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…

The Danish pacifist, Fredrik Bajer (April 21, 1837-January 22, 1922), was born in Vester Egede, near Naestved, Denmark. The son of a clergyman named Alfred Beyer, he adopted the altered spelling of his surname in 1865. Bajer entered the Sorø Academy in 1848 and six years later a military school. In 1856 he joined the…

Ferdinand Édouard Buisson (December 20, 1841-February 16, 1932), «the world’s most persistent pacifist», was born in Paris, the son of a Protestant judge of the St.-Étienne Tribunal. For his ardent partisanship of pacifist, Radical-Socialist, anticlerical views he was vilified by journalists, attacked by clerics and conservative scholars, forced from public office by political slander, and…

Ludwig Quidde (March 23, 1858 – March 4, 1941), the oldest son of a wealthy merchant, grew up in the republican atmosphere of the Hanseatic city of Bremen, enjoying an unusually liberal education at its humanistic gymnasium, «an education in freedom to freedom». He studied at the Universities of Strassburg and Göttingen, where his professors…

Albert Schweitzer (January 14, 1875-September 4, 1965) was born into an Alsatian family which for generations had been devoted to religion, music, and education. His father and maternal grandfather were ministers; both of his grandfathers were talented organists; many of his relatives were persons of scholarly attainments. Schweitzer entered into his intensive theological studies in…

Georges Charles Clement Ghislain Pire (February 10, 1910-January 30, 1969), born in Dinant, Belgium, the first child of Georges and Berthe (Ravet) Pire, assigned his life to action in striving to achieve understanding among peoples of the world, to eliminate poverty and hopelessness in the emerging nations, to alleviate the lot of the refugees of…