He was born in Stockholm in 1833 into a family of engineers. His family was descended from none other than Olof Rudbeck, the best-known technical genius of Sweden's 17th century era as a Great Power in Northern Europe. Having gone through a recent bankruptcy, when Alfred was five years old his father Immanuel Nobel moved to St. Petersburg, where he started a mechanical workshop for the manufacture of land mines. In 1842, when Alfred was nine years old, the rest of the family also moved to St. Petersburg. By then his father's fortunes had improved, enabling the family to live in high bourgeois style. At the time, St. Petersburg was a world metropolis, alive with scientific, social, and cultural life.
Immanuel Nobel's sons did not attend school, but were instead educated at home by outstanding teachers at the level of university professor. The instruction they provided focused on both the humanities and the natural sciences. Aside from Swedish, Alfred and his brothers were taught Russian, French, English and German, as well as literature and philosophy. In the natural sciences, they were guided by two professors of chemistry who taught them mathematics, physics and chemistry. Considering the specialty of his teachers, it was perhaps no coincidence that Alfred took a liking to chemistry. He learned to conduct chemical experiments, an activity that seemed to fascinate him from the very beginning. Alfred spent his most important formative years in the Russian capital. With his five languages, which he seemed to have mastered well, he laid the foundation for the cosmopolitan nature that would later become so prominent in his life.