ALFRED NOBEL ~ October 21, 1833 ~ December 10, 1896

Alfred Bernhard Nobel (Stockholm, Sweden, 21 October 1833 – Sanremo, Italy, 10 December 1896) was a Swedish chemist, engineer, innovator, armaments manufacturer and the inventor of dynamite. He owned Bofors, a major armaments manufacturer, which he had redirected from its previous role as an iron and steel mill. In his last will, he used his enormous fortune to institute the Nobel Prizes. The synthetic element nobelium was named after him.

Alfred Nobel was the third son of Immanuel Nobel (1801-1872) and Andriette Ahlsell Nobel (1805-1889). Born in Stockholm on 21 October 1833, he went with his family to Saint Petersburg in 1842, where his father (who had invented modern plywood) started a "torpedo" works. Alfred studied chemistry with Professor Nikolay Nikolaevich Zinin. When Alfred was 18, he went to the United States to study chemistry for four years and worked for a short period under John Ericsson. In 1859, the factory was left to the care of the second son, Ludvig Nobel (1831-1888), who greatly improved the business. Alfred, returning to Sweden with his father after the bankruptcy of their family business, devoted himself to the study of explosives, and especially to the safe manufacture and use of nitroglycerine (discovered in 1847 by Ascanio Sobrero, one of his fellow students under Théophile-Jules Pelouze at the University of Torino). A big explosion occurred on the 3 September 1864 at their factory in Heleneborg in Stockholm, killing five people, among them Alfred's younger brother Emil.

The foundations of the Nobel Prize were laid in 1895 when Alfred Nobel wrote his last will, leaving much of his wealth for its establishment. Since 1901, the prize has honored men and women for outstanding achievements in physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, for work in peace and now economics.

Though Nobel remained unmarried, his biographers note that he had at least three loves. Nobel's first love was in Russia with a girl named Alexandra, who rejected his proposal. In 1876 Bertha Kinsky became Alfred Nobel's secretary but after only a brief stay left him to marry her old flame, Baron Arthur Gundaccar von Suttner. Though her personal contact with Alfred Nobel had been brief, she corresponded with him until his death in 1896, and it is believed that she was a major influence in his decision to include a peace prize among those prizes provided in his will. Bertha von Suttner was awarded the 1905 Nobel Peace prize, 'for her sincere peace activities'.

Nobel's third and long-lasting love was with a flower girl named Sofie Hess from Vienna. This liaison lasted for 18 years and in many of the exchanged letters, Nobel addressed his love as 'Madame Sofie Nobel'. After his death, according to his biographers - Evlanoff and Flour, and Fant - Nobel's letters were locked within the Nobel Institute in Stockholm and became the best-kept secret of the time. They were released only in 1955, to be included with the biographical data of Nobel.

Sri Kantha has suggested that ' the one personal trait of Nobel that helped him to sharpen his creativity include his talent for information access, via his multi-lingual skills. Despite the lack of formal secondary and tertiary level education, Nobel gained proficiency in six languages: Swedish, French, Russian, English, German and Italian. He also developed literary skills to write poetry in English.' His Nemesis, a prose tragedy in four acts about Beatrice Cenci, partly inspired by Percy Bysshe Shelley's The Cenci, was printed while he was dying. The entire stock except for three copies was destroyed immediately after his death, being regarded as scandalous and blasphemous. The first surviving edition (bilingual Swedish-Esperanto) was published in Sweden in 2003. The play has been translated to Slovenian via the Esperanto version.

Nobel was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1884, the same institution that would later select laureates for two of the Nobel prizes, and he received an honorary doctorate fromUppsala University in 1893.

Alfred Nobel is buried in Norra begravningsplatsen in Stockholm.

Image & text:wikipedia.com

President Barack Obama received the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo three years ago today -- just a week after announcing an escalation in the war in Afghanistan.

Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. ~ Born August 4, 1961 in Honolulu, Hawaii, U.S.A.

Today is President Obama's 52nd birthday. Despite absurd claims by the so-called "Birthers," there is more than sufficient documentation that he was born in Honolulu, Hawaii on August 4, 1961. Barack Obama was born at the Kapi'olani Medical Center for Women & Children in Honolulu, Hawaii, United States, to Stanley Ann Dunham, an American of mainly English descent from Wichita, Kansas, and Barack Obama, Sr., a Luo from Nyang’oma Kogelo, Nyanza Province, Kenya.

Obama's parents met in 1960 in a Russian language class at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa, where his father was a foreign student on scholarship. The couple married on February 2, 1961, and Barack was born later that year. His parents separated when he was two years old and they divorced in 1964. Obama's father returned to Kenya and saw his son only once more before dying in an automobile accident in 1982.

Barack Hussein Obama is the 44th and current President of the United States. The first African American to hold the office, he served as the junior United States Senator from Illinois from January 2005 until he resigned after his election to the presidency in November 2008.

Obama is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he was the first African American president of the Harvard Law Review. He was a community organizer in Chicago before earning his law degree. He worked as a civil rights attorney in Chicago and also taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004.

Obama served three terms in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004. Following an unsuccessful bid for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2000, Obama ran for United States Senate in 2004. His victory, from a crowded field, in the March 2004 Democratic primary raised his visibility. His prime-time televised keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in July 2004 made him a rising star nationally in the Democratic Party. He was elected to the U.S. Senate in November 2004 by the largest margin in Illinois history.

He began his run for the presidency in February 2007. After a close campaign in the 2008 Democratic Party presidential primaries against Hillary Rodham Clinton, he won his party's nomination, becoming the first major party African American candidate for president. In the 2008 general election, he defeated Republican nominee John McCain and was inaugurated as president on January 20, 2009.

Image & Text:wikipedia.com

Immediate Thoughts on the INAUGURATION

Photo:chicagoweekendfun.com

The size of the crowds on the Mall was impressively overwhelming! It made the speech in Berlin seem like a small town gathering. Watching the multitudes brought back memories of being on the Mall the autumn of 1969 during anti-Vietnam War demonstrations, and being trapped on the middle of the span for the 50th Anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge in 1987.

San Francisco was well represented by Senator Dianne Feinstein and Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who looked great in her blue coat (and Michelle Obama looked terrific in her yellow outfit.)

I was somewhat disappointed that my friend David Conte's piece sung by the San Francisco Girls' Chorus and San Francisco Boys' Chorus was used merely as background for talking heads on CNN the hour before the official opening. I should have looked at C-Span. I'll be sure to catch re-runs on PBS.

Senator Feinstein did a commendable job as MC. Her words were strong and well delivered (though was she really supposed to give a speech?)

Pastor Rick Warren's invocation was on the surface gracious and inclusive. Though his ending with the Lord's Prayer appeared sectarian to me.

Soon-to-be former Vice-President Dick Cheney in a wheelchair, somehow seemed an appropriate image for the departing administration.

The bow on Aretha Franklin's gray hat looked like a St. Andrew's cross, and --with it's silver spangles-- had an uncanny and unintended resemblance to the Confederate battle flag!

John Williams' arrangement of "Simple Gifts" was lovely and poignant. Though I think it will work better inside a concert hall.

The schedule was off by a few minutes, so Vice President Biden was acting President for about seven or eight minutes -- until Barack Obama was sworn in as the 44th President. (45th, if you count Grover Cleveland twice, since his two terms were non-successive. Or is it the other way? Perhaps Barack Obama is the 43rd person to be President.) [I checked: yes, he is the 43rd.]

The only really awkward moment was when Chief Justice John Roberts flubbed his prompting of the Presidential Oath of Office.

Memorable words from the Inaugural Address:

"As for the common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals."

"We know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness."

"To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist."

"We have chosen hope over fear."

###

Added observation: The Bible used for the Presidential Oath yesterday was not Lincoln's personal Bible. Instead, it was provided by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, author of the Dred Scott Decision! That provides even greater poignancy and a bit of irony. Taney was also responsible for changing the headdress of the statue on top of the Capitol dome. The sculptor had originally wanted a Liberty Cap, worn by freed slaves in ancient Rome. Taney --in charge of the Capitol building project-- said he would never allow a statue of a freed slave. Would he be shocked and surprised today! How we have progressed as a nation!!

PRESIDENT BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA

Image: individualsole.com