Alfred Nobel. Portrait of Swedish chemist and inventor, Alfred Bernhard Nobel (1833-1896). From 1842, Nobel grew up in Russia where his father was an engineer. In 1850 he studied chemistry in Paris and later visited USA to work with propeller inventor J. Ericsson. Nobel returned to Sweden in 1859. Like his father he was interested in the use of explosives in civil engineering. He began to manufacture nitroglycerin (glyceryl trinitrate), but in 1865 his factory blew up. This explosive was made safe by absorbing it in a type of clay (kieselguhr). By 1866 the mixture was sold in waxed card tubes as dynamite". Nobel left his large fortune to endow the Nobel Prizes."