Who founded the Nobel Prize through a bequest in his will?

Alfred Nobel founded the Nobel Prize through a bequest in his will.

Nobel was a Swedish chemist, engineer, inventor, and industrialist who held hundreds of patents. He is especially associated with dynamite, which he developed as a safer and more practical explosive by stabilizing nitroglycerin.

In his 1895 will, Nobel directed that most of his fortune be invested and that the income fund annual prizes for people whose work benefited humanity. The first Nobel Prizes were awarded in 1901, five years after his death. The prizes originally covered physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, and peace.

The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel was created later, in 1968, and first awarded in 1969. It is administered with the Nobel Prizes but was not one of the categories named in Nobel’s original will.