Born in Uppsala, Sweden

Alva Reimer Myrdal was born on January 31, 1902, in Uppsala, Sweden, to Albert and Lova Reimer. She was the eldest of five children in a middle-class family, her father working as a building contractor and local politician associated with the temperance movement.

Her upbringing in early twentieth-century Sweden, a period of significant social and political transformation, exposed her early to debates about social reform, workers' rights, and gender equality. She pursued higher education at a time when it was still uncommon for Swedish women, eventually studying at Stockholm University College, where she encountered progressive intellectual circles.

This early environment shaped her lifelong commitment to social engineering, welfare state development, and international cooperation. Her birth marks the starting point of a career that would see her become one of the most influential Swedish public intellectuals and diplomats of the twentieth century, culminating in her becoming the first woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize as an individual laureate for disarmament work in 1982.