Nobel Peace Prize Winner Alva Myrdal Dead at 84

Nobel Peace Prize winner Alva Myrdal, a tireless advocate of world disarmament who criticized both superpowers for failing to end the arms race, died Saturday at a suburban Stockholm hospital. She was 84.

In recognition of her efforts to promote disarmament, Myrdal was awarded the Nobel Prize along with Mexican diplomat Alfonso Garcia Robles in 1982.

She was the wife of Gunnar Myrdal, who shared the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science in 1974. Alva Myrdal had been bedridden for the last two years, but the cause of death was not given.

Although disarmament remained an elusive goal, recognition was showered on Myrdal in her lifetime. She held a total of four peace awards, including the first Albert Einstein Peace Prize.

Even after resigning at age 71 from her posts as Sweden’s minister of disarmament and chief disarmament negotiator, Myrdal continued her struggle--researching, lecturing and writing on peace and disarmament.

“I have never, never allowed myself to give up,” she said in 1980.

She never lost the conviction and enthusiasm that attracted international attention from the moment in 1961 when she made a plea for the implementation of a nuclear test ban treaty in her first speech as Sweden’s delegate to the U.N. disarmament conference in Geneva.

But as the years went by, Myrdal became increasingly critical of the United States and Soviet Union for what she saw as their unwillingness to work seriously and sincerely for disarmament.

“The actions of those who lead the superpowers are governed by a deep lack of reason and common sense,” she said after winning the Nobel Peace Prize.