One of the
reasons that there is
no nobel prize in Mathematics might be the fact that the leading
Swedish mathematician at the time,
Gösta Mittag-Lefler, was a
personal enemy of
Nobel's.
Mittag-Lefler, a brilliant mathematician and the founder of the
Mittag-Lefler Institute, was also a
controversial and sometimes
feared person. He would often
participate in
inflamed public debates, and he was a
conservative in
political matters. If a
Nobel Prize in
Mathematics had been
created,
Gösta Mittag-Lefler would have had a very good chance of
receiving one of the first ones.
Nobel would not have wanted this to
happen.
It seems that the
Nobel Archive at
almaz.com/nobel has a long
page on this subject, on
http://almaz.com/nobel/why_no_math.html. They also
focus heavily on Gösta Mittag-Lefler, but they have some
evidence that
Nobel was not so
averse to him. They also mention
ariels patently
false story, noting in passing that
Nobel had no
wife.