematic mercury poisoning was the famous 16th-century alchemist, founder of iatrochemistry, T. Paracelsus, who died in 1541 at the age of 46 years.

It is known that shortly before his fiftieth birthday, the great natural scientist of the past I. Newton (1643–1727) also suffered from a serious and incomprehensible illness. The disease undermined the scientist’s physical strength and undermined his mental balance. Isaac lost sleep and appetite, was in a state of deep depression, and avoided contact even with people close to him. After an illness that lasted more than a year, Newton lived for more than 30 years, but all this time he suffered from gout, rheumatism, cholelithiasis, and his scientific performance dropped sharply. Neither the scientist himself nor his biographers could explain the strange disease.
In the 1980s a group of American and English researchers analyzed the scientist’s letters, where he described the symptoms of his illness, as well as Newton’s laboratory notebooks. It turned out that the scientist often worked with mercury and its compounds, heating them for a long time. Hence the hypothesis arose that the great scientist’s illness was caused by nothing more than mercury poisoning. The assumption was confirmed after an employee of the English Nuclear Center C. Pounds, using neutron activation analysis, established that the average concentration of mercury in Newton’s hair was 0.0075%, in some places even reaching 0.02%. The normal mercury content in human hair is considered to be 0.0005%.
Particularly difficult trials befell the scientists of the 17th–19th centuries, who stood at the origins of the emergence of chemistry as a science. In their laboratories, often damp and cold, which usually had no ventilation or running water, they obtained new substances. Studying the properties of substances, none of the scientists knew how this would affect their health in the future. Often, choking on toxic fumes, with tears in their eyes, they ran out of the laboratory to inhale a breath fresh air, but after catching their breath a little and coming to their senses, they returned to their workplace again.
Researchers have conducted new and new experiences, testing your guesses and assumptions. Work with toxic substances slowly but steadily destroyed the scientists’ bodies and undermined their health. In the last years of their lives, many of them experienced severe pain in the head, joints and lungs, and were often sick.
For example, the famous German chemist of the 17th century became a victim of systematic poisoning with harmful substances. Johann Glauber (1604–1670). At the age of 55, he suffered partial paralysis of his legs, which confined the scientist to bed for a long time. And although after this Glauber lived for almost ten years, it was fruitful to study scientific research he couldn't anymore.

It should be noted that the chemists of the past were to blame for many of their troubles, neglecting even basic means of protection. The Swedish chemist K. Scheele (1742–1786), two Russian chemist– T. Lowitz (1757–1804) and K. Klaus (1796–1864), as well as the English chemist G. Davy (1778–1829). Neglect of their health cost these scientists dearly, significantly shortening their lives.

Early death the great Swedish chemist Scheele, who died at the age of 44, was the result of long and intense work in premises poorly suited for chemical experiments, and constant poisoning with toxic substances. Scheele, like many other chemists of the past, often neglected caution when working with chemicals - his hands were constantly corroded by alkalis and burned by acids. The scientist worked a lot with such toxic substances as arsine, chlorine, hydrofluoric acid, arsenic, lead, and mercury compounds. When characterizing newly discovered substances, the scientist always tasted them. It is known that in 1783, three years before his death, Scheele even tasted one of the strongest inorganic poisons - hydrocyanic acid, which was obtained from coal, ammonia and carbon dioxide. Since the chemist tried only a tiny fraction of the substance, he remained alive, but his health was completely undermined. In the last years of his life, severe pain in his legs and arms often confined Scheele to bed.
It should be noted that not only Scheele, but also other chemists of the past used the taste test in their research. Having received any substance, they always “tasted” the product: after all, until the middle of the 19th century. characterization of a new substance without a description of its taste was considered incomplete.
In the workbooks of the Newton mentioned above, more than a hundred times you can find entries like: “taste sweetish,” “tasteless,” “salty,” “very caustic.”
Glauber, characterizing the properties of the sodium sulfate he obtained, wrote: “This salt, if well prepared, has the appearance of ice, it forms long, completely transparent crystals that melt on the tongue, without any causticity...”

It is known that the French scientist L.N. Vauquelin (1763–1829), having received a new element in 1798, gave it the name “glucinium” (“sweet”) because of the sweetish taste of the salts of the new metal. The German chemist M. Klaproth (1743–1817), who apparently knew the taste of many salts, opposed this name, noting that salts of some other metals, such as yttrium, also have the same taste.
The Russian scientist Lovitz, having isolated “strontian earth” and tasted it, noted that “a small grain of calcined strontian earth, the size of a pinhead, causes severe burning pain when touched on the tongue, lasting for several days.” In 1793, having obtained crystals of glacial acetic acid, Lovitz wrote: “The taste is very sour. One drop of this vinegar on the tongue causes pain that is felt for twenty hours...”

It is not surprising that with this approach to the analysis of unknown substances, oral burns, poisoning and other injuries constantly accompanied the work of chemists, making it very dangerous.

By the way, acetic acid has caused trouble for Lovitz more than once. So, one day I accidentally spilled concentrated acid on the table, he decided to collect it using filter paper, which he then squeezed into a glass with his bare hands. From such work, the fingers on the hands first lost sensitivity and became swollen, and then the skin on them began to burst and fall off in whole pieces. It should be noted that Lovitz’s hands suffered the most. During his experiments studying cooling mixtures, the scientist also did not take any measures to protect his hands. As a result, all the fingers on the hands were affected by abscesses and “severe nail eaters,” since some mixtures included caustic alkali NaOH. And besides, they turned out to be partially frostbitten - after all, the temperature of a number of mixtures reached –40...–50 °C.
After these experiments, Lovitz could not conduct experiments for six months.
Another time, while opening a cabinet with minerals, a chemist was injured by glass falling from the door, which cut the vessels and tendons of his left hand. As a result, the hand dried out and stopped working. And although the remarkable mechanic-inventor P.D. Kesarev made a prosthesis for Lovitsa, the previous subtle experiments were no longer out of the question.

More than once Lovitz received poisoning from inhaling vapors of various harmful substances. So, in 1790 he was poisoned by chlorine. On this occasion, the scientist wrote: “In addition to the painful pain in my throat that lasted almost eight days, it also happened that when, due to my carelessness... the gas came out of the vessel, I suddenly lost consciousness and fell to the ground.”
Lovitz also worked a lot with mercury. Using a mixture of caustic alkali, he froze several pounds of mercury onto a wooden stick, and then used a mercury hammer to hammer nails into the log. Lovitz performed this spectacular, but unsafe experiment many times at meetings of the Academy of Sciences, and also demonstrated it in front of the royal children - the future Emperor Alexander I and his brother Constantine. It is not surprising that with such an attitude towards his own safety and the intense impact of harmful substances on the body, Lovitz did not live to reach the age of 50, dying at the age of 47 from apoplexy.
The discoverer of ruthenium, Karl Karlovich Klaus, did not really care about his health. Coming to the laboratory in the morning, Klaus used to taste the solutions of the substances with which he had to work. According to the recollections of Klaus's students, when dissolving platinum ores in aqua regia, he had the habit of stirring the liquid directly with five fingers, determining the strength of unreacted acids by taste, which the scientist considered one of important characteristics substances. So, having obtained osmium tetroxide, Klaus found that the taste of this compound was “hot, pepper-like.” Recalling his work with osmium compounds, Karl Karlovich wrote: “Osmic acid belongs to the very harmful substances... I put up with a lot from her.” In particular, the scientist was forced to stop experiments for two weeks after he was poisoned by OsO 4 vapors in April 1845.

Klaus's words about the toxicity of osmium compounds are confirmed by his assistant in these experiments, E. Jacobi, who in his works also mentions eye damage from OsO 4 vapors, black spots and purulent blisters on the skin. Klaus recommended that future researchers of osmium tetroxide build a stove with good draft and tie a wet sponge to their mouth.
His experiments with ruthenium compounds did not pass without a trace for Klaus. So, for three weeks his mouth hurt, which became covered with blisters, after the scientist tasted basic ruthenium ammonia. However, all these troubles in no way stopped the brave experimenter. He was only upset by the forced breaks in work, and after recovery he again enthusiastically indulged in his unsafe research.
The English scientist G. Davy, the discoverer of potassium, sodium, calcium and magnesium, played with death more than once. He was carefree and arrogant, loved thrills and did not take even the simplest precautions when performing experiments. His brother John wrote in his memoirs about Humphrey: “His courage during the experiments knew no bounds. He forgot that there was danger in the laboratory, because encounters with danger were everyday occurrences for him.”
Studying the effect of various gases on his own body, Humphrey was on the verge of death more than once. Only the intervention of a laboratory assistant saved him from death after he lost consciousness while inhaling methane. A scientist almost died while studying the effects of carbon monoxide and hydrogen on the body. While trying to isolate free fluoride, Davy suffered from hydrogen fluoride poisoning, as a result of which he had to spend considerable time in bed. The scientist was forced to stop trying to obtain fluorine, limiting himself to being one of the first to identify it atomic mass and proved the similarity of fluorine to chlorine.

Davy was also costly by his carelessness when working with alkali metals. When the scientist immersed the crucible with newly obtained potassium in water, an explosion occurred. Shards of glass with traces of alkali hit him in the face and left deep scars, and also severely damaged the scientist's right eye. Subsequently, Davy repeatedly injured his face and hands from fragments of exploding glass vessels during numerous experiments on liquefying gases and creating a safe lamp design for miners. And studying the properties of trichlor nitride almost completely deprived Davy of his sight. The injury received as a result of the explosion of a flask with Cl 3 N was so serious that the scientist could neither read nor write for a long time. How dangerous the injury was can be judged by an excerpt from a letter from Humphry Davy to his brother John: “My eye is again in such inflamed state, that we had to resort to puncturing the mucous membrane and cornea.”
In 1826, Davy suffered his first apoplexy (cerebral hemorrhage and partial paralysis of the body). To improve his failing health, he went to Italy and Switzerland for treatment, but these trips changed little. In 1829, on his way to England, Davy was struck by a second stroke of apoplexy, from which he died on May 29, 1829.

In addition to the scientists listed above, we note other chemists of the past who received serious poisoning as a result of prolonged work with toxic substances. Among them, for example, is the English scientist R. Boyle (1627–1691), whose health deteriorated greatly as a result of working with phosphorus and its compounds, in particular phosphine.
American chemist D. Woodhouse (1770–1809) died of systematic carbon monoxide poisoning at the age of 39.
The English chemist and surgeon W. Cruikshank (1745–1810) made a significant contribution to refuting the phlogiston theory. He worked in a laboratory with primitive ventilation and, as a result of gradual poisoning with chlorine, carbon monoxide and phosgene, went crazy. The poor fellow died a few years later in a mental hospital, having almost completely lost his mind.
For the last eleven years of his life, the French chemist C. Berthollet (1748–1822) suffered from unbearable pain, who spent a lot of time working with chlorine, ammonia, hydrogen sulfide and hydrocyanic acid.
The German chemist E. Fischer (1852–1919) suffered for twelve years from the consequences of the toxic effects of phenylhydrazine, the discovery, synthesis and application of which the scientist described in his doctoral dissertation.

Material prepared
S.I.ROGOZHNIKOV

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