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  • Laureates
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  • Nomination
    • Nomination 2025
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    • The award ceremony 2024
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    • The award ceremonies of the past
  • Activities
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    • Lecture 2024
  • Marcel Benoist
    • The founder
    • The legacy
  • Foundation
    • Foundation
    • News
    • Board of Trustees
    • Patronage Committee and Friends
    • Create excellence!
    • Foundation assets
    • Contact
  • Laureates
    • Laureate 2024
    • Prize 2024
    • Past laureates
    • Subsequent Nobel Prize laureates
  • Nomination
    • Nomination 2025
  • The award ceremony
    • The award ceremony 2024
    • The award ceremony 2023
    • The award ceremony 2022
    • The award ceremony 2021
    • The award ceremony 2020
    • The award ceremony 2019
    • The award ceremony 2018
    • The award ceremonies of the past
  • Activities
    • Lecture 2025
    • Workshop 2024
    • Lecture 2024
  • Marcel Benoist
    • The founder
    • The legacy
  • Foundation
    • Foundation
    • News
    • Board of Trustees
    • Patronage Committee and Friends
    • Create excellence!
    • Foundation assets
    • Contact

The founder

The founder

Marcel Benoist, a Frenchman living in Switzerland at the beginning of the 20th century, was a great humanist. During his lifetime, he worked to improve the human lot, dedicating his entire wealth to this aim.

MarcelBenoit
Marcel Benoist, 1864-1918

Marcel Benoist was born in 1864 into a bourgeois family in Paris. He studied law and in 1889 took over his father’s law firm. About ten years later he stopped working in order to travel extensively throughout Europe. He was possessed by a strong determination to help other people and dedicate himself to the poor.

Marcel Benoist was a very reserved person. He had a wide range of interests and over the years amassed a vast amount of knowledge, inspiring the admiration of those he came into contact with. He was godfather to one Gabrielle Duvivier, daughter of some friends, who was his junior by 21 years; he played an important role in her life and supported her financially. She remained his secretary until his death.

In 1911 Marcel Benoist began transferring his wealth, library and art collection to Switzerland. In 1914 he moved to Lausanne. Always careful about his health, in 1918 Benoist nonetheless caught smallpox and died aged just 54. He had no family.

Contact

Marcel Benoist Foundation
State Secretariat for Education,
Research and Innovation SERI
Einsteinstrasse 2
CH – 3003 Bern

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