Which scientist founded the Nobel Prizes through his will?

Alfred Nobel founded the Nobel Prizes through his will.

Nobel was a Swedish chemist, engineer, inventor, and entrepreneur who held hundreds of patents. He is especially associated with dynamite, patented in 1867, which made the handling of nitroglycerin safer and helped build his fortune.

In his 1895 will, Nobel directed that most of his estate fund annual prizes for people who had conferred the greatest benefit on humanity. The original categories were Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature, and Peace.

The first Nobel Prizes were awarded in 1901, five years after Nobel’s death. The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel was created later, in 1968, and is not one of the original prizes established in his will.