Nobel: A Biography of Alfred Nobel

New York: Orion Press, 1959. First Printing. Hardcover. good. 22 cm, 281 pages. Index. Nicholas Halasz was the author of a book about Alfred Dreyfus, the French army officer wrongly accused of treason. Mr. Halasz also wrote a biography of Alfred Nobel, another book titled ''Russia Through Foreign Eyes,'' and ''The Rattling Chains,'' a study of slave uprisings in the Antebellum South. But his best-known book was ''Captain Dreyfus: The Story of a Mass Hysteria,'' published in 1955, which was the basis for the 1958 movie ''I Accuse!'' with Jose Ferrer as Dreyfus. Mr. Halasz was born in Slovakia, then part of Austria-Hungary, and was a journalist and lawyer before coming to the United States in 1941. Alfred Bernhard Nobel (21 October 1833 - 10 December 1896) was a Swedish chemist, engineer, inventor, businessman, and philanthropist. Known for inventing dynamite, Nobel also owned Bofors, which he had redirected from its previous role as primarily an iron and steel producer to a major manufacturer of cannon and other armaments. Nobel held 355 different patents, dynamite being the most famous. After reading a premature obituary which condemned him for profiting from the sales of arms, he bequeathed his fortune to institute the Nobel Prizes. The synthetic element nobelium was named after him. His name also survives in modern-day companies such as Dynamit Nobel and AkzoNobel, which are descendants of mergers with companies Nobel himself established. At age 18, he went to the United States for one year to study chemistry, working for a short period under inventor John Ericsson, who designed the American Civil War ironclad USS Monitor. Nobel filed his first patent, an English patent for a gas meter, in 1857, while his first Swedish patent, which he received in 1863, was on 'ways to prepare gunpowder'. The family factory produced armaments for the Crimean War (1853-1856), but had difficulty switching back to regular domestic production when the fighting ended and they filed for bankruptcy. In 1859, Nobel's father left his factory in the care of the second son, Ludvig Nobel (1831-1888), who greatly improved the business. Nobel and his parents returned to Sweden from Russia and Nobel devoted himself to the study of explosives, and especially to the safe manufacture and use of nitroglycerin. Nobel invented a detonator in 1863, and in 1865 designed the blasting cap. On 3 September 1864, a shed used for preparation of nitroglycerin exploded at the factory in Heleneborg, Stockholm, killing five people, including Nobel's younger brother Emil. Dogged and unfazed by more minor accidents, Nobel went on to build further factories, focusing on improving the stability of the explosives he was developing. Nobel invented dynamite in 1867, a substance easier and safer to handle than the more unstable nitroglycerin. Dynamite was patented in the US and the UK and was used extensively in mining and the building of transport networks internationally. In 1875 Nobel invented gelignite, more stable and powerful than dynamite, and in 1887 patented ballistite, a predecessor of cordite. His decision to posthumously donate the majority of his wealth to found the Nobel Prize has been credited at least in part to him wanting to leave a behind a positive legacy.