Nobel Prize

Elie Ducommun (February 19, 1833-December 7, 1906), Swiss journalist, eloquent lecturer, business executive, steadfast advocate of peace, was born in Geneva, the son of a clock maker whose original home was in Neuchâtel. Early in his boyhood he gave evidence of his capacity to make the most of his remarkable talent and intelligence by intense…

Carl von Ossietzky (October 3, 1889-May 4, 1938) was born in Hamburg, though his father, a civil servant, had originally come from a village near the German-Polish border. Seven years after Ossietzky’s father died in 1891, his mother married Gustav Walther, a Social Democrat, who was influential in shaping Ossietzky’s later political attitudes. Ossietzky’s academic…

Linus Pauling (February 28, 1901- ), the only person who has won two undivided Nobel Prizes, was born in Portland, Oregon, the son of a pharmacist, Henry H.W. Pauling, and Lucy (Darling) Pauling. He attended Washington High School in Portland but because of a technicality did not receive his diploma until 1962, long after he…

Rigoberta Menchú was born on January 9, 1959 to a poor Indian peasant family and raised in the Quiche branch of the Maya culture. In her early years she helped with the family farm work, either in the northern highlands where her family lived, or on the Pacific coast, where both adults and children went…

Charles Albert Gobat (May 21, 1843-March 16, 1914) was born at Tramelan, Switzerland, the son of a Protestant pastor and the nephew of Samuel Gobat, a missionary who became bishop of Jerusalem. A brilliant student, he studied at the Universities of Basel, Heidelberg, Bern, and Paris, taking his doctorate in law, summa cum laude, from…

Baroness Bertha Felicie Sophie von Suttner (June 9, 1843-June 21, 1914), born Countess Kinsky in Prague, was the posthumous daughter of a field marshal and the granddaughter, on her mother’s side, of a cavalry captain. Raised by her mother under the aegis of a guardian who was a member of the Austrian court, she was…

Theodore Roosevelt (October 27, 1858–January 6, 1919) was born in New York into one of the old Dutch families which had settled in America in the seventeenth century. At eighteen he entered Harvard College and spent four years there, dividing his time between books and sport and excelling at both. After leaving Harvard he studied…

Sir Joseph Austen Chamberlain (October 16, 1863-March 17, 1937) was the eldest son of Joseph Chamberlain, the great British statesman known as the «Empire-builder» he was a half-brother of Neville Chamberlain, prime minister from 1937 to 1940. Like William Pitt the Younger, son of a famous father a hundred years earlier, he was trained for…

Henry Alfred Kissinger was the 56th Secretary of State of the United States from 1973 to 1977, continuing to hold the position of Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs which he first assumed in 1969 until 1975. After leaving government service, he founded Kissinger Associates, an international consulting firm, of which he is…

Charles Gates Dawes (August 27, 1865-April 23, 1951) pursued two careers during his lifetime, one in business and finance, the other in public service. He was at the height of his fame in both in 1926 when he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 1925. He was the vice-president of the United States; he…