The question should rather be: what are the Nobel Prizes?
Alfred Nobel (1833-1896) spent his illustrious career as an industrialist (he owned some 100 factories), chemist, engineer and inventor (355 patents, listed at https://www.nobelprize.org/alfred-nobel/list-of-alfred-nobels-patents/); he was particularly known for his work with the armaments industry in Sweden, Norway, greater Europe, the UK, and the United States. Despite his work in the sciences of warfare, he was also known for his voracious appetite for the arts via literature, poetry, and drama, and he spoke 5 languages with admirable fluidity. He was a well-rounded, lively individual with a single-minded passion for all things explosive.
Likely apocryphal, there is a story that Nobel read an 1888 premature obituary of himself (probably intended for his brother Ludvig’s death) in which a journalist had written Le marchand de la mort est mort (“The merchant of death is dead”) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Nobel. Supposedly, this obituary caused him to reevaluate his work and legacy, wanting to be known for more than just his professional pursuits, eventually leading to a radical rewriting of his will in the year before his death. While he may have read someone else’s obituary in which an armaments-oriented man was referred to in scathing terms, it is doubtful as to whether the obituary in question was ever published, much less in a journal that may never have existed. (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/blame-sloppy-journalism-for-the-nobel-prizes-1172688/) However, it makes for a good backstory, though not one the Nobel Foundation embraces in its literature or his official biography on its website. (https://www.nobelprize.org/alfred-nobel)
A political liberal with socialist leanings and great generosity in philanthropy, he yet opposed such enlightened pursuits like woman suffrage. He came to believe in himself and his legacy as essentially pacifist, expressing it in the somewhat puzzling idea that, “My factories may well put an end to war before your congresses. For in the day that two armies are capable of destroying each other in a second, all civilized nations will surely recoil before a war and dismiss their troops.” (1890 letter to peace activist Bertha von Suttner quoted in https://www.history.com/articles/did-a-premature-obituary-inspire-the-nobel-prize) It reminds me of the madman theory of mutually assured destruction, which states that the only thing staving off war (nuclear war, in particular) is maintaining the peace by force. Indeed, even Albert Einstein was reputed to say, “I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.” Nobel’s work with blasting caps, bombs, safer utilization of nitroglycerin, ballistite, the legally much-contested cordite, mining explosives, dynamite, and countless others speak to a man who believed at least in the concept of war, but also in peaceful uses of volatile compounds and devices. He also developed some wholly peaceable items like synthetic rubber, artificial silk and artificial leather. (https://www.britannica.com/biography/Alfred-Nobel)
When Nobel died in 1896, his will left 95% of his estate to the foundation of prizes in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature and peace. Quite belatedly, in 1969, a prize in Economics was also funded. Prizes in these fields have been awarded annually since 1901, although World War II caused some temporary suspension of prizes. They are to be conferred only on “those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind” though this has since been somewhat stretched to specific lifetime acheivements benefitting humanity. (https://www.nobelprize.org/alfred-nobel) The long lens is sometimes the sharper focus. No prize is transferrable, and ownership of a Nobel does not mean the honor was awarded to the possesser.
An interesting side note: while this is a Swedish prize, the Peace Prize committee works out of Oslo, Norway.
The Nobel Prizes highlight the best in our world, steeped in the timeframe in which they are given. The people who receive them should make us aspire to greater things for the greater good, and their work should advance our knowledge of the world. It is to higher ideals and ideas to which Nobel himself strove; Nobel believed far greater things were to come. We would be well-disposed to endeavor to the same.
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