Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor and industrialist, was a man of many contrasts. He was the son of a bankrupt （破產(chǎn)者） , but became a millionaire; a scientist with a love of literature, an industrialist who managed to remain an idealist. He made a fortune but lived a simple life, and although cheerful in company he was often sad in private. A lover of mankind, he never had a wife or family to love him; a patriotic son of his native land, he died alone on foreign soil. He invented a new explosive, dynamite （甘油炸藥） ,to improve the peacetime industries of mining and road building, but saw it used as a weapon of war to kill and injure his fellow men. During his useful life he often felt he was useless: "Alfred Nobel," he once wrote of himself, "ought to have been put to death by a kind doctor as soon as, with a cry, he entered life." World-famous for his works he was never personally well known, for throughout his life he avoided publicity. "I do not see," he once said, "that I have deserved any fame and I have no taste for it," but since his death his name has brought fame and glory to others.