Nobel Prize

Although his active participation in efforts to solve the problems of international law brought him honor and respect from around the world, Louis Renault (May 21, 1843-February 8, 1918) was, in his own words, «a professor at heart». Born at Autun in the Saône-et-Loire district of France, he received his love of learning as a…

Menachem Begin was born in Brest-Litovsk, Poland on 16 August 1913, son of Zeev-Dov and Hassia Begin. He was educated at the Mizrachi Hebrew School and the Polish Gymnasium (High School). In 1931, he entered Warsaw University and took his law degree in 1935. Until the age of 13 he belonged to the Hashomer Hatza’ir…

José Ramos-Horta, born December 26, 1949 in Dili, East Timor. Single with one son. Catholic. Living in Lisbon and Sydney. Current positions Special Representative of the National Council of Maubere Resistance of East Timor. CNRM is a non-partisan supreme national body based inside East Timor comprising all East Timorese nationalist political forces and resistance groups.…

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…