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Births on December 20

Ferdinand Buisson
1841Dec, 20

Ferdinand Buisson

Ferdinand Buisson, French academic and politician, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1932)
Ferdinand Édouard Buisson (20 December 1841 – 16 February 1932) was a French academic, educational bureaucrat, pacifist and Radical-Socialist (left liberal) politician. He presided over the League of Education from 1902 to 1906 and the Human Rights League (LDH) from 1914 to 1926.

In 1927, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to him jointly with Ludwig Quidde.

Philosopher and educator, he was Director of Primary Education. He was the author of a thesis on Sebastian Castellio, in whom he saw a "liberal Protestant" in his image.

Ferdinand Buisson was the president of the National Association of Freethinkers . In 1905, he chaired the parliamentary committee to implement the separation of church and state.

Famous for his fight for secular education through the League of Education, he coined the term laïcité ("secularism").

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Events on 1841

  • 9Mar

    United States v. The Amistad

    The U.S. Supreme Court rules in the United States v. The Amistad case that captive Africans who had seized control of the ship carrying them had been taken into slavery illegally.
  • 16Aug

    Second Bank of the United States

    U.S. President John Tyler vetoes a bill which called for the re-establishment of the Second Bank of the United States. Enraged Whig Party members riot outside the White House in the most violent demonstration on White House grounds in U.S. history.
  • 24Sep

    Kingdom of Sarawak

    The Sultanate of Brunei cedes Sarawak to the United Kingdom.
  • 13Nov

    Hypnotism

    James Braid first sees a demonstration of animal magnetism, which leads to his study of the subject he eventually calls hypnotism.