hobbies included forestry and the cultivation of fruit trees.
Jules Bordet (1870–1961)
1919 Physiology or Medicine
For his discoveries relating to immunity.
Jules Jean Baptiste Vincent Bordet, a Belgian doctor and microbiologist, achieved international respect as an authority in many areas of bacteriology and immunology, providing the medical sciences with invaluable discoveries in these fields. He was awarded the Grand Cordon de l’Ordre de la Couronne de Belgique in 1930, the Grand Cordon de l’Ordre de Léopold in 1937 and the Grand Croix de la Légion d’Honneur in 1938 besides many others honors. He was a permanent member of the Administrative Council of the University of Brussels, a professor of bacteriology, president of the first International Congress on Microbiology held in Paris in 1930, and he held important positions at the Scientific Council of the Pasteur Institute of Paris and the Royal Academy of Medicine of Belgium.
Jules Bordet was born in Soignies, Belgium, at the beginning of the summer of 1870. He studied at the University of Brussels, where he was made a doctor of medicine in 1892. Two years later he left for Paris to begin his work at the Pasteur Institute. With the experience he gained at this well-respected scientific establishment, Bordet returned to his homeland in 1901 to found a branch of the institute in the Belgian capital.
It was in these two establishments that he worked on developing the diagnosis and treatment of various contagious diseases. He contributed to the foundation of serology, the study of immunized reactions on bodily fluids, and, in partnership with Octave Gengou, he established the basis of serological tests for the propagative organisms of various diseases, including typhoid, tuberculosis and syphilis. He also discovered the bacteria related to whooping cough. Bordet, besides his work in the laboratories, dedicated time to recording and preserving his knowledge. The Traité de l’immunité dans les maladies infectieuses (Treatise on Immunity in Infectious Diseases) was one of his main works.
In 1919 he received the highest distinction for his work on immunology, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. On the day of the award ceremony, Bordet’s medal and diploma were presented to a high-ranking official of the Belgian state since the laureate was giving a speech in the United States at the time.
He was married to Marthe Levoz in 1899 and was a father of three. His son Paul decided to follow in his footsteps, also becoming a professor of bacteriology, and succeeded him as head of the Pasteur Institute in Brussels. When he died in the Belgian capital, Jules Bordet had a worthy scientific successor in his son.
Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
1919 Peace
[For his] attempts to negotiate peace, with special reference to his speech “Fourteen Points,” aimed at achieving a lasting Peace after World War I, and which would be fundamental in establishing the League of Nations.
The son of a Presbyterian minister, the young Wilson grew up in a home governed by religious values and education. He attended Princeton University then finished his law degree at the University of Virginia.
In 1886 he received his doctorate from Johns Hopkins University). He was president of Princeton between 1902 and 1910, and he became known for his passionate ideas on the reformation of the educational system.
Politics began to attract the young professor, and the Democrats persuaded him to run for governor of New Jersey in 1910. He won the election and continued to bolster his national image as an independent, personal representative of the people. He made his views clear in his speeches and publications over the coming years, affirming in 1912 that “the business of government is to organize the common interest against the special interest.”
In 1912 Wilson was elected the 28th president of the United States in an election that split the Republican vote between William Howard Taft and Theodore Roosevelt. Wilson had run on a program called the New Freedom, which emphasized individualism and the rights of states.
In 1916, touting his legislation successes and the motto “he kept us out of the war,” Wilson was narrowly reelected, but World War I would nevertheless constitute the biggest test of Wilson’s presidency. American efforts slowly turned the tide in favor of the Allies, allowing them to achieve victory in Europe in 1918.
Wilson’s role on the international scene grew after the end of the war, and in January he went before Congress and the Paris Peace Conference with his Fourteen Points, the last of which would establish “a general association of nations… affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike.” Many of President Wilson’s ideas were implemented in the Versailles Treaty and the League of Nations, which earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1919. However, when the U.S. Senate refused to give its approval to the U.S. joining the League, Wilson, against the advice of his doctors, made an exhausting national tour in an attempt to stir up support for the Versailles Treaty. He nearly died from a stroke while campaigning in Pueblo, Colorado, and had to be nursed by his second wife, Edith Bolling Galt, until his death in 1924.
Although unable to attend the Nobel ceremony because of his failing health, President Woodrow Wilson had a telegram read by the American minister in which he praised the legacy of Alfred Nobel, where the “cause of peace and the cause of truth are of one family.”
Nobel Laureates
1910-1919
1910
Nobel Prize in Physics
Johannes Diderik van der Waals
Born November 23, 1837, in Leiden, Netherlands, and died March 8, 1923, in Amsterdam. For his work on the equation of state for gases and liquids.
Nobel Prize in Chemistry
Otto Wallach
Born March 27, 1847, in Königsberg, Germany, and died February 26, 1931, in Göttingen. In recognition of his services to organic chemistry and the chemical industry by his pioneer work in the field of alicyclic compounds.
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
Albrecht Kossel
Born September 16, 1853, in Rostock, Germany, and died July 5, 1927, in Heidelberg. In recognition of the contribution to our knowledge of cell chemistry made through his work on proteins, including the nucleic substances.
Nobel Prize in Literature
Paul Johann Ludwig Heyse
Born March 5, 1830, in Berlin, Germany, and died April 2, 1914, in Munich. As a tribute to the consummate artistry, permeated with idealism, which he has demonstrated during his long productive career as a lyric poet, dramatist, novelist and writer of world-renowned short stories.
Nobel Peace Prize
Permanent International
