Read and translate the text. Alfred Bemhard Nobel (1833 — 1896), Swedish inventor and philanthropist, was a man of many contrasts

Alfred Nobel

(A Man of Contrast)

Alfred Bemhard Nobel (1833 — 1896), Swedish inventor and philanthropist, was a man of many contrasts. He was a son of a bankrupt, but became a millionaire; and a scientist with a love of literature. He made a large fortune but lived a simple life. He was cheerful in company, but often sad in private. A lover of mankind, he never had a wife or family to love him; a patriotic son of his native land, he died alone on foreign soil. He discovered a new explosive, dynamite, to improve the peacetime industries of mining and road building, but saw it used as a weapon of war to kill and injure his fellow men. World-famous for his works, he was never personally well- known, for throughout his life-he avoided publicity. " I do not see", he once said, "that I have deserved any fame and I have no taste for it", but since his death his name has brought fame and glory to others.

He was born in Stockholm on October 21, 1833 but moved to Russia with his parents in 1842, where his father acquired a strong position in the engineering industry. He made a lot of money from his invention of the landmine (фугас), but later went bankrupt. Alfred went to Sweden in 1863, and started his own study of explosives in his father's laboratory. He had never been to school or University but he studied privately and by the time he was twenty he became a skillful chemist and excellent linguist, speaking Swedish, Russian, German, French and English. Like his father, Alfred Nobel was imaginative and inventive, but he had better luck in business and showed more financial sense.

He was quick to see industrial openings for his scientific inventions and built up over 80 companies in 20 different countries. Indeed his greatness lay in his outstanding ability to combine the qualities of an original scientist with those of a forward-looking industrialist.

But Nobel's main concern was never with making money or even with making scientific discoveries. Seldom happy, he was always searching for a meaning to life, and from his youth he took a serious interest in literature and philosophy. Perhaps because he could not find ordinary human love, he never married but came to care deeply about the whole of mankind. He was always generous to the poor. His greatest wish, however, was to see an end to wars and peace between nations, and he spent much time and money working for this cause until his death in Italy in 1896. His famous will, in which he left money to provide prizes for outstanding work in physics, chemistry, psychology, medicine, literature and peace, is a memorial to his interests and ideals.

11. After listening tests:

Isaac Newton, a great English scientist.