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Some of the greatest minds in history went to their graves lamenting their most influential work. Like these eight groundbreakers ...

- Jacopo della Quercia

The Inventor of Dynamite

Alfred Nobel, a Swedish chemist and inventor, made his fortune as a young man developing nitroglycerin-based explosives for use in mining and engineering. He patented the blasting cap, or detonator, which allowed explosives to be triggered from safe distances. And then in 1867, he developed something that made nitroglycerin easier to use, store and carry anywhere from caves to bank vaults.

Nobel's miraculous invention was dynamite, and it became a huge hit among miners, robbers and countless cartoon characters. Unfortunately, something happened that Nobel didn't expect: His little boom stick made an even bigger splash among the world's growing armies. Dynamite made its first wartime appearance during the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. And by the time the Spanish-American War came along in 1898, soldiers were shooting horrific weapons called dynamite guns at each other.

Nobel was so hurt by his reputation as a “merchant of death” that he set aside the bulk of his fortune to finance annual prizes for “those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind.” These awards are the Nobel Prizes, the highest and most sought-after academic honors in the world, and they probably would not exist had Alfred Nobel not dedicated so much of his life to explosions.

That said, we imagine that Alfred Nobel might have regretted how some of his honorees used their brilliance to build ever-bigger explosives, such as the 31 Nobel Prize winners who worked on the Manhattan Project, which created an even larger boom stick—the first atomic bomb.

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