Alva Myrdal Biography

Alva Myrdal was a Swedish politician, diplomat and a sociologist, best remembered as the winner of 1982 Nobel Prize for Peace. She worked tirelessly to transform her country's social welfare system, as well as extended her efforts beyond Sweden to work for world peace. She combined together her profound commitment with great professional insight in her work towards disarmament and to end the propagation of nuclear weaponry in the second half of the twentieth century. Born to a middle class family, she was highly influenced by her parents and became motivated towards creating a better society from an early age. After becoming an educator, she made earnest efforts in order to make changes in her country's educational policies and she built a reputation for herself as an activist for women's rights. During the inter-war years, she devoted herself towards improving the conditions of the working class through the Social Democrat Party, and after the war she held prominent posts in the United Nations, dealing with the organization’s welfare policies. But her most remarkable contribution was her advocacy of world disarmament for which she received a Nobel Prize for Peace. As the representative of a non-aligned Sweden, she worked actively to persuade the superpowers to promote disarmament. She was a selfless promoter of world peace and dedicated all her life towards creating a better world for humanity.