Charles Albert Gobat

Charles Albert Gobat (1843 to 1914) was a Swiss lawyer, educational administrator and politician who shared the 1902 Nobel Peace Prize with Élie Ducommun for their leadership of the Permanent International Peace Bureau. Born at Tramelan, he took a doctorate in law at Heidelberg in 1867, practised in Bern, lectured on French civil law at the University of Bern and opened a law office in Delémont that became the leading legal firm of the district. After fifteen years at the bar he turned to politics and education, serving as superintendent of public instruction for the canton of Bern for thirty years from 1882, sitting in the Council of States from 1884 to 1890 and in the National Council from 1890 until his death. He worked with the Inter-Parliamentary Union, became general secretary of its bureau and after Ducommun's death in 1906 directed the International Peace Bureau, and in 1902 he sponsored legislation that applied the principle of arbitration to commercial treaties.