Former President Carter, Nobel Winner, Dies at 100

ATLANTA-Former President Jimmy Carter, the Georgia peanut farmer whose one term in the Oval Office was plagued by problems at home and abroad but who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize after he left office, has died.

-  CAMERON MCWHIRTER AND BETSY MCKAY

The Carter Center confirmed the death on X Sunday.

He was 100 years old, the longest-lived former president in the country's history. He had been in hospice since February 2023.

The 39th president's sole term in office was marred by a listless economy and stubborn inflation, squabbles within his party, gridlock in Congress and the seizure of U.S. hostages in Iran. Considered a long-shot Democratic candidate when he announced his bid, Carter would broker a historic peace treaty between Israel and Egypt and set in motion other changes that would dominate global politics in subsequent years.

Many of the achievements for which he was recognized Please came after he left office in January 1981. He was the most active former president in modern U.S. history, gaining renown for work over four decades monitoring elections around the world, fighting neglected diseases, working to raise living standards for the poor and advocating for human rights. He did much of this work through the Carter Center, the humanitarian nonprofit he founded with his wife, Rosalynn Carter, in 1982.

"Jimmy Carter will probably not go down in American history as the most effective president. But he is certainly the best ex-president the country ever had," said Gunnar Berge of the Norwegian Nobel Committee in his 2002 speech presenting Carter with the peace prize.

James Earl Carter Jr. was born Oct. 1, 1924, in the small town of Plains, Ga. A religious Baptist, he grew up on his family's farm in a home that didn't have plumbing, electricity or insulation when he was a boy. He graduated from high school at age 16 and attended college for two years in Georgia before enrolling at the U.S.

Naval Academy, from which he graduated in 1946. As a young naval officer, he worked on the nascent nuclear submarine program.