J. William Fulbright was born in Missouri in 1905. He was educated at the University of Arkansas and at Oxford University, where, as a Rhodes Scholar, he earned an M.A. degree.

Fulbright was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1944 and served there from 1945 through 1974. In 1949 he became a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and from 1959 to 1974 he was its chairman, the longest serving chairman of that committee in history. Fulbright became one of the most influential and best-known members of the Senate. In 1963 Walter Lippman said, “The role he plays in Washington is indispensable. There is no one else who is so powerful and also so wise?” Today he is best remembered for the legislation establishing the Fulbright Program, which passed without debate in 1946. The first participants traveled in 1948. Since then more than 310,000 “Fulbrighters” have participated in the program.