English Original
Alfred Nobel, the great Swedish inventor and industrialist, was a man of many contrasts. He was the son of a bankrupt, but became a millionaire; a scientist with a love of literature, an industrialist who managed to remain an idealist. He made a fortune but lived a simple life, and although cheerful in company he was 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 invented 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. During his useful life he often felt he was useless: "Alfred Nobel," he once wrote of himself, "ought to have been put to death by a kind doctor as soon as, with a cry, he entered life."
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, Immanuel, made a strong position for himself in the engineering industry. Immanuel Nobel invented the landmine and made a lot of money from government orders for it during the Crimean War, but went bankrupt soon after.
Most of the family returned to Sweden in 1859, where Alfred rejoined them in 1863, beginning his own study of explosives in his father's laboratory. He had never been to school or university but had studied privately and by the time he was twenty was a skilful 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 had taken a serious interest in literature and philosophy. Perhaps because he could not find ordinary human love -- he never married -- he came to care deeply about the whole of mankind. He was always generous to the poor: "I'd rather take care of the stomachs of the living than the glory of the dead in the form of stone memorials," he once said.
His greatest wish, however, was to see an end to wars, and thus 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, Physiology, Medicine, Literature and Peace, is a memorial to his interests and ideals. And so, the man who felt he should have died at birth is remembered and respected long after his death.
中文翻译
阿尔弗雷德·诺贝尔，这位伟大的瑞典发明家和实业家，是一个充满矛盾的人。他是一个破产者的儿子，却成了百万富翁；一位热爱文学的科学家，一位设法保持理想主义情怀的实业家。他积累了财富，却过着简朴的生活；在人群中他开朗愉快，私下里却常常郁郁寡欢。他热爱人类，却从未拥有爱他的妻子或家庭；他是祖国忠诚的爱国之子，却孤独地客死异乡。
他发明了一种新型炸药——达纳炸药，本意是改进采矿和筑路等和平时期的工业，却目睹它被用作战争武器，杀戮和伤害他的同胞。在他卓有成就的一生中，他却常感自己无用。他曾这样写道：“阿尔弗雷德·诺贝尔，本应在呱呱坠地之时，就被一位仁慈的医生结束生命。”
他的成就举世闻名，但他本人却鲜为人知，因为他一生都避免公开露面。他曾说：“我不认为自己配得上任何名声，也对此毫无兴趣。”然而，自他去世后，他的名字却为他人带来了声望与荣耀。
他于1833年10月21日出生于斯德哥尔摩，1842年随父母移居俄国。在那里，他的父亲伊曼纽尔在工程行业站稳了脚跟。伊曼纽尔·诺贝尔发明了地雷，并在克里米亚战争期间通过政府订单赚了大钱，但不久后就破产了。
1859年，大部分家人返回瑞典，阿尔弗雷德于1863年与他们会合，并在父亲的实验室里开始了自己的炸药研究。他从未上过学或大学，而是通过自学，到二十岁时已成为一名技艺娴熟的化学家和出色的语言学家，能说瑞典语、俄语、德语、法语和英语。
和父亲一样，阿尔弗雷德·诺贝尔富有想象力和创造力，但他在商业上运气更好，也展现出更强的财务头脑。他敏锐地看到了自己科学发明的工业前景，在20个不同的国家建立了80多家公司。的确，他的伟大之处在于他卓越的能力，能将原创科学家的品质与远见卓识的实业家的特质结合起来。但诺贝尔主要关心的从来不是赚钱，甚至不是做出科学发现。
他很少感到快乐，总是探寻生命的意义，并从青年时代起就对文学和哲学产生了浓厚的兴趣。或许是因为他未能找到寻常的人间之爱——他终身未娶——他开始深切地关怀全人类。他对穷人总是慷慨大方，他曾说：“我宁愿关心生者的温饱，也不愿以石碑的形式纪念死者的荣耀。”
然而，他最大的愿望是看到战争的终结，以及随之而来的国家间的和平。为此，他投入了大量的时间和金钱，直到1896年在意大利去世。他著名的遗嘱，即留下财产为物理学、化学、生理学或医学、文学及和平领域的杰出工作提供奖项，正是他兴趣与理想的纪念碑。于是，这位认为自己本应在出生时就死去的伟人，在去世后长久地被人铭记和尊敬。