As a boy he was a national champion at cross-country skiing, and decided to study zoology to stay outdoors. That led him to be on the team that staged one of the first explorations of Greenland. He later was part of the Fram expedition to the Arctic. Early in the 1900s, he was one of the leaders of the faction in Norway that wanted the country to be completely separate from Sweden. Nansen won that argument in 1905, and was the country's first minister in London. That didn't last too long, as he resigned to study oceanography.
But he went back to government work in World War I, and was a key representative for Norway during the early years of the League of Nations. In that role, he played a huge part in the return of many thousands of prisoners of war to their homes. One of the problems along the way was that refugees in the early 1920s had no proof of identity. He created the "Nansen Passport," which was accepted by more than 50 countries as such proof. His work first was directed at Russians, but soon expanded to other groups in peril. That earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1922, and the story is honored on the wall of City Hall.
Nansen worked in other international projects throughout the 1920s, but died in 1930. He's been the subject of several honors since then; he even has a crater on Mars named after him. Here's more on Nansen's life:
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