A brilliant inventor and a wealthy businessman, Alfred Nobel was a complex and controversial figure in his lifetime, but he left the world an enduring legacy in the form of the Nobel Prizes. Beset with poor health and unscrupulous competitors, he died a hermit with no family and few friends. Despite its importance for mining and construction, his greatest invention, dynamite, was dangerous stuff and Nobel was reviled for the accidental deaths that resulted from its manufacture and its use, as well as for his involvement with military applications, but he had a long-term interest in the promotion of peace and, in fact, the peace prize was the first one he conceived. At ease in five foreign languages, he had a love of poetry and literature and wrote in several languages, including English. But he distrusted lawyers, and when he died his will was so difficult to probate that it took over three years for his young confidant, Ragnar Sohlman, to establish the Nobel Foundation and the Nobel Prizes. They remain the most famous prizes awarded in the intellectual world.