Biography
Galtung was born in Oslo. He earned the cand. real. (PhD) degree in mathematics at the University of Oslo in 1956, and a year later completed the mag. art. (PhD) degree in sociology at the same university. Galtung received the first of nine honorary doctorates in 1975.
Galtung's father and paternal grandfather were both physicians. The Galtung name has its origins in Hordaland, where his paternal grandfather was born. Nevertheless, his mother, Helga Holmboe, was born in central Norway, in Trøndelag, while his father was born in Østfold, in the south. Galtung has been married twice, and has two children by his first wife Ingrid Eide, Harald Galtung and Andreas Galtung, and two by his second wife Fumiko Nishimura, Irene Galtung and Fredrik Galtung, the co-founder and chief executive of Tiri.
Upon receiving his mag.art. degree, Galtung moved to Columbia University, in New York City, where he taught for five semesters as an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology. In 1959, Galtung returned to Oslo, where he founded the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO). He served as the institute's director until 1969, and saw the institute develop from a department within the Norwegian Institute of Social Research into an independent research institute with enabling funds from the Norwegian Ministry of Education.
In 1964, Galtung led PRIO to establish the first academic journal devoted to Peace Studies: the Journal of Peace Research. In the same year, he assisted in the founding of the International Peace Research Association.
In 1969 he left PRIO for a position as professor of peace and conflict research at the University of Oslo, a position he held until 1978. He then served as the director general of the International University Centre in Dubrovnik, also serving as the president of the World Future Studies Federation. He has also held visiting positions at other universities, including Santiago, Chile, the United Nations University in Geneva, and at Columbia, Princeton and the University of Hawaii. He has served at so many universities that he has "probably taught more students on more campuses around the world than any other contemporary sociologist". Galtung is currently teaching courses in the Human Science Department at Saybrook University.
He is a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.
Read more about this topic: Johan Galtung
Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“Just how difficult it is to write biography can be reckoned by anybody who sits down and considers just how many people know the real truth about his or her love affairs.”
—Rebecca West [Cicily Isabel Fairfield] (1892–1983)
“A great biography should, like the close of a great drama, leave behind it a feeling of serenity. We collect into a small bunch the flowers, the few flowers, which brought sweetness into a life, and present it as an offering to an accomplished destiny. It is the dying refrain of a completed song, the final verse of a finished poem.”
—André Maurois (1885–1967)
“Had Dr. Johnson written his own life, in conformity with the opinion which he has given, that every man’s life may be best written by himself; had he employed in the preservation of his own history, that clearness of narration and elegance of language in which he has embalmed so many eminent persons, the world would probably have had the most perfect example of biography that was ever exhibited.”
—James Boswell (1740–95)