Unknown author · Public domain

Badly wounded fighting for France in the First World War, Cassin spent the rest of his life building legal instruments to prevent the next catastrophe. He joined de Gaulle's Free French from London in 1940, lending the resistance government-in-exile his legal expertise, and after the war became a principal drafter of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. For that work — turning a wartime conviction into binding international language — he received the 1968 Nobel Peace Prize.