Ferdinand Buisson

Ferdinand Édouard Buisson was a French academic, educational bureaucrat, pacifist and Radical-Socialist 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").