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Born in Stockholm in 1833 of Swedish parents, moved with his family to St. Petersburg, then the capital of Russia, at the age of nine. There his energetic and inventive father soon acquired a strong and respected position as an inventor and industrialist. Nobel s ....

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.... mother he always wrote in Swedish, which is also the language of the will he composed in Paris. The fields embraced by the prizes stipulated by the will reflect Nobel's personal interests. While he provided no prizes for architects, artists, composers or social scientists, he was generous to those working in physics, chemistry, physiology and medicine—the subjects he knew best himself, and in which he expected the greatest advances. Throughout his life he suffered from poor health and often took cures at watering places, “less to drink the water than to rest.” But he expected great improvements in medicine, and the profession has since realized ....