The premature obituary that supposedly created the Nobel Prizes may be a myth
The legend says Alfred Nobel read his own obituary in 1888, headlined The Merchant of Death Is Dead, after a French paper confused him with his brother Ludvig, and rewrote his will in shame. It is a gripping tale. Historians, however, have never managed to confirm it, and some reject it outright.
Nobel, born in Stockholm on 21 October 1833 into a family of engineers, was a chemist and prolific inventor with 355 patents, dynamite the most famous. He also bought the Bofors mill in 1894 and turned it into a major arms maker, and his ballistite was a forerunner of smokeless military powders, which later embroiled him in a patent fight over the British propellant cordite. He died of a cerebral haemorrhage at his villa in San Remo on 10 December 1896, aged 63.
His final will, signed in Paris on 27 November 1895, stunned people. It left about 94 percent of his fortune, some 31 million Swedish kronor, to fund prizes for those whose work most benefited mankind in physics, chemistry, medicine, literature and peace. Doubts about the document delayed approval by Norway's parliament until April 1897. The executors, Ragnar Sohlman and Rudolf Lilljequist, created the Nobel Foundation to manage the money, and prize-awarding bodies were named that year: a Norwegian committee for peace, plus the Karolinska Institute, the Swedish Academy and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
The first awards came in 1901, five years after his death. Sweden's central bank added a prize in economics in 1968 in his memory, first given the following year. Laureates receive a medal of green gold plated in 24-carat gold, a diploma and money, 11 million kronor as of 2023, around a million dollars.
The rules are strict. No more than three people can share a prize, though the peace award can go to organisations. There are no posthumous awards, except when a winner dies after being chosen. From 1901 to 2026 the prizes were handed out 633 times to 1,018 recipients, and only five individuals and two organisations have won more than once.
Source: Nobel Prize
