history of nobel prize
donating = loving

the revered Nobel Prize — held today as an echelon of
celebrating the human spirit at its highest potential — has a rather
dark origin of destruction and confusion. In 1888, when a humble
Swede by the name of Ludwig Nobel died, the French press confused
him with his younger brother Alfred — the famed Swedish
entrepreneur and inventor who amassed his fortune by making such
deadly delights as dynamite and ballistic — and ran an eviscerating
epitaph about this “Tradesman of Death.” Alfred Nobel, having the
rare misfortune of witnessing his legacy while still alive, found
himself heartbroken and determined to change his story before it was
too late. Likening his tale to that of Scrooge in A Christmas Carol ,
Oldfield writes:
Nobel had a vision of the future that might be, and he decided to
change his destiny.
He thought for a while about what to do. Then, on November 27, 1895,
he took action. He went to the Swedish Norwegian Club in the Marais
in Paris, sat down at a writing desk — which is still there (the venue is
now called simply the Swedish Club) — and wrote his last will and
testament.
Over four pages, he set out what he wanted to give to his relatives —
he had no children — and to his staff. He asked that the rest of his
estate be invested into a fund, “the interest on which shall be annually
distributed in the form of prizes to those who, during the preceding
year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit to mankind.”
The interest was to be divided into five equal parts and each part given
to the person who had made the most important discovery each year in
four fields and, finally, “one part to the person who shall have done the
most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or
reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of
peace congress” — the Nobel Peace Prize.





below is the translation of the passage from Nobel’s will outlining the
ideals and practical execution of the prize:


The whole of my remaining realizable estate shall be dealt with in the
following way: the capital, invested in safe securities by my executors,
shall constitute a fund, the interest on which shall be annually
distributed in the form of prizes to those who, during the preceding
year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit to mankind. The said
interest shall be divided into five equal parts, which shall be
apportioned as follows: one part to the person who shall have made
the most important discovery or invention within the field of physics;
one part to the person who shall have made the most important
chemical discovery or improvement; one part to the person who shall
have made the most important discovery within the domain of
physiology or medicine; one part to the person who shall have
produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal
direction; and one part to the person who shall have done the most or
the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or
reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of
peace congresses. The prizes for physics and chemistry shall be
awarded by the Swedish Academy of Sciences; that for physiological or
medical work by the Caroline Institute in Stockholm; that for literature
by the Academy in Stockholm, and that for champions of peace by a
committee of five persons to be elected by the Norwegian Storting. It is
my express wish that in awarding the prizes no consideration whatever
shall be given to the nationality of the candidates, but that the most
worthy shall receive the prize, whether he be a Scandinavian or not.
The will, which is now kept in a vault at the Nobel Foundation in
Stockholm and has never been on display, was so impromptu that
Nobel asked four random gentlemen who happened to be in the Club
that day to witness the document. When he died the following year,
his 25-year-old assistant Ragnar Sohlman was entrusted with
executing Nobel’s wishes. Oldfield captures the young man’s relentless
dedication to his task:
He raced around Paris in a horse-drawn carriage, collecting cash,
papers and bonds from different banks. He packed everything into
boxes and shipped it to Sweden, from the Gare du Nord, Paris, as
registered luggage. Back in Sweden, he began slowly to sell Nobel’s
shares, so the companies he had been invested in didn’t crash.
And yet Nobel’s will was met with enormous resistance at first. His
relatives, completely unaware of his plan, were shocked. The Swedish
royal family condemned him for being unpatriotic by setting up a
nationality-blind prize fund rather than rewarding Swedes only. His
staff was outraged by the enormous administrative and organizational
costs of such an operation, which they thought Nobel didn’t consider
when he made his will. But the idea also stirred quite a few hearts:
The Olympics were happening in Greece in 1896 and there was a
general sense of wanting to create a world family and to honor people
who were helping mankind. Ragnar found more and more support as
he worked steadily to set up the Nobel Foundation, and to make
Nobel’s wishes a reality. In 1901, five years after Nobel’s will was first
read, the first Nobel Prizes were awarded in Sweden and Norway. A
century later, the museum opened in Stockholm.
Today, it gives one pause to consider that the highest honor of human
achievement owes its origin to a combination of journalistic error and
existential guilt. The more cynical might say that Alfred Nobel was
exercising an especially grandiose form of vanity, but cynicism has no
place in the spirit of the Prize, so in honoring that, let’s instead
acknowledge that altruism has always been a tricky subject and that
the desire to leave something meaningful behind, rather than a form
of vanity, is among the universal longings of the human condition.
The Secret Museum is astonishing — quite literally — in its entirety,
unraveling such scrumptious and surprising curiosities as Van Gogh’s
unseen sketchbooks, the tools that belonged to Queen Victoria’s
dentist, and Winston Churchill’s sketches.
Since then, our own Nigerians like wole Soyinka and others have been beneficiary of this too .