Ludwik Rajchman
Ludwik W. Rajchman | |
---|---|
Born | Warsaw, Poland | 1 November 1881
Died | 13 July 1965 Chenu, Sarthe, France | (aged 83)
Known for | Founding UNICEF |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Bacteriology |
Signature | |
Ludwik Witold Rajchman (1 November 1881 – 13 July 1965) was a Polish physician and bacteriologist. He is regarded as the founder of UNICEF,[1] and served as its first chairman from 1946 to 1950.
Early life and education
Ludwik Witold Rajchman was born to Aleksander Rajchman, the founder and first director of the
Rajchman grew up in Warsaw in the difficult conditions of the Russian partition. At an early age, he and his sister Helena Rajchman became keenly aware of the social injustices in their "country" (Poland did not officially exist at the time) and were involved as teenagers in teaching young workers. As an adult, he joined the Polish Socialist Party (PPS) and was involved in the 1905 uprising and even arrested. After several months in prison he was exiled for a while to Kharkiv.
Rajchman studied medicine at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, where he met his future wife, Marja Bojanczyk who was also a medical student. He became fascinated by bacteriology as taught to him by Odo Bujwid who had worked with Louis Pasteur.
Career
Rajchman did his post-doctoral studies at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, then briefly returned to Kraków (he was banned from going to the Russian-occupied part of Poland), before being named to a prominent bacteriological laboratory in London. Rajchman and his wife and three children remained in London throughout the First World War, during which time Rajchman was kept busy also as a PPS activist lobbying for Polish independence after the war. The family returned to Warsaw in October 1918 and Rajchman (who was well acquainted with the Polish elite thanks to his family connections) persuaded the new Polish authorities to create an epidemiological center, subsequently renamed "Państwowy Zakład Higieny" (National Institute of Hygiene) which exists in Warsaw to this day as Poland's main public health institute.
Rajchman was very active in the fight against several waves of a typhus epidemic which was devastating Eastern Europe and as such was noticed by the burgeoning
In the early 1930s, Rajchman introduced his friend Jean Monnet to China's finance minister T. V. Soong, thus contributing to the creation in 1934 of the China Development Finance Corporation. Meanwhile, he became known in Geneva for his anti-fascist and anti-appeaser attitudes and actions. He no longer politically pleased the French appeaser director of the League of Nations, Joseph Avenol, who dismissed him from his functions in 1938.
Finding himself without a job, Rajchman went to China to help the government prepare their defense against Japan, notably by buying airplanes from the United States. His family moved to France, purchasing a "chateau" in
Later age, founding of UNICEF
When UNRRA announced at a UN meeting in Geneva that it would be putting an end to its relief efforts, Rajchman stood up before the assembly and called for the creation of a Fund dedicated to helping children throughout the world. His proposal was accepted and by the beginning of 1947, UNICEF was already helping children, notably with nutrition and immunization. Rajchman remained chairman of the board at UNICEF until 1950 and refused to be paid for his work.
In the context of the nascent
Personal life and death
Rajchman was married to Marja Bojanczyk and together the couple had a daughter Marthe Rajchman, who became a cartography specialist. He died in Chenu, Sarthe, in 1965 due to complications of Parkinson's disease.
See also
- Michel Balinski, a grandson of Rajchman
- Janusz Korczak, children's rights advocate
- Marthe Rajchman, cartography specialist
- Timeline of young people's rights in the United Kingdom
- UNRRA
References
- ISBN 0-19-262747-3. Retrieved 4 April 2017.
- ISBN 9781580463386.
- ^ https://cdn.ymaws.com/alumni.ecolint.ch/resource/resmgr/magazines_newsletters/echo_17_web.pdf [bare URL PDF]
- ^ "OHCHR | Keynote speech by Mr. Zeid Ra'ad al Hussein, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights at the Conference on "Education for Peace" Palais des Nations, Geneva, 14 January 2015".
- ISBN 83-88542-68-0
Further reading
- Balinska, Marta A. (1998). For the Good of Humanity : Ludwik Rajchman, Medical Statesman (Translated by Rebecca Howell). Budapest: ISBN 978-9639116177.