ABSTRACT
Unesco began with five program departments of which Education was the largest from the start, the other four—Natural Science, Mass Communication, Cultural Activities and Social Science—being on approximately comparable scales. The Social Science Department was initially composed of two divisions, one of political science, the other of international cooperation; the Tensions Project also enjoyed autonomy until its merger with the Division of Applied Social Science in 1953. The first three years were unsteady under a succession of directors, two of whom—Mohammad Awad of Egypt and Arvid Broderson of Norway—had been connected with the work of the Preparatory Commission. They were succeeded by Robert Angell of the United States and Arthur Ramos of Brazil, who died before he took office. After a further interim under Angell, Mrs. Alva Myrdal of Sweden was appointed to the directorship in 1950. Then in her late forties and fresh from a year at the UN, Alva Myrdal was at the beginning of a remarkable international and diplomatic career to be crowned by the award of the shared 1982 Nobel Prize for Peace in recognition of her contribution to the movement in favor of world disarmament. (It is worth noting that Unesco itself has never been awarded a Nobel Prize for Peace, and not for want of trying, while other agencies of the UN, the International Red Cross or Amnesty International have.) She was an early advocate of interdisciplinarity at a time when this concept was still anathema to many and badly in need of promotion by a missionary in the cause of democratic uplift.
