Paul Painlevé was born in 1863 in Paris. He studied mathematics at the École Normale Supérieure and the University of Göttingen, and completed his doctorate in 1887. From 1887 until 1892 he taught at Lille, before returning to Paris as professor at Ecole Polytechnique and then Collège de France. An outstanding mathematician, he was awarded the Grand Prix des Sciences Mathématiques in 1890 and the Prix Bourdin in 1894. From the early 1900s he became interested in aviation and created a course in aeronautical mechanics at the École Aéronautique.

At the same time, Painlevé became involved in politics and sat in the Chamber of Deputies beginning in 1906. During the First World War, he served as Education Minister as well as War Minister from March to September 1917. From September until November 1917, Painlevé was Prime Minister, and again from April to November 1925.

From December 1925, Painlevé was President of the Administrative Council of the International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation (ICIC). From 1926 until his death, he was a member of the ICIC. He played a key role during the restructuring of the Organisation of Intellectual Cooperation from 1930 to 1931 (Renoliet, pp. 116 and 331). Painlevé died in October 1933.

"The First International Conference of American States was held in Washington, D.C., October 1889 to April 1890 'for the purpose of discussing and recommending for adoption to their respective Governments some plan of arbitration for the settlement of disagreements and disputes that may hereafter arise between them, and for considering questions relating to the improvement of business intercourse and means of direct communication between said countries, and to encourage such reciprocal commercial relations as will be beneficial to all and secure more extensive markets for the products of each of said countries'

"Eighteen American States took part in that Conference, in which it was agreed to constitute the "International Union of American Republics for the prompt collection and distribution of commercial information," with its headquarters in Washington. Later it was to become the “Pan American Union” and, eventually, as its functions expanded, today’s General Secretariat of the OAS" (Organization of American States website, Our History webpage).

For more, please see the OAS website: http://www.oas.org/en/about/our_history.asp

George Oprescu was born in 1881 in Câmpulung, Romania. Though raised in poverty, he was educated in literature and philosophy at the University of Bucharest thanks to the help of friends and scholarships. After his graduation in 1905 he became a teacher of French language and literature. He also taught at the University of Fluj and led an art history seminar. He later became professor at the University of Bucharest and, since 1932, director of the Toma Stelian Museum, to which he donated a considerable amount of his private art collection. After the Second World War, he donated his collection to the Romanian Academy.

From 1923 until 1939, Oprescu worked as secretary of the International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation in Geneva.

After the war he became a member of the Romanian Academy, and from 1949 until his death in 1969 he led the Academy’s Institute of Art History.

Born in Buenos Aires in 1890, Victoria Ocampo came from an Argentinian high-society family. In 1916, aged 26, she met José Ortega y Gasset who had a great influence on her. Virginia Woolf, to whom she later dedicated a study, also inspired her to become a writer.
In 1931 Ocampo founded the review Sur (the title of which was suggested to her by Ortega y Gasset). Writers from all over the world collaborated in the review, the editorial board included, among others: Pedro Enriquez Ureña, Alfonso Reyes, Ortega y Gasset, Jules Supervielle, Guillermo de Torre, Waldo Frank, Jorge Luis Borges, and Eduardo Mallea. The review published works by young literary talents as well as major authors of the time, such as: Breton, Camus, Claudel, Caillois, Eluard, Gide, Malraux, Maritain, Romain Rolland, Saint-John Perse, Sartre, Valéry, Graham Greene, Huxley, Shaw, Jorge Guillén, J. R. Jiménez, Heidegger, Herman Hesse, Thomas Mann, Croce, Ungaretti, Michaux, Asturias, Octavio Paz, Faulkner, Saroyan, Steinbeck, etc. The review’s history continued until 1970 and played a significant role in spreading international literature in the Latin American world.

Ocampo formed long friendships with a number of writers and intellectuals, such as Français Pierre Drieu La Rochelle, Jules Supervielle, Roger Caillois, Rabindranath Tagore, and the Spaniards Jorge Luis Borges et Federico García Lorca. From 1935 Ocampo published her memoirs in ten volumes (1935–1977) in which she recounts her various encounters, alongside numerous novels: La Laguna de los nenúfares (1924), Supremacía del alma y de la sangre (1933), Domingos en Hyde Park (1936), San Isidro (1941), Habla el algarrobo (1959). Victoria Ocampo décède en 1979.

“There is no authentic national culture, only authentic international culture”, declared Ocampo to those who accused her of being too preoccupied with foreign literature. This internationalism marked the life and the work of the Argentinian writer, but also her commitment to the Organisation of Intellectual Cooperation. In May 1939, she was appointed a member of the International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation (ICIC).

After the war, she remained a public intellectual, giving lectures and receiving honorary degrees in various countries. She donated her Buenos Aires villa to UNESCO in 1973 for, as she wished, “promotion, research, experimentation and development of activities related to culture, literature, art and social communication, which are aimed at improving the quality of human life.”

Noel Joseph Terence Montgomery Needham, known as Joseph Needham, was born in London in 1900. He is also known by the Chinese name Li Yuese.

In 1918, Needham left King’s College to begin training for service as surgeon sub-lieutenant, Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve. The First World War ended before he was deployed at sea. He then pursued his higher education at Cambridge University, earning a bachelor’s degree in 1921, a master’s degree in 1925, and a doctorate later in 1925. From 1924, he was a Fellow at Cambridge and held various appointments in universities in England and in the United States. He worked as a University Demonstrator in Biochemistry at Cambridge from 1928 to 1933, when he was appointed Sir William Dunn Reader in Biochemistry. He held this title until 1966 when he was appointed Master of Gonville and Caius College at Cambridge. During his academic career at Cambridge, he also served as visiting lecturer in England, the United States, and Poland. He retired from the Mastership in 1976.

In 1942, Needham was sent to China as Head of the British Scientific Mission and Counsellor at the British Embassy in Chungking, in charge of a Sino-British Science Co-operation Office (SBSCO). “The SBSCO was responsible for assessing the needs of Chinese scientific, technological and medical institutions and researchers, and facilitating the supply of equipment and medicines, books and journals to China” (UK National Archives).

After this experience, Needham is considered to have played an instrumental role in introducing Science into the mandate of UNESCO. His proposal for a scientific programme at UNESCO was presented to the first General Conference in November 1946. Needham served as Senior Counsellor for the Natural Sciences Section of the Preparatory Commission from May 6 - December 6, 1946. He continued, first under the title of Senior Counsellor, then as Head of the Natural Sciences Section in the UNESCO Secretariat from December 6, 1946 to April 20, 1948. On April 6, 1948, he was appointed Honorary Consultant in the Natural Sciences by the Director-General. The Executive Board awarded him the title of Honorary Counsellor to UNESCO on September 16, 1949.

After leaving UNESCO in April 1948, Needham’s work at Cambridge focused on the contribution of China to science and civilization. The question of why historically the scientific and industrial revolutions had occurred in Europe and not China, given its scientific traditions, became known as ‘the Needham Question’ or ‘Needham’s Grand Question.’

Needham died March 24, 1995.

Among his honours, Needham was made a Foreign Member of the Chinese National Academy, the National Academy of Peiping, and the Société philomathique de Paris. The Needham Research Institute for the study of Chinese science was opened at Cambridge in 1985. He also held the following British orders: Fellow, Royal Society (1941); Fellow, British Academy (1971); and, Companionship of Honour (1992).

Among his many publications, Needham is noted for: 'Chemical Embryology' (1931); 'Biochemistry and Morphogenesis' (1942); and, his contributions to 'Science and Civilization in China' series.

The National Commissions for intellectual cooperation began to be established in 1922-1923, following a CICI study on the conditions of intellectual workers. National Commissions, affiliated with the CICI, were national working groups responsible for questions on intellectual cooperation in their respective countries. They were composed of intellectuals who were initially charged with alerting the CICI to the post-war situation and needs with respect to intellectual cooperation in their respective countries. The National Commissions evolved to play a liaison role between the CICI and their national institutions. The Commissions had varied statuses in their states: governmental, semi-governmental, or private (for the majority). By 1940, 40 National Commissions were operating. The Commissions ceased their activities during the Second World War, and then briefly recommenced their activities in 1946, avant que l'IICI ne disparaisse.

Alva Myrdal, was born Alva Reimer on 31 January 1902 in Uppsala, Sweden. She pursued her higher education first in Sweden, earning a Bachelor of Arts from Stockholm University in 1924 and a Master of Arts at Uppsala University in 1934. She undertook postgraduate work at Columbia University in New York and at the Université de Genève.

Myrdal began her career at the Teacher Workers Education Association in Stockholm from 1924 to 1932. She then worked as a psychological assistant at the Central Prison from 1932 to 1934. Myrdal founded a training college for preschool teachers, Social-Pedagogiska Seminarist, in Stockholm, and served as its Director from 1936 to 1948. Beginning in 1938, Myrdal was also engaged by the Swedish Government for various public enquiries, for preparing new social legislation and for planning a new educational system.

In 1948, Myrdal was engaged as a Consultant in UNESCO’s Section for Mass Communication, Projects Division. The following year Myrdal accepted the post of Top Ranking (Principal) Director of the United Nations Department of Social Affairs. However, in 1950, Myrdal began work at UNESCO as staff on loan from the UN in New York. She assumed the title of Director of the UNESCO Social Science Department 28 August 1950. Myrdal was officially transferred to UNESCO effective 1 January 1951. She resigned from UNESCO effective 31 October 1955 so that she could accept diplomatic postings.

After her career at UNESCO, Myrdal served first as Swedish Ambassador to India and Minister to Ceylon from 1955 to 1961. She was further appointed Minister to Burma from 1955 to 1958, and then Minister to Nepal from 1960 to 1961. Myrdal acted as Ambassador-at-large in the period 1961-1966. In 1962, she was appointed Swedish delegate to the UN Disarmament Conference, Geneva. Also that year, Myrdal was voted in as a member of the Swedish Parliament. She was appointed Cabinet Minister responsible for disarmament in 1966; responsibility for church affairs was added to her portfolio in 1969. In 1966, Myrdal, as chair of a Swedish Royal Commission, proposed the founding of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). Myrdal also served as Swedish Delegate to the UN General Assembly from 1962 to 1973. She was chairman of the UN Security Council group of experts who reported on problems of apartheid in the Republic of South Africa in 1964 and the UN Group of Governmental Experts on the Relationship between Disarmament and Development in 1972.

Among her many publications are the books: Crisis in the Population Problem (with Gunnar Myrdal), 1934; City Children, 1935; Are We Too Many, 1950; Women’s Two Roles (with Viola Kline), 1968; The Game of Disarmament: How the United States and Russia Run the Arms Race, 1972; War, Weapons and Everyday Violence, 1977; and, Dynamics of European Nuclear Disarmament, 1981. Among other honours, she was co-recipient with Alfonso García Robles of Mexico of the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1982.

Alva Myrdal died 1 February 1986.

Gilbert Murray was born in Sydney, Australia, in 1866. Having moved to England at the age of seven, he was educated at Merchant Taylors' School and then St John’s College, Oxford, where he excelled in classics and won several prizes. At the age of twenty-three he became university professor of Greek at Glasgow, before moving to Oxford in 1905 where he became regius professor of Greek three years later. Murray published numerous books and translations, and established himself as an authority on the Ancient Greek world. He retired from the regius chair in 1936.

At the outbreak of the First World War, Murray became increasingly involved in contemporary political affairs, working for the British League of Nations Union beginning in 1918. After an invitation by Jan Smuts, he participated at the League of Nations (LN) 1921 Assembly. During the 1930s, he collaborated with William Beveridge in setting up the Society for the Protection of Science and Learning. Although somewhat disenchanted with the LN after the Abyssinian crisis, his commitment for international cooperation remained (Stray 2004). After the Second World War, he served three terms as President of the United Nations Association.

Murray was a member of the International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation (ICIC) from 1922 until 1939, the only individual apart from Gonzague de Reynold to serve for the entire period of its existence. In 1928, Murray became President of the ICIC, succeeding Henri Bergson and Hendrik Antoon Lorentz. After the war, he was involved in the preparatory discussions of the Conference of Allied Ministers of Education (CAME). Murray died in 1957.

Robert de Montessus de Ballore was a French mathematician, 1870–1937. In 1898, he entered the French Mathematical Society with the support of his fellow mathematicians Charles-Ange Laisant and Maurice d’Ocagne. Before the First World War, Montessus was professor of mathematics at the Catholic University of Lille. In the early 1920s he left Lille and, in 1924, he obtained a post with the National Office of Meteorology in Paris.

Montessus submitted his thesis, under the supervision of the mathematician Paul Appel, at the Sorbonne in 1905. He was given important assignments in the field of further algebraic fractions. Montessus was awarded the Grand Prix of the Academy of Sciences in 1906 for this work. After his thesis, he continued to pursue his interest in probability theory. In 1908, he published an introductory work on probabilities in which he devoted a chapter to the innovative works by Louis Bachelier on the theory of speculation. Montessus then shifted his attention to research in geometry, such as the study of certain algebraic space curves.

In 1917 he joined the editorial board of the Journal de Mathématiques Pures et Appliquées at the request from Camille Jordan. From 1924 on, his research focused on applied statistics. He became a prolific scholar and author of numerous articles in academic journals, such as Acta Mathematica or the Journal de Mathématiques Pures et Appliquées. These publications were supplemented by papers in l’Einseignement des Mathématiques, La revue du Mois, as well as by his activities in learned societies, including the Société Scientifique in Brussels. Besides these involvements, Montessus published on a range of mathematical topics, such as numerical calculation, probability theory, elliptic functions, rational mechanics and statistics.

In 1919, Montessus embarked on the publication of l’Index Generalis, which was supposed to be a directory of higher education institutions and research centres around the world. As a contributing editor of this project, he was in touch with the CICI and the IIIC over the years. (Le Ferrand, 2010)

Born in 1889 in Vicuña, Chile, as Lucila Godoy y Alcayaga, she used her writer’s pseudonym Gabriela Mistral since 1914. Raised in a small Andean village, she began to teach at primary and secondary schools at the age of fifteen and remained a committed educator throughout her life. The publication of Sonnets of Death in 1914 won her a national prize and helped to build her reputation as a poet. In 1923 she became professor of Spanish at the University of Chile. In 1945 she received the Nobel Prize in Literature, the first Latin American woman to do so.

In 1926, Mistral became the Chilean delegate at the International Institute of Intellectual Cooperation (IIIC). From 1933 she went on numerous diplomatic missions for Chile, and during the Second World War she lived in Brazil. Mistral died, having suffered from cancer for several years, in 1957 in New York.

Robert A. Millikan was born in Morrison, USA, in 1868. After a childhood in a rural region, he briefly worked as a judicial stenographer and then entered Oberlin College, Ohio, in 1886. He graduated in 1891 and started to teach physics. In 1893, he obtained a Master’s degree and began to teach at Columbia University. Having earned his PhD in 1895 in physics, he worked on the electric charge of electrons. During the two following years, he studied at Berlin and Göttingen, before returning to the US where he received an assistant position at the newly founded Ryerson Laboratory at the University of Chicago.

In 1910, Millikan became professor at the University of Chicago and occupied this post until 1921. He authored many articles in scientific revues and didactical physics works, such as A College Course in Physics, with S. W. Stratton (1898), A First Course in Physics, with H.G. Gale (1906) or A Laboratory Course in Physics for Secondary Schools, with H.G. Gale (1907). He was responsible for many major discoveries in the field of electricity, optics, and molecular physics. In 1923 he received the Nobel Prize in Physics.

During the First World War, Millikan assumed the vice-presidency of the US National Research Council (NRC). In 1921, he was appointed director of the Norman Bridge Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology, a post that he held until 1946. He was also President of the American Physical Society and Vice-President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He died in 1953 in San Marino, California.

In 1923, Millikan was one of the twelve first members of the ICIC, alongside Albert Einstein and Marie Curie. At his initiative the American Committee of Intellectual Cooperation was founded in 1926, of which he became President. Millikan remained a member of the ICIC and President of the American Committee until 1932, when his compatriot James T. Shotwell succeeded him in the two functions. Millikan remained nonetheless a member of the American Committee of Intellectual Cooperation.

Mexican national.

Amadou-Mahtar M'Bow was born in 1921. After completing his higher education in Paris, he taught history and geography in Senegal, where he directed basic education from 1952 to 1957. Minister of Education and Culture during his country’s transitional period of internal autonomy (1957-1958), he resigned in order to engage in the struggle for independence. After this had been achieved, he became Minister of Education (1966-1968) and then of Cultural and Youth Affairs (1968-1970) and was a member of the National Assembly of Senegal. Elected to the Executive Board in 1966, he became Assistant Director-General for Education in 1970. Appointed Director-General in 1974, he was reappointed for a second term of office in 1980. He retired from UNESCO in 1987.

Born in 1901, Jean-Jacques Mayoux was educated at the Sorbonne and Exeter University, he became an English teacher and obtained his doctorate in 1933. Between 1925 and 1936 he was a lecturer of French language and literature at the University of Liverpool, then professor of English at the University of Nancy, and subsequently at the Sorbonne.

In 1945 he became Interim Director of the International Institute of Intellectual Cooperation (IIIC), following the end of Henri Bonnet’s second term. He argued for the survival of the IIIC and asked the French government to care for its funding (IIIC, A.II.1). Eventually, on 9 November 1946, he signed an agreement with Julian Huxley, representing UNESCO, which specified the termination of the IIIC and the transferral of all possessions (the library, archives, etc.) to UNESCO. From 1951 until 1973 Mayoux was professor of English literature at the Sorbonne. He died in 1987.

Federico Mayor was born in 1934. Having accomplished an PhD in Pharmacy, he became director of the Severo Ochoa Molecular Biology Centre (Madrid, 1973-1978). He served as Under-secretary of the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science (1974-1976) and was a member of Parliament and Chairman of the Parliamentary Commission for Education and Science (1977-1978). He later became Adviser to the Prime Minister on these questions. Minister of Education and Science (1981-1982), in 1987 he was elected a Member of the European Parliament. After being Deputy Director-General of UNESCO from 1978 to 1981, he returned to the Organization as Special Adviser to the Director-General (1983-1984), whom he succeeded in 1987.

Koïchiro Matsuura of Japan was appointed by the Organization's General Conference on November 12 1999 to serve as Director-General of UNESCO. Mr Matsuura, born in Tokyo in 1937, served as Ambassador of Japan to France from 1994 to 1999. He was educated at the Law Faculty of the University of Tokyo and at the Faculty of Economics of Haverford College (Pennsylvania, U.S.A.) and began his diplomatic career in 1959. Posts held by Mr Matsuura include those of Director-General of the Economic Co-operation Bureau of Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs (1988); Director-General of the North American Affairs Bureau, Ministry of Foreign Affairs (1990); Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs. He also served as the Chairperson of UNESCO's World Heritage Committee for one year, until November 1999.

Thomas Mann was born in Lübeck, Germany, in 1875. He studied literature, economics, history and art history at Lübeck and Munich, to become a journalist. While spending a year in Italy he began to write his novel Buddenbrooks, which was later published in 1901. He began his career as an author at the German satirical magazine Simplicissimus. In 1912 he published Death in Venice and began his work on The Magic Mountain that same year, published in 1924. His literary reputation allowed him to travel extensively during the early 1920s to Holland, Switzerland, Denmark, and Spain. In 1924 he was invited as an honorary member of the PEN-Club London. In 1929, Mann received the Nobel Prize in Literature. During the Weimar Republic, he tried to denounce the resurgence of nationalists. Mann moved into exile in 1933 and subsequently renounced his German citizenship in 1936. Acquiring American citizenship in 1940, he lived in the US until 1952. He then returned to Switzerland where he died in 1955.

Mann joined the Permanent Committee on Arts and Letters in 1931. He participated at interviews organised and subsequently published by the IIIC: Entretiens sur Goethe (1932), L'Avenir de l'esprit européen (1934), Vers un nouvel humanisme (1937).

Frank Joseph Malina was born in Brenham, Texas, USA, on October 12, 1912. He received a Bachelor of Sciences in Mechanical Engineering from the Texas Agricultural & Mechanical College in 1934. He then continued his studies at the California Institute of Technology (CIT), earning a Masters of Science in Mechanical Engineering in 1935, a Masters of Science in Aeronautical Engineering in 1936, and a Ph.D. in Aeronautics in 1940. He served as an Assistant Professor at CIT from 1942-1946.

During his academic and professional career at CIT, Malina and colleagues founded the Rocket Research Project at the Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory (GALCIT). “From 1940 to 1944 Malina was the chief engineer of the Air Corps Jet Propulsion Research Project of GALCIT; in 1944 these projects became the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)” (American National Biography Online). Malina was the first director of the Laboratory from 1944-1946. His work in rocketry led to the launch of the WAC Corporal in 1945, the United States’ first successful high altitude sounding rocket. (Personnel File). In 1949, when boosted on the nose of a captured V-2 German rocket, the WAC Corporal became the first man-made object to reach outer space. (American National Biography Online).

“In 1944 and in 1946 Malina travelled to Britain and France on mission as a scientific consultant for the U.S. War Department for European Missions” (Americal National Biography Online).

Malina joined UNESCO on April 18, 1947 as a Programme Specialist (Counsellor) in the Natural Sciences Section. He was made Deputy Head of the Department on March 15, 1949, and then was appointed Head of the Division of Scientific Research on June 1, 1949. The Division had several name changes, but when Malina resigned from UNESCO effective February 10, 1953, it was named the Contribution to Research Division. Among his activities at UNESCO, Malina worked on the Hylean Amazon Project and the Arid Zone Programme, which he described in his resignation letter as being “especially close to my heart.” (Personnel File).

Among his honours, Malina was awarded the French Prix d’Astronautique in 1939, a Certificate of Commendation from the U.S. Army in 1946, the C.M. Hickman Award of the American Rocket Society in 1948, and the Order of Merit from the French Society for the Encouragement of Research and Invention in 1962.

Also an artist, after his time at UNESCO Malina seemed to focus on his art work. He was a pioneer of kinetic art, incorporating electric light into paintings or mobiles (Personnel file). He began to also incorporate sound into his works in the 1960s (WAP Unit Website). Malina’s exhibited his work internationally at major institutions such as the Centre National d'Art Contemporain (Paris) and the Smithsonian Institute (Washington, DC, USA). One of his works, Ladders to the Stars III, 1965, is in the UNESCO works of art collection. In 1968, Malina founded the art journal Leonardo and served as Chief Editor until his death. Malina died November 9, 1981.

René Maheu was born in 1905. He was a professor of Philosophy and served as Cultural Attaché in London (1936-1939). After teaching in Morocco (1940-1942) he occupied a managerial post in the France-Afrique press agency in Algiers, before joining the Executive Office of the Resident-General in Rabat. In 1946 he entered UNESCO as Chief, Division of Free Flow of Information. In 1949 Jaime Torres Bodet appointed him Director of his Executive Office. In 1954 he became Assistant Director-General and was UNESCO’s representative at UN Headquarters from 1955 to 1958. Promoted Deputy Director-General in 1959, Acting Director-General in 1961, and in 1962 Director-General, for two successive mandates. He died in 1975.

The General Conference approved the creation of the Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Education for Peace and Sustainable Development as a UNESCO Category 1 Institute on 22 October 2009, during its 35th Session.