Nobel Prize

Ralph Johnson Bunche (August 7, 1904-1971) was born in Detroit, Michigan. His father, Fred Bunche, was a barber in a shop having a clientele of whites only; his mother, Olive (Johnson) Bunche, was an amateur musician; his grandmother, «Nana» Johnson, who lived with the family, had been born into slavery. When Bunche was ten years…

President Kim Dae-jung was born on 8 January 1924* in a small village on an island of South Korea’s southwestern coast. He graduated from a commercial high school in 1943. When the Syngman Rhee Administration (1948-1960) began to become increasingly dictatorial, he decided to enter politics. His political career proved to be rather turbulent from…

Martti Ahtisaari was born on June 23, 1937 in the city of Viipuri, then still part of Finland. Finland lost Viipuri when the Soviet Union attacked the country. Along with 400,000 fellow Karelians, Ahtisaari became an eternally displaced person in the rest of Finland. With his mother, he moved from one household to another before…

Auguste Marie François Beernaert (July 26, 1829-October 6, 1912) was born in Ostend, Belgium, in a middle-class Catholic family of Flemish origin. His father was a government functionary whose changing appointments took the family from Ostend to Dinant and then to Namur, where Auguste and his sister spent their childhood. Their early education was undertaken…

Barack H. Obama is the 44th President of the United States. His story is the American story – values from the heartland, a middle-class upbringing in a strong family, hard work and education as the means of getting ahead, and the conviction that a life so blessed should be lived in service to others. With…

Paul Henri Benjamin Balluet, Baron d’Estournelles de Constant de Rebecque (November 22, 1852 – May 15, 1924), the son of an aristocratic family tracing its ancestry back to the Crusaders, was born at La Flèche in the Sarthe district of the Loire valley. A diplomat and politician, d’Estournelles, immensely energetic, found time to engage in…

The life of Frank Billings Kellogg (December 22, 1856-December 21, 1937), a farm boy who rose to international preeminence as the co-author of a treaty to outlaw war, is a uniquely American story. Frank Kellogg was born in Potsdam, N.Y., but the Kellogg family, becoming part of the westward movement which gripped the country at…

George Catlett Marshall (December 31, 1880-October 16, 1959), America’s foremost soldier during World War II, served as chief of staff from 1939 to 1945, building and directing the largest army in history. A diplomat, he acted as secretary of state from 1947 to 1949, formulating the «Marshall Plan», an unprecedented program of economic and military…

Alfonso García Robles was born in Zamora in Mexico in 1911. After studying law he entered his country’s foreign service in 1939. From 1962 to 1964 he held the post of Ambassador to Brazil, and from 1964 to 1970 was State Secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. From 1971 to 1975 he was Mexico’s…

Nathan Söderblom (January 15, 1866-July 12, 1931), near the beginning and near the end of his illustrious career, found his name linked with that of another Swedish citizen of the world, . He was called to San Remo in 1897 to conduct the memorial service for Nobel and in 1930 to Oslo to receive the…