Sully Prudhomme

René François Armand Prudhomme was a French poet and essayist. He was the first winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1901.

Born in Paris, Prudhomme originally studied to be an engineer, but turned to philosophy and later to poetry; he declared it as his intention to create scientific poetry for modern times. In character sincere and melancholic, he was linked to the Parnassus school, although, at the same time, his work displays characteristics of its own.