Ducommun, Élie (1833-1906), a Swiss journalist, lecturer, business executive, and editor, was awarded the Nobel Prize for peace in 1902 for his work as honorary secretary of the International Peace Bureau. He shared the prize with Charles Albert Gobat of Switzerland. In 1891, Ducommun became head of the newly formed bureau, which was based in Bern, Switzerland. In 1895, he became editor of the bureau’s Correspondance bi-mensuelle (Bimonthly Correspondence).
Ducommun was born in Geneva on Feb. 19, 1833. In his twenties, he was the editor of the Revue de Genève (Geneva Review), a political journal. In 1865, he moved to Bern and founded a radical journal published in two languages as Fortschritt in German and Progrès in French (Progress). In the late 1860’s and early 1870’s, he also edited L’Helvetia (Switzerland) and Les États-Unis d’Europe (The United States of Europe). Ducommun died in Bern, Switzerland, on Dec. 7, 1906.
