Nobel Peace Prize Recipient. Nathan Soderblom received international acclaim after being awarded the 1930 Nobel Peace Prize. He received the coveted award, according to the Nobel Committee, "for promoting Christian unity and helping create that new attitude of mind which is necessary if peace between nations is to become reality." He was the first clergy to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. He received 19 nominations for the Nobel Prize within four years. Born Lars Olof Jonathan Soderblom, the oldest son of seven children of a very conservative clergy, he followed in his father's footsteps. Called "Nathan," he started his studies at Uppsala University in 1883, earning a bachelor's degree in 1886, with honors in Greek and competency in Hebrew, Arabic, and Latin plus becoming an excellent orator. He was a disciplined student, with an outgoing personality. From 1892 to 1893, he was first vice president and the president of the Uppsala Student Union. After traveling to the United States in the summer of 1890, he was one of 370 students at Dwight L. Moody's Northfield Summer School in New England. After being e ordained in 1893, his first assignment was a chaplain post at a mental hospital. He married a fellow student, Anna Forsell, and the couple had thirteen children with five being born in France. His wife was a talented, educated woman, who became his personal editor for his many publications. Although he might have worked fruitfully his whole life as a professor of religion, the Church of Sweden called him to serve as a pastor. His next assignment was the Swedish Church in Paris from 1894 to 1901. There he faced city crime, poverty, Anti-Semitism, and the stirring of a political idea called Communism. He became the first foreigner ever to earn a Doctor of Theology degree at the Protestant Faculty of the Sorbonne, France. Along with presiding over many noted artists, businessman, diplomats, and scholars' funerals, he was called to San Remo in 1897 to conduct the memorial service for Alfred Nobel. He may be the only Nobel Prize recipient that actually knew Alfred Nobel personally. From 1901 to 1914, he occupied a chair in the School of Theology at Uppsala University and concurrently, from 1912 to 1914, a chair at Leipzig University in Germany. He was the Church of Sweden Archbishop of Uppsala between 1914 and 1931. Nominated for this post on March 20, 1914, a week later World War I started. During the war, he actively intervened on behalf of prisoners of war and displaced persons. He was heartbroken with France becoming war-torn. From 1909 to 1922, he wrote a series of books on religious history, religious psychology, and religious philosophy. His most noted book was "The Origin of the Faith of God" in 1914. His book "History of Christ's Suffering" was done somewhat like a play and considered a literary work of art. In the last years of his life, he had the challenge of being the head of the ecclesiastical establishment. He visited churches throughout the nation; solicited funds to reopen old churches and build new ones; returning to the elaborate ecclesiastical rituals of the past; imbuing the work of the church with evangelistic fervor, directing conferences; and acting as advisor in the administration of Uppsala University. While doing all this work, he continued to write. Through his efforts, the Stockholm Conference in 1925 was held, bringing together Anglican, Protestant, and Orthodox Christians, yet not the Roman Catholic church. One of the major goals of the conference was world peace, which was a precursor to the 1948 founding of the World Council of Churches. He published in details what was covered in the conference in his book, "Stockholm 1925." Besides the Nobel Prize, he was elected to the Swedish Academy in 1921 and invited to deliver the Gifford Lectures in Edinburgh in 1931, which was one of many worthy lectures he made. He collected his lectures, publishing them in volumes and his last book was "The Living God." Upon returning home after the 1931 Gifford Lectures, his health greatly declined, followed with having an emergency surgery for a bowel obstruction, and post-operatively dying after having two heart attacks. He had a history of bleeding ulcers and had his first heart attack in 1924. He is commemorated on July 12th in the Lutheran Church and in the liturgical calendar of the Episcopal Church in the United States. With Royal permission, he was laid to rest with honors in the Uppsala Cathedral.