The Merchant of Death and the Weight of Legacy: Alfred Nobel’s Wake-Up Call

No one ever truly knows the consequences of their inventions—at least, not until it’s too late. But some warning signs are hard to ignore. Alfred Nobel, best known today for the prestigious prizes that bear his name, once held a vastly different reputation. For much of his life, he was associated less with peace and more with destruction, as the inventor of dynamite. Though he claimed noble intentions, the reality of what he had unleashed would haunt him.

Born in Stockholm in 1833, Alfred Nobel was drawn early to the world of chemistry and explosive substances. His fascination with nitroglycerin, a volatile compound discovered in 1847, would define the course of his life. After studying under private tutors and chemists, he experimented relentlessly with ways to stabilise and safely detonate the unstable substance. The results were often disastrous.

One of the most tragic moments came in 1864, when an explosion at the family’s nitroglycerin factory in Stockholm killed five people—including his younger brother, Emil. Despite this tragedy, Nobel pressed on. By 1867, he patented a stabilised form of nitroglycerin that he called dynamite, which he marketed as a revolutionary “new, transportable explosive.” As the Sydney Morning Herald noted in a retrospective, it “was an instant hit in the mining and construction industries.” Originally called “Nobel’s Blasting Powder,” the name was eventually changed to “dynamite,” drawn from the ancient Greek word dýnamis, meaning “power.”

It wasn’t long, however, before dynamite’s applications moved from quarry and tunnel to battlefield. Nobel may have envisioned constructive purposes, but by the time of the Spanish-American War in 1898—just two years after his death—dynamite was a weapon of war. His invention had crossed a line, and its uses could no longer be controlled.

But perhaps the most significant turning point in Nobel’s life came not from a war, but from a newspaper printing error. In 1888, Alfred’s brother Ludwig died while in France. A French paper mistakenly believed it was Alfred who had passed away and published an obituary under the damning headline:

“The Merchant of Death is Dead!”

The article continued unsparingly, stating that Nobel “became rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before.” It was, by all accounts, a deeply sobering moment for him. Seeing himself portrayed in such stark and brutal terms jolted Nobel into a reassessment of his life’s work.

“Legend has it, Nobel was mortified… and spent the rest of his life trying to establish a positive legacy.”

He did not abandon invention altogether—far from it. He continued to work on various projects, including an early prototype of what some have likened to Google Earth: a plan to create a photographic map of the world using balloons and rockets. But his greatest effort to shift the narrative came in the form of his will. When he died in 1896, Nobel bequeathed nearly 94 percent of his fortune—an amount equivalent to over half a billion US dollars today—to establish what became the Nobel Prizes.

The story of his transformation is often told as one of moral redemption. Organisational psychologist Adam Grant, speaking on the Stay Tuned podcast hosted by Preet Bharara, described Nobel as “a pretty radical example of people changing in pretty radical ways.” But was Nobel’s evolution truly radical?

Not everyone agrees. The idea that Nobel’s character underwent a profound transformation is challenged by historical records. Nobel had long harboured idealistic leanings. A biography from Vanderbilt University describes him as an “international figure,” a man who supported “the peace movement” and spoke five languages. The writer Victor Hugo reportedly referred to him as “the wealthiest vagabond in Europe.” He was a prolific writer of poetry, novels, and letters, and possessed a deeply humanist worldview. His horror at the obituary may not have inspired a change of heart, but rather a redirection of already existing values.

And yet, contradictions abounded. In 1891, he was labelled a traitor by the French government for selling arms to Italy. His company’s business practices did not radically deviate from those of other industrialists of the era. His first Swedish patent, after all, was for a method of preparing gunpowder, and his father had built weapons for the Crimean War.

So what truly changed?

Perhaps it wasn’t Nobel’s soul, but his perspective. “Too often,” Adam Grant told Bharara, “we’re looking at our lives through a microscope,” obsessing over the small picture. “What we actually need is a wide-angle lens where we can zoom out and ask, what is my legacy? What is the impact of this behaviour on my reputation?” Sometimes, Grant added, “people do not like the person that’s staring them in the mirror, and they decide they want to change.”

Nobel didn’t stop making explosives. His company didn’t halt the production of weapons. But he understood, more than most, the importance of how he would be remembered. His response was to craft a legacy that extended far beyond his own time—a mechanism by which the world’s best thinkers, scientists, writers, and peacemakers could be recognised, elevated, and celebrated.

The Nobel Prizes have, in many ways, succeeded. They’ve launched the careers of great innovators, drawn global attention to pressing issues, and honoured extraordinary achievements in science, literature, and peace. Some recipients have refused the prize—Jean-Paul Sartre famously declined in 1964, and Le Duc Tho rejected his jointly awarded Peace Prize with Henry Kissinger in 1973. These refusals remind us that legacy, even Nobel’s, is a complex, contested thing.

What remains beyond doubt is that Alfred Nobel’s life was a web of contradictions. He was a brilliant scientist and a melancholy poet, a man of peace who built tools of war, a recluse who built an international foundation. He was, as many are, both the cause and the attempted cure of his own legacy.

And if we accept that people don’t need to completely reinvent themselves to leave a mark—only to change the angle from which they see the world—then perhaps Nobel’s example is not one of contradiction, but clarity.

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Sources

• Sydney Morning Herald, “The surprising history of dynamite and Alfred Nobel”

• Vanderbilt University biography on Alfred Nobel

• Stay Tuned podcast, Preet Bharara interview with Adam Grant

• Nobel Foundation, official biography and last will

• “The Merchant of Death is Dead” obituary, 1888, La Marseillaise (France)

• Victor Hugo’s correspondence on Nobel (archival letters, Bibliothèque nationale de France)