The Nobel Foundation is a private institution founded on 29 June 1900 to manage the finances and administration of the Nobel Prizes. The foundation is based on the last will of Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite.

It also holds Nobel Symposia on important breakthroughs in science and topics of cultural or social significance.

History

Alfred Nobel (; born 21 October 1833, in Stockholm, Sweden) was a chemist, engineer, innovator, armaments manufacturer and the inventor of dynamite. He owned Bofors, a major armaments manufacturer, which he had redirected from its original business as an iron and steel mill. Nobel held 355 different patents, dynamite being the most famous. Nobel amassed a sizeable personal fortune during his lifetime, thanks mostly to this invention. In 1896 Nobel died of a stroke in his villa in San Remo, Italy, where he had lived his final years.

Nobel's will expressed a request, to the surprise of many, Though Nobel wrote several wills during his lifetime, the last was written a little over a year before he died, and signed at the Swedish-Norwegian Club in Paris on 27 November 1895. Nobel bequeathed 94% of his total assets, 31 million Swedish kronor, to establish and endow the five Nobel Prizes.

The executors of his will were Ragnar Sohlman and Rudolf Lilljequist who formed the Nobel Foundation to take care of Nobel's fortune and organize the prizes. Although Nobel's will established the prizes, his plan was incomplete and, because of various other hurdles, it took five years before the Nobel Foundation could be established and the first prizes could be awarded on 10 December 1901 to, among others, Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen.

At the end of 2024, the Foundation's investment capital amounted to 6.6 billion Swedish kroner, or about $US 700 million.

The Nobel Foundation

thumb|Portrait of Alfred Nobel by Gösta Florman

The Nobel Foundation was founded as a private organisation on 29 June 1900 specifically to manage the finances and administration of the Nobel Prizes. It is based on Nobel's last will and testament. Soon thereafter they appointed the members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee that was to award the Peace Prize. Shortly after, the other prize-awarding organizations followed; Karolinska Institutet on 7 June, the Swedish Academy on 9 June and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on 11 June. In 1900 the Nobel Foundation's newly created statutes were promulgated by King Oscar II. The Nobel Foundation invests money to maintain a funding base for the prizes and the administrative activities. The Nobel Foundation is exempt from all taxes in Sweden (since 1946) and from investment taxes in the United States (since 1953). At the beginning of the 1980s the award money was 1 million SEK but in 2008 the award money had increased to 10 million SEK.

According to the statutes of the Nobel Foundation, the Board of Directors will have its registered office in Stockholm. The Board consists of seven members and two deputies, Swedish or Norwegian citizens elected by the trustees of the prize-awarding institutions, and it chooses a Chairman, Vice-Chairman, and Executive Director from among its members. The symposia has covered topics such as prostaglandins, chemical kinetics, diabetes mellitus, string theory, cosmology, and the Cold War in the 1980s. The Nobel Symposium Committee consists of members from the Nobel Committees in Chemistry, Literature, Peace, Physics, and Physiology or Medicine; the Prize Committee for Economics; the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation; and the Wallenberg Foundation.

The plan was announced at nanoTX 07. The Nobel Foundation quickly reacted by threatening legal action for "clear misuse of the reputation and goodwill of the Nobel Prize and the associations of integrity and eminence that has been created over time and through the efforts of the Nobel Committees". The director, Michael Sohlman, of the Nobel Foundation and the elected head of the Nobel family disapproved to the institution of the so-called 'Dr. Michael Nobel Award' as well as the Nobel Charitable Trust (NCT) and Nobel Family Benevolent society.

See also

  • Lars Ernster (1920–1998) – A professor of biochemistry and a former member of the Board of the Nobel Foundation
  • Ragnar Sohlman
  • List of wealthiest charitable foundations
  • Nobel Conference
  • Wolf Foundation

Notes

References

  • "2007 Nobel Conference" – Official site of the "2007 Nobel Conference" at Gustavus Adolphus College, Saint Peter, Minnesota. Retrieved 28 October,
  • "The Nobel Foundation" – Official site of the Nobel Foundation.
  • "Nobel Symposia" – Official webpage of the Nobel Foundation.
  • "The Will of Alfred Nobel" – Official webpage of the Nobel Foundation; quotes a pertinent excerpt.