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Alfred Nobel. A Biography. KENNE FANT. Arcade, New York, 1993. x, 342 pp. + plates. $24.95. Translated from the Swedish edition (Stockholm, 1991) by Marianne Ruuth.
Nitro compounds contain a grouping of atoms made up of two oxygens and one nitrogen. The credit for their commercial importance belongs not to the chemists who established their properties but to those who overcame the problems of practical application. This happened in the 1860s when nitro compounds became the basis of the new technologies of synthetic dyestuffs and explosives. The latter, in the form of the unstable liquid nitroglycerine, accelerated railroad construction, increased the output of mines and quarries, and gave a new and terrifying dimension to warfare. The harnessing of nitroglycerine as dynamite was the triumph of the Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel. By careful control of his patents, mainly through licensing arrangements with companies (later dominated by the Nobel Dynamite Trust Company and a second multinational corporation) that were set up to exploit his inventions, as well as through other industrial activities, Nobel left a fortune that serves...