Sculptor. He is best remembered for designing the Peace Dollar, issued for circulation in the US from 1921 until 1935. He immigrated to the US in 1905 and studied sculpting under coin designers James Earle Fraser, Hermon Atkins MacNeil, and Adolph Alexander Weinman. In 1913 he became a naturalized US citizen and two years later he was hired as an instructor at Columbia University in New York City, New York. In 1917 he began his own sculpting studio and started working with the US Mint. In late 1921 the Commission of Fine Arts held a competition for the design of a new silver dollar and invited eight prominent sculptors to participate.  The theme was to produce a “peace coin” which would replace the Morgan Dollar.  Several of the entrants, like Fraser and MacNeil, had already designed US coins and achieved considerable fame.  Although the youngest participant and a novice coin designer, he won the competition and received the $1,500 cash prize.  He used his wife, Teresa de Francisci, as the model for the Liberty head.  In his initial design, he depicted a broken sword under the eagle on the reverse side of the coin which caused some people to interpret it as meaning defeat and surrender and the US Mint requested that he change the design and remove the broken sword.  His other significant works include the Adolph Alexander Weinman Portrait Plaque (1915), the Maine Centennial commemorative coin (1920), the National Guard Bureau Insignia (1921), the James Douglas Gold Medal (1922), the Society of Medalist Medal (1935), the World War II Honorable Service Lapel Button (also known as the “Ruptured Duck”), the Congressional Gold Medal to General John J. Pershing (1946), the Inaugural Medal for the 1964/1965 New York’s World Fair, the Peter Cooper Medal and the Abraham Lincoln Medal, both for the Hall of Fame for Great Americans Medal Series (1964).  During his life, he served as an Academician of the National Academy of Design and a Fellow of the National Sculpture Society.  In 1927 he received the American Numismatic Society’s Saltus Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Art of Medal and in 1932 he was presented with the Lindsey Morris Award.  He died at the age of 77. (bio by: William Bjornstad)