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Which explosive did Alfred Nobel invent, funding the Nobel Prizes?
Nobel patented dynamite in 1867. His will left most of his fortune to fund the prizes.
Nitroglycerin, discovered in 1847, was a powerful but dangerously unstable liquid. An explosion in 1864 at the Nobel family's factory near Stockholm killed several people, including Alfred's younger brother Emil. Nobel searched for a way to make nitroglycerin safer to handle and found that mixing it with kieselguhr, a porous earth made of fossilized diatoms, produced a paste that could be shaped into sticks and detonated with a blasting cap, another Nobel invention. He called it dynamite, from the Greek word for power, and patented it in 1867.
Dynamite transformed mining, tunneling and construction, and Nobel built a global network of factories, later also patenting blasting gelatin and ballistite. At his death in 1896, he held roughly 350 patents. His will, signed in 1895, directed that the bulk of his fortune be invested and the interest distributed as annual prizes in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature and peace.
A popular story says he was moved by a premature obituary that called him a 'merchant of death', which was supposedly published after his brother Ludvig died in 1888 and was mistaken for Alfred. The account is widely repeated but rests on thin documentation, so it is best treated as probable lore. The first prizes were awarded in 1901, and the economics prize, funded by Sweden's central bank, was added in 1968.