Quick answer: The Nobel Prize exists because a newspaper made a mistake. In 1888 a French paper confused Alfred Nobel with his brother, printed his obituary, and called him a merchant of death. He rewrote his will in 1895, left almost everything to fund prizes, and died the next year. The first prizes were awarded in 1901.
Most institutions are founded on ambition. This one was founded on embarrassment.
The man who made explosions safe
Alfred Nobel was born in Stockholm in 1833 into a family of engineers. His father built naval mines. Alfred trained as a chemist, spoke five languages, wrote poetry nobody remembers, and spent his working life on a single problem: nitroglycerin was extraordinarily powerful and extraordinarily likely to kill whoever handled it.
That problem was personal. In 1864 an explosion at the family laboratory near Stockholm killed five people, including Nobel's younger brother Emil. Stockholm banned him from rebuilding inside the city, so he moved his experiments onto a barge on a lake.
In 1867 he solved it. By absorbing nitroglycerin into a porous earth called kieselguhr he produced a paste that could be shaped, transported and detonated on command. He called it dynamite. It made tunnels, canals, mines and railways possible at a scale that had not existed before, and it made him one of the richest men in Europe. By the end of his life he held more than 350 patents and controlled around 90 factories across some 20 countries.
1888: the obituary
In April 1888, Alfred's brother Ludvig died in Cannes. At least one French newspaper got the brothers mixed up and published an obituary for Alfred instead.
The headline, in the version that has passed into history, declared that the merchant of death was dead. The text argued that Alfred Nobel had become rich by finding ways to kill more people more quickly than ever before.
He was 54, in poor health, and entirely alive. There is no diary entry recording his reaction, which is why careful historians hedge on the causal link. What is documented is the sequence: the obituary in 1888, a will in 1893 that split his estate between institutions and relatives, and then a far more radical will in 1895.
1895: the will that upset everyone
On 27 November 1895, at the Swedish-Norwegian Club in Paris, Nobel signed a document barely more than a page long. It left about 94 percent of his estate, roughly 31 million Swedish kronor, to a fund whose interest would be distributed annually as prizes to those who had conferred the greatest benefit to humankind.
He specified five fields: physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, and peace. He specified that nationality must not be considered. And he assigned the Peace Prize, alone among the five, to a committee appointed by the Norwegian parliament.
Then he died, on 10 December 1896, in San Remo.
The will was contested immediately. His relatives challenged it. Swedish nationalists objected to a fortune leaving the country to be handed to foreigners. King Oscar II reportedly disapproved. The institutions Nobel had named had not been asked in advance whether they wanted the job, and some were reluctant to take it.
His young executor, Ragnar Sohlman, spent years converting assets and defending the will, at one point moving securities out of France in a hurry to keep them out of a legal dispute. The Nobel Foundation was finally established in 1900.
1901: the first prizes
The first Nobel Prizes were awarded on 10 December 1901, the fifth anniversary of Nobel's death, which remains the ceremony date to this day.
| Prize | 1901 laureate | For |
|---|---|---|
| Physics | Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen | The discovery of X-rays |
| Chemistry | Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff | Laws of chemical dynamics and osmotic pressure |
| Medicine | Emil von Behring | Serum therapy against diphtheria |
| Literature | Sully Prudhomme | Poetry, in a decision still argued about |
| Peace | Henry Dunant and Frédéric Passy | Founding the Red Cross, and peace advocacy |
The literature choice set an early pattern. Prudhomme won ahead of Leo Tolstoy, and 42 Swedish writers and artists sent a letter of protest to Tolstoy in apology. The Nobel committees have been generating that kind of letter ever since.
The sixth prize that is not a Nobel
In 1968, Sweden's central bank marked its 300th anniversary by funding a new award: the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, first given in 1969.
It is administered by the Nobel Foundation, announced in the same week, and presented at the same ceremony. It is not one of the prizes Alfred Nobel endowed, which is why members of the Nobel family have publicly objected to it over the years, and why the pedantic distinction is worth knowing.
What the prize is worth now
The first prizes were about 150,000 Swedish kronor each, an amount comparable to two decades of a professor's salary. Inflation and cautious investment eroded the real value through the twentieth century before the Foundation's investment rules were loosened.
Today a full prize is 11 million Swedish kronor, roughly one million euros, split if it is shared. Each laureate also receives a diploma and a gold medal, struck in 18-carat green gold and plated with 24-carat gold.
What the money has never been able to fix is the structure. A prize can be split three ways at most, it cannot be awarded posthumously, and the nomination records stay sealed for 50 years. Those rules produce most of the arguments, which we covered in Nobel Prize snubs and controversies, and the mechanics are laid out in how the Nobel Prize works.
Learn it in five minutes
Our Nobel Prize week 2026 page has the announcement schedule, the rules, and four free courses that run in the browser. The Nobel Prize: From Dynamite to Legacy covers this history in five lessons with quizzes, and Hidden Secrets of the Nobel Prize covers the parts that sound invented, including the two gold medals dissolved in acid to hide them from the Nazis.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why did Alfred Nobel create the Nobel Prize?
The trigger was a premature obituary. When his brother Ludvig died in 1888, a French newspaper mistakenly reported Alfred's death and called him a merchant of death who had grown rich by finding ways to kill more people faster. Nobel read it, and in 1895 he signed a will devoting almost his entire fortune to prizes for work that benefits humanity.
When was the first Nobel Prize awarded?
On 10 December 1901, five years after Nobel's death. The first laureates were Wilhelm Röntgen in physics, Jacobus van 't Hoff in chemistry, Emil von Behring in medicine, Sully Prudhomme in literature, and Henry Dunant and Frédéric Passy jointly in peace.
How much of his fortune did Alfred Nobel leave to the prizes?
About 31 million Swedish kronor, roughly 94 percent of his estate. His relatives contested the will and the Swedish establishment objected to money leaving the country, so the executors spent years securing the assets before the Nobel Foundation was established in 1900.
Why is the Peace Prize awarded in Norway?
Because Nobel's will specified it. He gave the five-member committee appointed by the Norwegian parliament responsibility for the Peace Prize while leaving the other prizes to Swedish institutions. He never explained why, and Sweden and Norway were joined in a union at the time.
What did Alfred Nobel invent?
Dynamite, patented in 1867, along with blasting gelatin and the smokeless propellant ballistite. He held over 350 patents and built a network of factories across some 20 countries.
How much was the first Nobel Prize worth?
About 150,000 Swedish kronor in 1901, an enormous sum equivalent to roughly 20 years of a professor's salary at the time. Today a full prize is 11 million Swedish kronor.
📚 Keep Learning
Ready to Level Up?
Turn your screen time into knowledge. Download NerdSip and start learning in just 5 minutes a day.
