Former Secretary of State George Shultz has died, according to the Hoover Institution. He was 100.
Shultz passed away Saturday at his home on the Stanford University campus, the think tank said. It did not provide a cause of death.
Shultz served under three American presidents and was a key player in bringing the Cold War to an end alongside President Ronald Reagan.
Born in New York City, he was raised in Englewood, New Jersey and taught at many prestigious universities before being appointed Secretary of Labor by President Richard Nixon in 1969. He went on to serve in multiple positions in Nixon’s cabinet.
Shultz left government in the mid-1970s to work in academia and for an engineering firm, before being appointed to two key posts by Reagan, including secretary of state.
Shultz later served as an informal advisor to President George W. Bush and authored many books.
In 1989, he earned the nation’s highest civilian honor, the Medal of Freedom.
“Our colleague was a great American statesman and a true patriot in every sense of the word. He will be remembered in history as a man who made the world a better place,” said former Secretary of State and current Hoover Institution director Condoleezza Rice.
Shultz, who was a professor emeritus at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business and served at the Hoover Institute for decades, is one of only two Americans to have held four different federal cabinet posts: State, Treasury, Labor and Office of Management and Budget, according to the university.
Shultz is survived by his wife, five children, 11 grandchildren, and nine great grandchildren.