Christian Lous Lange

Christian Lous Lange was born in Stavanger, Norway; his grandfather Christian Christoph Andreas Lange was the national archivist of Norway. Graduating from the University of Christiania (Oslo) with a degree in history, English, and French in 1893, Lange served as secretary of the arrangements committee for the Inter-Parliamentary Union conference held in Christiania in 1899, catching the attention of the Norwegian Storting.

When the Norwegian Nobel Committee was established in 1900 to administer the Nobel Peace Prize, Lange was appointed its first secretary, helping create the Norwegian Nobel Institute and library in 1904. In 1909, Lange was chosen to succeed Charles Albert Gobat as Secretary-General of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, a post he held with distinction until 1933.

During World War I, with European borders closed and belligerent parliaments at war, Lange relocated IPU headquarters to neutral Geneva, keeping the fragile machinery of international parliamentary dialogue alive through personal correspondence and neutrality. In 1919, he published the first volume of his landmark masterwork, Histoire de l'internationalisme, charting the history of internationalist thought from antiquity to modern times. Jointly awarded the 1921 Nobel Peace Prize with Hjalmar Branting, Lange served as a distinguished Norwegian delegate to the League of Nations Assembly throughout the 1920s and 1930s.