Nobel Peace Prize Recipient. Ferdinand Édouard Buisson received recognition after being awarded the 1927 Nobel Peace Prize, sharing the award jointly with German pacifist Ludwig Quidde. The two men received the coveted award for, according to the Nobel Prize committee, "their contribution to the emergence in France and Germany of a public opinion which favors peaceful international cooperation." Within two years, he received nine nominations for a Nobel Prize. Born the son of a Huguenot judge, he left school at the age of sixteen upon his father's death to support his widowed mother and younger brother Benjamin. Before his father's death, he had attended Collège d'Argentan and the Lycée Saint Étienne. Leaving for Paris, he would have to work part-time tutoring protestant students to pay for any further schooling. While living under Emperor Napoleon III, he attended the Lycée Condorcet and his undergraduate degree at the University of Paris, obtaining an advanced degree and certification to teach philosophy. Years later, he would earn his doctorate in literature at the age of fifty-one. All his life he was committed to the advancement of democracy and human rights. In 1866, unwilling to swear allegiance to the Emperor Napoleon, he fled to Switzerland for freedom to teach, think, and after attending the 1867 Geneva Peace Congress, to write. Two of his published articles during this period were "Abolishing War through Education" and "Liberal Christianity." He taught at the University of Neuchâtel, a French-speaking university in Switzerland. After the Franco-German War ended in 1871, he returned to France where he became a professor at the Sorbonne University in Paris. He took a stand against anti-Semitism in the French society. In 1902 he was elected to the Chamber of Deputies as a Radical Socialist, or a leftish liberal, and became a spokesman for women's suffrage. He was one of the first persons to use the word "secularism." He began his career as an educational administrator, but because of his speeches and published pamphlets pleading for a system of secular education there was general outcry from the public, hence he felt called upon to resign. With all public schools in France being governed by the Roman Catholic church, it was an up-hill battle for a change in the system, yet he stood firmly for the Separation of Church and State. Later, he became secretary of the Statistical Commission on Primary Education, attended the Vienna and the Philadelphia Expositions as a delegate of the French Ministry of Public Instruction, and prepared extensive reports on education in Austria and the United States. He became involved with the first secular or non-Catholic orphanage in France. In support of women's suffrage, on July 16, 1909 he submitted a report, which would become a bill for a vote. As a progressive educator, he played a vital role in the modernization of France's primary education system. He was the president of the National Association of Freethinkers, presided over the League of Education from 1902 to 1906, and the Human Rights League from 1914 to 1926. In 1903 he and Charles Wagner published their classic book, "Protestantism Liberal," which is still being read in the 21st century. During World War I, he regarded Germany as the aggressor, but he strongly opposed the harsh measures inflicted on Germany after the war, fearing that frustrated Germans would start another war in retaliation. In 1867 he married Pauline Derbeaucourt and had two sons and a daughter. His wife died in 1904. Remaining a widower for 28 years, he died at home peacefully of heart disease at the age of 91. He gave his monetary Nobel Prize to his "adopted sons", the primary schoolteachers of France, who would teach the basic understanding between the peoples through educating children. A school near his hometown was named in honor of him. At the Nobel Prize presentation on December 10, 1927, the Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Fredrik Stang's speech included, "Buisson and his friends have not confined themselves merely to talking about the disarmament of hatred; they have sought to make it a living fact."