Literary Prize for Maritain

FRENCH Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain, 81, has received France's national grand prize for letters.
The prize, created in 1951, was for the first time awarded on the first ballot by a unanimous vote of a 15-member jury which included Nobel Prize winning novelist Fancois Mauriac and representatives of leading literary societies. The jury was headed by Gaetan Picon, director of arts and letters at the Ministry of Cultural Affairs.
Maritain was converted to Catholicism at the age of 24.
He was professor of philosophy at the Institut Catholique, Paris Catholic university, from 1916 to 1939. In 1939, the French government sent him as a representative to the United States. From 1940 to 1944, he was visiting professor of philosophy at Columbia University and Princeton University. He was French Ambassador to the Holy See from 1945 to 1948. when he returned to Princeton, where he was professor of philosophy until 1952.