Nobel Peace Prize Recipient. Fridtjof Nansen received world-wide recognition after being awarded the 1922 Nobel Peace Prize. Already famous world-wide as the Norwegian, who had explored areas of the frozen arctic, Nansen became the first High Commissioner for Refugees appointed by the League of Nations. After World War I, he accepted the position of director of the exchanges of 400,000 prisoners of war between Russia, Germany, and the former Austria-Hungary Empire. In addition, he engaged in humanitarian relief work in 1921, during the severe famine in the Soviet Union. His work on behalf of prisoners of war and starving people earned him the Nobel Peace Prize. Being one of the few candidates who received the Nobel Peace Prize in the first year of nomination, he received 3 nominations within 18 months and was justified to receive the coveted award. Born the son of a lawyer, he was a proud Norwegian patriot, whose ancestry contains brave warriors for centuries. Although his family was wealthy, they enjoyed a simple, plain lifestyle. He excelled in sports such as skating, tumbling, swimming, and skiing, which would play a prominent role in his life. He won the national cross-country skiing championship twelve times in succession, and at age eighteen, broke the world record for one-mile skating. He had the physical endurance to ski fifty miles in a day and the psychological and emotional self-reliance to have only his dog for company on long, isolated trips. In 1881, he entered the University of Oslo, studying zoology. The next year he accepted a position at the University Museum of Bergen, where he did research on the central nervous system of lower marine creatures, wrote the classic scientific paper "The Structure and Combination of Histological Elements of the Central Nervous System," which earned him a doctorate degree in physiology in 1887. He led several expeditions to the Arctic starting in 1893, 1895 to 1896, which followed by oceanographic expedition in the North Atlantic from 1900 and again in 1910 to 1914. The Norwegian Parliament, along with private sources, funded the cost of his team's explorations. One trip in 1888 involved traveling across Greenland from the unpopulated eastern shore to the west over mountains reaching the peak of 8,920 feet. No European had penetrated this far into Greenland's inland snowfields. At this point in his life, he married Eva Helene Sars, a promising opera singer. Although the trip was considered suicidal, he sailed on a three-year voyage to the frozen polar ice cap of the North Pole, traveling further than anyone ever had done before. On March 14, 1895 Nansen and a colleague left the ship with dogs, kayaks and sledges, making a desperate bid for the North Pole, yet the cold freezing winds kept them 300 miles south of their goal and not reaching the north pole. At this point, he and his colleagues spent the winter surviving on walrus blubber and polar bear steaks. A map of the Fram Voyage and Nansen's Journey is on display at the Fram Museum in Frammuseet, Norway. He published a host of detailed books about his journeys, which include his drawings and are still very popular in the 21st century. In 1905 as Norway desired to break from Swedish rule and become a free and separate country, stress between the two countries was tense to the point of war, but he acted as a diplomat in arbitration, settling as smooth separation. He was offered the position of Norwegian king or president but refused, yet became Norway's Ambassador to Great Britain serving 1906 to 1908. He helped to design Polhøgda, his home, which was a 3-story English manor house in Italian renaissance style and was finished by 1910. While he was away in England, his wife Eva died of pneumonia in December of 1907, leaving him with five young children. With his long periods away from home traveling, his children had surrogate parents. A long-time friend Sigrun Munthe became Nansens' second wife in 1919. In the spring of 1920, he was invited by the League of Nations to undertake his first humanitarian effort of repatriating the prisoners of war, many of them held in Russia. In June of 1921, while helping several organizations, he created a legal document called the "Nansen Passport," which was recognized by 52 countries to help displaced refugees to return to their homeland or settle elsewhere, instead of being in refugee camps without papers. In 1921 he was invited by the Red Cross to direct relief for millions of Russians dying in the famine of 1921 to 1922. In 1922 he was invited by the Greek government, with the approval of the League of Nations, to help with Greek refugees from Asia Minor after the Greek army had been defeated by the Turks. He arranged the exchange of 1,250,000 Greeks living on Turkish soil for 500,000 Turks living in Greece. Using his Nobel Prize monetary funds, he appropriated funds to give many refugees provisions to start a new life. In 1925 he was invited by the League of Nations to do his fifth humanitarian effort by relocating 10,000 Armenians, which he did. His health had declined after a bout with influenza and later phlebitis, yet he continued to work. He campaigned for Norwegian disarmament but suddenly died of heart failure before this occurred. After a six-year-long bureaucratic halt, his ashes were buried on October 10, 1936 in the gardens surrounding his home, Polhøgda, instead of a cemetery with the King of Norway attending the small service.