Nobel was the loner, prone to fits of depression, who invented dynamite. He had three significant loves in his life but failed to let family or friends know he was leaving most of his wealth to inaugurate the prize. Nobel’s family firm also supplied arms in the Crimean war, where conditions were grim for injured soldiers, but were improved by a pioneering nurse, Florence Nightingale …

Brunel came second in a 2002 BBC poll to determine the “100 Greatest Britons” – second world war leader Winston Churchill won. Designer of the Great Western Railway and dockyards, Brunel also devised the first commercially viable propeller-driven steamship capable of a transatlantic crossing to New York in 1843, half a century before the doomed Titanic. The story of the sinking of the latter ship in 1912 was turned into a hugely successful movie, which launched to superstardom the actress Kate Winslet …