Alfred Nobel (1833-1896), the inventor of dynamite, was a chemist, engineer, businessman and, most memorably, philanthropist; he was also a scholar, fluent in Russian, French, English and German. Above all, he loved poetry.
“The arrival of that first train is an event to be remembered; it had been expected in the afternoon of the preceding day, and hundreds of people had gathered in the street to witness it.”
-- Historian Charles J. Taylor
