Nobel Peace Prize Recipient. John Raleigh Mott received world-wide acclaim after being awarded the 1946 Nobel Peace Prize, sharing jointly with Emily Greene Balch. According to the Nobel Prize committee, "the Peace Prize for 1946 was awarded to the head of the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA), the American John Raleigh Mott, who had contributed to the creation of a peace-promoting religious brotherhood across national boundaries." Born into a family strongly influenced by their Puritan faith, he was the only son of four children of a lumber man, who became the mayor of Postville, Iowa. He first attended Upper Iowa University, then transferred to earn a bachelor's degree in history in 1888 from Cornell University in New York. Representing Cornell University at the first YMCA International Conference, he was an award-winning student debater. While still a student, he received a calling to spread the Word of Christianity, and devoted his life doing that by the YMCA and ongoing evangelistic, missionary, and ecumenical agendas. By establishing and strengthening Protestant Christianity, this would eventually promote world peace. In his positions of the general-secretary of the International Committee of YMCA and the president of YMCA's World Committee, he organized youth exchanges, set-up study groups, and arranged international youth camps. As an American Methodist lay pastor, he was influenced by the Presbyterian minister, Arthur Tappan Pierson. According to his obituary, he was one of five honorary presidents of the World Council of Churches and the only layperson to hold this honor. In 1910 he presided over the first World Missionary Conference in Edinburgh, Scotland. Considered by religious historians "the most widely traveled and universally trusted Christian leader of his time," he traveled, spreading Protestant Christianity throughout Europe, and from October of 1912 to May of 1913, held 18 conferences in Ceylon, India Burma, China, Malaya, Korea, and Japan. Fulfilling the Biblical "Great Commission" of taking the Word to all nations, he crossed the Atlantic Ocean over one hundred times and the Pacific Ocean fourteen times, averaging thirty-four days on the ocean per year for fifty years, delivering thousands upon thousands of presentations on Christ's forgiving love. After the Russian Revolution, he worked closely with others to maintain a relationship with the Russian Orthodox Church as the Communist came to power, forcing churches to close or stay open within the governmental guidelines. On April 6, 1917, as the United States entered World War I, he wired President Woodrow Wilson to volunteer the YMCA and became the general secretary of the National War Work Council, raising funds to prisoners of war and other projects. For this effort, he was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal. During World War II, he continued his efforts to improve conditions in the prisoner of war camps, serving as an ambassador and negotiator on the behalf of the United States government. Among numerous awards he received are decorations from China, Czechoslovakia, Finland, France, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Jerusalem, Poland, Portugal, Siam, Sweden, and the United States. He was a prolific author with sixteen books including "The Future Leadership of the Church" in 1909 and "The Larger Evangelism" in 1944. He was married and had four children.