Jimmy Carter's Biography

Jimmy Carter was born on October 1, 1924 in Plains, Georgia.

Carter, who was a Democrat, was the 39th President of the United States, serving from 1977 to 1981, when he was defeated by Ronald Reagan.

After graduating from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1946, he married Rosalynn Smith.

In 1953, Carter resigned from the Navy, to return to Georgia to save his late father's peanut farm.

Jimmy Carter became governor of Georgia in 1971.

Carter then came from nowhere to win the Presiential race defeating Gerald Ford by 297 electoral votes to 241, in 1977.

Many people remember Carter's term in office for its end. When the Ayatollah Khomeini seized power in Iran, the USA offered sanctuary to the former ruler, the Shah, which led to student militants storming the American embassy in Iran and taking over fifty Americans hostage.

Jimmy Carter's handling of the crisis was widely criticised and the Operation Eagle Claw launched in 1980 in an attempt to free the hostages ended badly with eight American servicemen dead.

According to an article in The Guardian:

"Rosalynn [his wife] has been quoted as saying that, had her husband bombed Tehran, he would have been re-elected. I put this to Carter. "That's probably true. A lot of people thought that. But it would probably have resulted in the death of maybe tens of thousands of Iranians who were innocent, and in the deaths of the hostages as well. In retrospect I don't have any doubt that I did the right thing. But it was not a popular thing among the public, and it was not even popular among my own advisers inside the White House. Including my wife.""

In 1982, following his election defeat, he became University Distinguished Professor at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, and founded The Carter Center.

He was awarded the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize for work to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development.

After his presidency, Jimmy Carter conducted various international missions and was responsible for negotiating a 1994 nuclear disarmament pact with North Korea.

In 2015, Jimmy Carter made public that liver surgery had revealed that he had cancer and it had spread to other parts of his body.