Who Was Alfred Nobel?

1. A poor childhood in Stockholm and St Petersburg

Alfred Nobel was born on 21 October 1833 in Stockholm, Sweden, the third son of Immanuel Nobel, an engineer and inventor, and Andriette Ahlsell Nobel. The family was poor in his childhood, and his father went bankrupt in the year Alfred was born. In 1842 the family moved to St Petersburg, Russia, where Immanuel Nobel's business prospered building bridges and armaments for the Russian government, and Alfred was educated by private tutors. He never took a university degree, but he studied chemistry in Paris under Théophile-Jules Pelouze, where he met Ascanio Sobrero, the inventor of nitroglycerine, and he worked briefly in the United States with the engineer John Ericsson. He spoke several languages, including Swedish, Russian, French, English and German, and he wrote poetry and drama in his spare time.

The family's move to Russia shaped Nobel in ways that are often overlooked. He grew up in a household where invention was a business, where his father built weapons for a government, and where success depended on winning contracts and protecting patents. He learned, early, that an inventor who could not sell his invention would starve, and that lesson stayed with him for the rest of his life. He was not a romantic inventor working in a garret; he was a businessman who understood markets, factories and international trade, and his success with dynamite was as much a business achievement as a chemical one. That combination, of scientific talent and commercial instinct, is rare, and it is the reason he became rich while other inventors of explosives did not.

There is also a personal side to his youth that matters. Nobel was shy, melancholic and often lonely, and he never married. He was, by all accounts, a sensitive man who wrote poetry and who was troubled by the uses to which his inventions were put. The contrast between the sensitive poet and the arms manufacturer is the central tension of his life, and it is the tension that the Nobel Prizes were meant to resolve. He was not a man who loved war; he was a man who made weapons because that was the family business, and who spent his later life trying to atone for it. Whether the atonement worked is the question his prizes still pose.

2. Nitroglycerine, the blasting cap and dynamite

Nitroglycerine, invented by the Italian chemist Ascanio Sobrero in 1847, was far more powerful than gunpowder but detonated unpredictably and could not be used safely. Nobel first made it usable with the blasting cap, patented in 1864, which detonated it in a controlled way, and then, in 1866, found that absorbing the liquid in kieselguhr, a porous earth, produced a paste that could be shaped into rods and inserted into drilling holes. In 1867 he patented this material under the name of dynamite, from the Greek word for power, and he also invented a detonator that could be ignited by lighting a fuse. These inventions were made at the same time as the pneumatic drill came into general use, and together they transformed mining, tunnelling and construction.

The human cost of the work was high. In 1864 an explosion at Nobel's factory in Heleneborg, Sweden, killed his younger brother Emil and four other people, and the Swedish government banned the manufacture of nitroglycerine in the city. Nobel moved his work to a barge on a lake, and then to a factory outside the city, and he continued, driven by the conviction that the explosive could be made safe. The death of his brother is often presented as the turning point in his life, the moment when he understood the danger of his work, but the evidence is more complicated: he continued to manufacture explosives, and he continued to profit from them, for the rest of his life. The explosion taught him to be careful, not to stop, and that distinction matters for understanding his character.

Dynamite was a commercial triumph. The market for dynamite and detonating caps grew very rapidly, and Nobel proved himself a skilful entrepreneur and businessman. Over the years he founded factories and laboratories in some 90 different places in more than 20 countries, and by the time of his death in 1896 he had 355 patents, most of them for explosives and armaments, including gelignite in 1875 and ballistite in 1887, the forerunner of cordite. His explosives were used to build the St Gotthard tunnel through the Swiss Alps, to dig the Corinth Canal, and to open mines around the world. They were also used in war, and Nobel knew it: he sold explosives to governments, and he did not refuse military contracts. The same invention that built tunnels also killed soldiers, and Nobel's fortune came from both uses.

3. The merchant of death and the obituary that changed everything

The most famous story about Nobel is that in 1888 a French newspaper mistakenly published an obituary of Alfred Nobel when his brother Ludvig died, calling him the merchant of death who became rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before. The story, which may be partly legend, is said to have made Nobel think about how he would be remembered, and to have led him to write the will that founded the Nobel Prizes. Historians have searched for the original obituary and have not found it in the form the story describes, and some argue that the story is a myth invented after his death. But whether or not the obituary existed, the sentiment behind the story is true: Nobel was aware that he was known as a maker of weapons, and he was troubled by it, and his will was, in part, an attempt to change that reputation.

The will, written in Paris on 27 November 1895, is one of the most consequential documents in the history of science. In it Nobel left most of his fortune to fund prizes for those who, during the preceding year, had conferred the greatest benefit on humankind, in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, and peace. The will was contested by his relatives, who thought he had given away too much, and it took five years of legal argument before the prizes could be awarded. The first prizes were given in 1901, and they were, from the start, international in a way that no other prize was: they were awarded regardless of nationality, and they were judged by Swedish institutions, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for physics and chemistry, the Karolinska Institute for medicine, the Swedish Academy for literature, and the Norwegian Parliament for peace.

The choice of peace as a prize category is the most revealing part of the will. Nobel had made his fortune from explosives, and he chose to reward peacemaking with the same money. Some have argued that this was hypocrisy, a weapons manufacturer buying a reputation as a peacemaker. Others have argued that it was a genuine change of heart, the act of a man who had come to believe that his inventions had made war worse and who wanted to encourage the opposite. The truth is probably that it was both: Nobel was a complex man who held contradictory beliefs, who supported peace movements and sold weapons, who wrote poetry and built factories, and whose will reflected all of those contradictions. The prizes do not resolve the contradictions; they embody them, and that is part of why they remain so powerful.

4. An industrial empire and a lonely life

By the time of his death Nobel's business empire was genuinely international: factories in Sweden, Germany, France, Britain, Italy and America, laboratories in Paris and San Remo, and a network of agents and partners that spanned the world. He managed this empire personally, travelling constantly, writing thousands of letters, and keeping control of his patents and his finances. He was, by modern standards, a multinational chief executive, and he was remarkably successful at it, in an age before telephones and airmail made international business easy. His success was based on a simple principle: he patented everything, he licensed his patents rather than selling them, and he kept improving his products, so that his competitors were always a step behind.

His personal life was, by contrast, unhappy. He never married, and his closest relationships were with his mother, with whom he corresponded throughout his life, and with a series of women, including Bertha von Suttner, an Austrian writer and peace activist who worked briefly as his secretary and who later won the Nobel Peace Prize herself in 1905. Von Suttner is often credited with influencing Nobel's decision to include a peace prize in his will, and their correspondence shows a genuine friendship and a shared interest in peace. Nobel's loneliness, his melancholy, and his sense of being misunderstood are evident in his letters and in his poetry, and they make him a more sympathetic figure than the image of the cold arms manufacturer suggests.

The contrast between his business success and his personal unhappiness is one of the most human parts of his story. He had money, fame and influence, but he did not have a family of his own, and he spent much of his life travelling alone between his factories and his laboratories. He wrote, in a letter, that he was a misanthrope who loved humanity in the abstract but found individual people difficult, and that remark captures something real about him. He was a man who wanted to benefit humankind but who was uncomfortable with humankind in person, and the Nobel Prizes, which benefit strangers he would never meet, were a fitting expression of that character. They were a gift to the world from a man who found the world hard to live in.

5. The prizes: how they work and why they matter

The Nobel Prizes are awarded annually, and they have become the most prestigious awards in the world. The physics and chemistry prizes are awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the medicine prize by the Karolinska Institute, the literature prize by the Swedish Academy, and the peace prize by a committee appointed by the Norwegian Parliament. The prizes are awarded for work done in the preceding year, though in practice they often honour work done decades earlier, and they are given to individuals, not to institutions, with a maximum of three recipients per prize. The prize in economic sciences, awarded since 1969, was not part of Nobel's will; it was established by Sweden's central bank in memory of Nobel, and it is often called the Nobel Prize in Economics, though it is technically a separate award.

The prizes matter for two reasons. The first is that they confer prestige and money on the winners, and they draw public attention to science, literature and peacemaking in a way that no other award does. A Nobel Prize can transform a scientist's career, and it can bring a writer or a peacemaker to the attention of the world. The second reason is that the prizes have become a record of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries: the list of laureates is a history of physics, from Einstein to the discoverers of gravitational waves, of medicine, from the discoverers of penicillin to the developers of vaccines, and of peace, from the Red Cross to Malala Yousafzai, who won the Peace Prize in 2014. To read the list of laureates is to read the history of modern science and of modern efforts to make the world better.

The prizes have also been controversial, and the controversies are worth understanding. The physics prize has been criticised for overlooking women and for favouring certain fields, the literature prize for its Eurocentric choices, and the peace prize for rewarding politicians whose records are disputed. Abdus Salam, who shared the physics prize in 1979, was the first Muslim to win a science Nobel, and his case shows both the prizes' power to recognise talent from outside the West and their limits, since his own country barely honoured him. Marie Curie, who won the physics prize in 1903 and the chemistry prize in 1911, remains the only person to win Nobel Prizes in two different sciences, and her case shows the prizes at their best, recognising work that changed the world. The controversies do not diminish the prizes; they show that the prizes matter enough to argue about, and that is itself a measure of their importance.

6. Science, peace and the contradiction at the heart of Nobel

Nobel's life poses a question that has no easy answer: can a man who made weapons also be a man of peace? His defenders say yes, and they point to his support for peace movements, his friendship with Bertha von Suttner, and his will, which gave his fortune to the cause of peace. They argue that he understood, better than most, that explosives could be used for good or for ill, and that he wanted to encourage the good. His critics say no, and they point to his arms sales, his military contracts, and the fact that his fortune came from the very wars he claimed to oppose. They argue that the prizes are a form of reputation laundering, a way for a wealthy man to buy a legacy that his life did not earn.

Both arguments have force, and the honest account is to hold them together. Nobel was not a hypocrite in the simple sense; he genuinely believed in peace, and he genuinely sold weapons, and he did not see the contradiction as clearly as we do. He lived in a century when the distinction between civilian and military technology was less clear than it is today, when dynamite was used to build railways and to kill soldiers, and when many inventors moved between the two worlds without thinking twice. Albert Einstein, who signed the letter that led to the atomic bomb and then campaigned against nuclear weapons, faced a similar contradiction, and his case shows that the problem is not unique to Nobel. It is a problem that faces every scientist whose work can be used for war, and it has no solution that satisfies everyone.

There is also a larger question about the prizes themselves: do they reward the right things? Nobel's will specified physics, chemistry, medicine, literature and peace, and those categories reflect the concerns of a nineteenth-century industrialist. There is no prize for mathematics, no prize for history, and no prize for the environment, and the absence of those categories has been debated for a century. The prizes have adapted, within limits, and the peace prize in particular has been given to environmentalists and to human rights activists, but the categories remain Nobel's, and they are a reminder that the prizes are the creation of one man, with one man's view of what matters. That view has proved remarkably durable, and the prizes have outlived the world that created them, which is itself a tribute to Nobel's judgement.

7. Death, the will and a reputation remade

Nobel died in San Remo, Italy, on 10 December 1896, aged 63, of a cerebral haemorrhage. His will was read, his relatives contested it, and it took five years before the Nobel Foundation was established and the first prizes were awarded in 1901. The delay was a measure of how radical the will was: no one had ever left a fortune to fund international prizes for science, literature and peace, and the legal and institutional work required to create the prizes was considerable. The fact that the prizes survived the legal challenges, and that they have been awarded every year since, is a tribute to the clarity of Nobel's intentions and to the determination of his executors, above all Ragnar Sohlman, who fought for the will in court.

The reputation the prizes created is the one Nobel wanted. Today, when people hear the name Nobel, they think of the prizes, not of dynamite, and they think of Einstein, Curie and Malala Yousafzai, not of explosives factories. That is a remarkable achievement: a man who made his fortune from weapons succeeded, through his will, in being remembered for something else. Whether that is a triumph of generosity or a triumph of public relations is a question that will be argued for as long as the prizes are awarded, and it is a question that Nobel himself would probably have understood. He was a man who thought about how he would be remembered, and he took steps to shape that memory, and the steps worked.

For readers who want to go further, the best starting point is the Nobel Prize website, which gives Nobel's own life and work, the text of his will, and the full list of laureates. The site also explains how the prizes are awarded, and it is the most authoritative source on the subject. The biography on this site gives the verified facts of his life; the prizes give his legacy, and they are awarded every October, in Stockholm and Oslo, to people who have, in Nobel's words, conferred the greatest benefit on humankind. That phrase, written by a maker of dynamite, is the most hopeful sentence he ever wrote, and it is the reason his name is still honoured, more than a century after his death.

Frequently asked questions

Sources and further reading

• NobelPrize.org — Alfred Nobel, his life and work
• Wikipedia — Alfred Nobel
• NobelPrize.org — Alfred Nobel, the man behind the prizes
• American Institute of Physics — The Legacy of Alfred Nobel

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• Who Is Zinedine Zidane? — Zinedine Zidane won the World Cup as a player and three Champions Leagues as a manager, and in July 2026 was appointed head coach of France.
• Who Was A. P. J. Abdul Kalam? — A. P. J. Abdul Kalam rose from a poor boyhood in Rameswaram to lead India's space and missile programmes, then served as the country's 11th president.
• Who Was Abdul Sattar Edhi? — Abdul Sattar Edhi built Pakistan's largest welfare network from a single free dispensary. This explains his life, his foundation and his legacy.
• Who Was Abdus Salam? — Abdus Salam won the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics for unifying two forces of nature. This explains his science, his institutions and his contested legacy.
• Who Was Abraham Lincoln? — Abraham Lincoln preserved the Union through the Civil War and ended slavery. This explains his rise, his presidency and his contested legacy.
• Who Was Ada Lovelace? — Ada Lovelace published the first program for a programmable machine in 1843. This explains her notes, her vision of computing and the debate over her role.
• Who Was Adolf Hitler? — Adolf Hitler led the Nazi Party and ruled Germany as dictator from 1933 to 1945, started the Second World War in Europe and was central to the Holocaust.
• Who Was Alan Turing? — Alan Turing defined modern computing, broke German naval Enigma and proposed the Turing test. This explains his science, his war work and his tragic end.
• Who Was Albert Einstein? — Albert Einstein rewrote physics with relativity and won the Nobel Prize for the photoelectric effect. This explains his ideas, his life and his legacy.
• Who Was Alexander Graham Bell? — Alexander Graham Bell patented the first practical telephone in 1876. This explains his work with the deaf, the patent fight and his wider inventions.
• Who Was Alexander the Great? — Alexander the Great built one of history's largest empires before dying at 32. This explains his conquests, his cities and the debate over his legacy.
• Who Was Allama Iqbal? — Allama Iqbal was Pakistan's national poet, whose ideas shaped the case for Pakistan. This explains his poetry, his philosophy and his legacy.
• Who Was Benazir Bhutto? — Benazir Bhutto was the first woman to lead a Muslim-majority country, serving as prime minister of Pakistan in 1988-90 and 1993-96.
• Who Was Bob Marley? — Bob Marley took reggae from Jamaica to the world and became a symbol of peace, resistance and unity. This explains his life, his music and his legacy.
• Who Was Bruce Lee? — Bruce Lee was the martial artist and actor who carried Hong Kong action cinema to the world and founded Jeet Kune Do, leaving a lasting influence.
• Who Was Charles Darwin? — Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection, published in On the Origin of Species in 1859, became the foundation of modern biology.
• Who Was Charles Dickens? — Charles Dickens was the greatest novelist of the Victorian era, whose serialised novels mixed comedy, social criticism and unforgettable characters.
• Who Was Charlie Chaplin? — Charlie Chaplin created the Little Tramp, the most famous screen character of the silent era, and directed classics City Lights and The Great Dictator.
• Who Was Cleopatra? — Cleopatra VII was the last ruler of Ptolemaic Egypt, a multilingual stateswoman who kept her kingdom independent for 21 years before Rome annexed it.
• Who Was Diego Maradona? — Diego Maradona was an Argentine footballer who captained Argentina to the 1986 World Cup and is widely regarded as one of the greatest players in history.
• Who Was Don Bradman? — Don Bradman was an Australian cricketer who averaged 99.94 in Test cricket, a record so far ahead of any other batsman that it remains famous in sport.
• Who Was Elvis Presley? — Elvis Presley took gospel, country and rhythm and blues and turned them into rock and roll, becoming the most famous singer of his century.
• Who Was Emily Dickinson? — Emily Dickinson was an American poet who wrote nearly 1,800 poems in private in Amherst, Massachusetts, and was barely published in her lifetime.
• Who Was Faiz Ahmed Faiz? — Faiz Ahmed Faiz was Pakistan's most celebrated modern Urdu poet, whose verse joined romantic lyricism with resistance to injustice.
• Who Was Franz Beckenbauer? — Franz Beckenbauer was a German footballer known as Der Kaiser, who won the World Cup as captain in 1974 and as manager in 1990.
• Who Was Freddie Mercury? — Freddie Mercury was the lead singer of Queen, a four-octave voice and fearless showman who wrote Bohemian Rhapsody and We Are the Champions.
• Who Was Frida Kahlo? — Frida Kahlo was a Mexican painter known for uncompromising, brilliantly coloured self-portraits exploring identity, the body and death.
• Who Was Galileo Galilei? — Galileo Galilei reshaped astronomy with his telescopic discoveries of 1610, defended a Sun-centred universe, and was tried by the Inquisition in 1633.
• Who Was Genghis Khan? — Genghis Khan united the Mongol tribes and built the largest contiguous land empire in history, a conqueror and lawgiver whose legacy is still argued over.
• Who Was George Washington? — George Washington won American independence, presided over the Constitutional Convention, and as first president defined the office — then walked away.
• Who Was Guglielmo Marconi? — Guglielmo Marconi was an Italian inventor who built the first practical wireless telegraph and sent the first transatlantic radio signal in 1901.
• Who Was Henry Ford? — Henry Ford was an American industrialist who founded the Ford Motor Company, built the Model T and perfected the moving assembly line.
• Who Was Isaac Newton? — Isaac Newton wrote the laws of motion and universal gravitation, invented calculus and transformed optics, leaving a lasting legacy in science.
• Who Was James Watt? — James Watt did not invent the steam engine, but his separate condenser of 1765 made it efficient enough to power the Industrial Revolution.
• Who Was Jane Austen? — Jane Austen published six novels in her lifetime, anonymously, and died at 41. This explains her life, her novels, her irony and her growing reputation.
• Who Was Jesus Christ? — Jesus of Nazareth is the central figure of Christianity, the world's largest religion. This explains his life in the Gospels, his teachings and his legacy.
• Who Was Johan Cruyff? — Johan Cruyff was the star of Total Football, won three Ballon d'Or awards, and as a manager built the Barcelona team that shaped modern football.
• Who Was Johannes Gutenberg? — Johannes Gutenberg built the first mechanised printing press in Europe and printed the Gutenberg Bible around 1455, changing how the world shared ideas.
• Who Was John Keats? — John Keats died of tuberculosis in Rome at 25, having written his six great odes in a single year. This explains his short life, his poetry and his fame.
• Who Was Joseph Stalin? — Joseph Stalin led the Soviet Union from the 1920s until 1953, industrialised the country and led it through the Second World War, ruling through terror.
• Who Was Julius Caesar? — Julius Caesar conquered Gaul, crossed the Rubicon and remade Rome's calendar and government, and was murdered by senators who feared he would be king.
• Who Was Kobe Bryant? — Kobe Bryant won five NBA championships with the Los Angeles Lakers and became known for the Mamba Mentality, on and off the court.
• Who Was Leo Tolstoy? — Leo Tolstoy wrote War and Peace and Anna Karenina, then abandoned literary fame for a radical moral philosophy that influenced Gandhi and the world.
• Who Was Leonardo da Vinci? — Leonardo da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper and filled notebooks with anatomy and engineering, becoming the symbol of the Renaissance.
• Who Was Ludwig van Beethoven? — Ludwig van Beethoven wrote nine symphonies, 32 piano sonatas and the Missa Solemnis, much of it while deaf. This explains his life and legacy.
• Who Was Mahatma Gandhi? — Mahatma Gandhi led India to independence through nonviolent resistance, and his ideas shaped civil-rights movements worldwide.
• Who Was Mao Zedong? — Mao Zedong founded the People's Republic of China in 1949 and led it until 1976, bringing unification and the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution.
• Who Was Margaret Thatcher? — Margaret Thatcher was the first woman to serve as British prime minister, leading the UK from 1979 to 1990 through reform, the Falklands War and division.
• Who Was Marie Curie? — Marie Curie discovered polonium and radium and remains the only person to win Nobel Prizes in two different sciences, a pioneer of radioactivity research.
• Who Was Marilyn Monroe? — Marilyn Monroe was the biggest star of the 1950s, the blonde bombshell of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Some Like It Hot, who fought the studio system.
• Who Was Mark Twain? — Mark Twain, born Samuel Langhorne Clemens, wrote Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn and became America's most famous humorist.
• Who Was Maya Angelou? — Maya Angelou was a poet, memoirist and civil rights activist whose autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings made her widely read.
• Who Was Michael Jackson? — Michael Jackson, the King of Pop, made Thriller, the best-selling album in history, and changed music video, dance and pop stardom.
• Who Was Mirza Ghalib? — Mirza Ghalib (1797-1869) is the pre-eminent Urdu and Persian poet of the last Mughal era, whose ghazals on love, loss and doubt are still recited.
• Who Was Muhammad Ali Jinnah? — Muhammad Ali Jinnah was the barrister and statesman who led the All-India Muslim League and became Pakistan's first Governor-General in 1947.
• Who Was Muhammad Ali? — Muhammad Ali was the three-time heavyweight champion who called himself The Greatest, and the most famous athlete of the twentieth century.
• Who Was Napoleon Bonaparte? — Napoleon Bonaparte rose from Corsica to Emperor of the French, redrew the map of Europe, and left a legal code that still shapes law across the world.
• Who Was Nelson Mandela? — Nelson Mandela spent 27 years in prison under apartheid, then became South Africa's first democratically elected president and a Nobel Peace laureate.
• Who Was Nikola Tesla? — Nikola Tesla developed the alternating-current power system, the induction motor and the Tesla coil, making long-distance electric power practical.
• Who Was Osama bin Laden? — Osama bin Laden founded al-Qaeda in 1988 and organised the September 11, 2001 attacks, in which nearly 3,000 people were killed.
• Who Was Pablo Neruda? — Pablo Neruda was Chile's great poet, a Nobel laureate, a communist senator and a diplomat. This explains his poetry, his politics and his death.
• Who Was Pablo Picasso? — Pablo Picasso co-founded Cubism, painted Guernica, and spent 75 years breaking the rules of art — the most influential artist of the twentieth century.
• Who Was Pelé? — Pele is the only footballer to win three World Cups, the youngest winner, and the game's first global icon. This is his life, his goals and his legacy.
• Who Was Pope Francis? The People's Pope — Pope Francis, the first pope from the Americas and the first Jesuit pope, led the Catholic Church from 2013 to 2025 with an emphasis on mercy and the poor.
• Who Was Prophet Muhammad? — The Prophet Muhammad is the founder of Islam, the world's second-largest religion. This explains his life, his teachings and his legacy.
• Who Was Queen Elizabeth II? — Queen Elizabeth II reigned for 70 years, from 1952 to 2022 — the longest reign in British history. This explains her life, her reign and her legacy.
• Who Was Rabindranath Tagore? — Rabindranath Tagore was the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, and the author of the national anthems of India and Bangladesh.
• Who Was Rosa Parks? — Rosa Parks was not a tired seamstress who acted on impulse. She was a trained activist and NAACP secretary whose bus refusal was a deliberate act.
• Who Was Rosalind Franklin? — Rosalind Franklin's X-ray image, Photograph 51, gave Watson and Crick the key evidence for the double helix. This is her life and the credit debate.
• Who Was Rumi? — Rumi, the thirteenth-century Persian poet of Konya, wrote the Masnavi and the Divan-e Shams, and became the most widely read poet in the world.
• Who Was Shane Warne? — Shane Warne took 708 Test wickets, bowled the Ball of the Century in 1993 and won the 1999 World Cup with Australia. This explains his career.
• Who Was Stephen Hawking? — Stephen Hawking was a theoretical physicist who showed that black holes emit radiation and wrote A Brief History of Time. He died in 2018, aged 76.
• Who Was Steve Jobs? — Steve Jobs co-founded Apple in 1976, was forced out in 1985, built Pixar, and returned to launch the iMac, iPod, iPhone and iPad. He died in 2011, aged 56.
• Who Was Thomas Edison? — Thomas Edison held 1,093 US patents, invented the phonograph and the practical incandescent lamp, and built the first commercial electric power system.
• Who Was Vincent van Gogh? — Vincent van Gogh produced about 2,100 artworks in a single decade, including The Starry Night and Sunflowers, and became famous only after his death at 37.
• Who Was William Shakespeare? — William Shakespeare is the most performed playwright in history, yet almost nothing is reliably known about his private life.
• Who Was William Wordsworth? — William Wordsworth launched English Romanticism with Lyrical Ballads and wrote The Prelude, the great autobiographical poem. This explains his life.
• Who Was Winston Churchill? — Winston Churchill led Britain through the Second World War and won the Nobel Prize in Literature, and his record on empire is still debated.
• Who Was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart? — Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a child prodigy who composed more than 600 works before his death at 35, defining the Classical era.
• Why Van Gogh Became Famous After Death — Vincent van Gogh died in 1890 almost unknown, and within a few decades his paintings were among the most loved in the world.