Profession: industrialist

Keir was a significant member of the group who kick-started the Industrial Revolution, and established the world’s first soap factory. He and Darwin, a close lifelong friend (he suggested helpful improvements to Darwin’s poetry), met as students in Edinburgh; through Darwin he met Wedgwood and other Lunar Society members. Among those who became good friends, he worked closely with Priestley, managed Boulton and Watt’s business (unpaid) while they were away, loved Small affectionately, and wrote a biography of Day. Black and Berthollet were among his correspondents. Davy described him as both amiable and great.

It is an over-simplification to think of Nobel only in terms of explosives, much as they overshadow his patents for such things as artificial silk and leather. Zinin was engaged by Nobel’s father Immanuel as a private tutor when the family lived in Russia. Nobel later worked in Pelouze’s laboratory for a year. Zinin reminded him of the disconcerting discovery of another of Pelouze’s students, Ascanio Sobrero: nitroglycerine. Nobel managed to stabilise it, and commercially exploited it as well as other discoveries of his own, e.g. gelignite. Hugo, perhaps an unlikely friend, called Nobel the richest vagabond in the world.