The ceremony came on the fifth anniversary of the death of
Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite and other high explosives. In his will, Nobel directed that the bulk of his vast
fortune be placed in a fund in which the interest would be
“annually distributed in the form of prizes to those who, during
the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind.”

Although Nobel offered no public reason for his creation of the
prizes, it is widely believed that he did so out of moral regret
over the increasingly lethal uses of his inventions in war.