Happy birthday: Albert Camus, Nobel Prize winner

A very special "happy birthday" is in order for Albert Camus, who was born on this date (Nov. 7) in 1913. He was a French Nobel Prize-winning philosopher and novelist.

During the war, Camus joined the Combat, a French Resistance cell which published an underground newspaper by the same name. The group worked against the Nazis, and Camus became the underground paper's editor in 1943. The Allies liberated Paris in August 1944, and Camus witnessed and also reported on the last of the fighting. He was also one of the few French editors to publicly express opposition and disgust to the United States' dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan.

However, his Nobel Prize in literature did not come as a result of those efforts. Instead, his Nobel Prize came as a result of his work in 1957, when he wrote for L'Express. He was awarded the Nobel Prize "for his important literary production, which with clear-sighted earnestness illuminates the problems of the conscience in our times."

Albert Camus died on January 4, 1960 at the age of 46. He was killed in a car accident, taken from us way too soon.

Happy birthday, Mr. Albert Camus, Nobel Prize winner!