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LEFT NOBEL PRIZES 478 NOBILITY tinous nitroglycerin; in 1889 ballistite, which led the way to the invention of smokeless powder. The Nobel firm in 1886-1896 employed constantly 12,000 persons in the manufacture of dynamite alone, and in 25 years the firm never had a strike. Alfred invented also arti- ficial gutta-percha; manufactured can- non, and, with his brother, Louis, devel- oped the petroleum deposits at Baku, in the Caucasus. He subscribed half the sum for fitting out the ill-fated Andree balloon expedition. He lived for a long time in Paris, but had a villa and labor- atory at San Remo, Italy, where he died Dec. 10, 1896. NOBEL PRIZES, FOUNDATION, AND INSTITUTES. Alfred Bemhard Nobel, the Swedish inventor, provided before his death that five prizes be every year distributed to individuals, who during each respective year had made the great- est contribution to progress and learn- ing in the fields of physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, and international peace. The fund donated by him to these purposes was $9,200,000, of which the interest, usually about $200,000, is awarded by the trustees. The decision in the case of chemistry and physics was intrusted to the Swedish Academy of Sciences, in physiology and medicine to the Caroline or Medical In- stitute in Stockholm, and in peace to a committee of five, elected by the Storth- ing of Norway. The Nobel Foundation is formed of a president appointed by the government, and four other members chosen for a two-year term by fifteen deputies named by the bodies intrusted by the donor with the awards. The Foundation has care of the funds, to which one-tenth of the interest is annu- ally added, while a fourth is deducted in the main for the use of the Nobel Institutes. These Institutes include that of the Swedish Academy, with a literary library of 38,000 volumes; the Nobel In- stitute for Physics and Chemistry of the Stockholm Academy of Sciences with a scientific librarjr: and the Norwegian Nobel Institute, witn a law library. Awards have been made since 1901 and among the noted recipients have been W. K. Rontgen, G. Lippman, and G, Marconi in physics; Sir W. Ramsay, H. Moissan, and Marie Curie in chemistry; R. Koch and A. Carrel in medicine; B. Biornson, F. Mistral, G. Carducd, R. Kipling, M. Maeterlinck, and Rabindranath Tagore in literature; and Baron d'Estoumelles de Constant, T. Roosevelt, and E. Root in international peace. The peace prize for 1919 was awarded to Leon Bourgeois, and for 1920 to Woodrow Wilson. NOBILITY, that distinction of rank in civil society which raises a man above the condition of the mass of the people. The ancient Romans were divided into nobiles and ignobiles, a distinction at first corresponding to that of patricians and plebeians, A new nobility afterward sprang out of the plebeian order, and obtained (336 B. C.) the right to rise to hiffh ofiices in the state; and in course of time the descendants of those who had filled curule magn^stracies inherited the jus imaginuni, or right of having images of their ancestors — a privilege which, like the coat-of-arms in later ages, was considered the criterion of nobility. The man entitled to have his own image was a novus homo, while the ignobilis could neither have his ancestor's image nor his own. The origin of the feudal aristocracy of Europe is in part connected with the accidents which influenced the division of conquered lands among the leaders and warriors of the nations that over- threw the Roman empire, and is out- lined in the article Feudal, System ; and the evolution of the dignities of baron, count, earl, marquis, duke, and other ranks will be found under those several heads. In the subinfeudations of the greater nobility, originated a secondary sort of nobility under the name of vava- sors, castellans, and lesser barons; and a third order below them comprised vas- sals, whose tenure, by the military obli- gations known in England as knight's sen/ice, admitted them within the ranks of the aristocracy. In France the allegi- ance of the lesser nobles to their inter- mediary lord long continued a reality; in England, on the other hand, William the Conqueror obliged not only his barons who held in chief of the crown, but their vassals also, to take an oath of fealty to himself; and his successors altogether abolished subinfeudation. The military tenant, who held but a por- tion of a knight's fee, participated in all the privileges of nobility, and an im- passable barrier existed between his order and the common people. Over con- tinental Europe in general the nobles, greater and lesser, were in use, after the 10th century, to assume a territorial name from their castles or the principal town or village on their demesne; hence the prefix "de," or its German equivalent "von," still considered over a great part of the Continent as the criterion of nobil- ity or gentility. After the introduction of Heraldry (q. v.), and its reduction to a system, the possession of a coat-of-arms was a recognized distinction between the noble and the plebeian. On the Continent who-