Former President Jimmy Carter, the 39th president of the United States, has died at age 100

Former President Jimmy Carter, the 39th president of the United States, who dedicated his life after he left office to brokering international peace, has died at age 100, his office confirmed Sunday.

Carter, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for his human rights work around the world, had been in hospice care since February 2023 at his home in Plains, Georgia, where he lived with his wife of 77 years, Rosalynn Carter. The former first lady, 96, died on Nov. 19, 2023.

Carter was the first U.S. president to reach his 100th birthday.

In October, for Carter’s 100th birthday, President Joe Biden recognized him in a direct-to-camera birthday message shared with CBS News, saying: “Mr. President, you’ve always been a moral force for our nation and the world. I recognized that as a young senator. That’s why I supported you so early. You’re a voice of courage, conviction, compassion, and most of all, a beloved friend of Jill and me and our family.”

Biden said he would order an official state funeral to be held in Washington and issued a proclamation later Sunday declaring Jan. 9 to be a national day of mourning. The U.S. Army Military District of Washington said Monday morning that the state funeral would be held on that same date.

A Georgia native and a Democrat, Carter was elected president in 1976, defeating the Republican incumbent, Gerald Ford, in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal. Carter served one term before he lost re-election in 1980 to Ronald Reagan, his bid hobbled by an inability to resolve the Iran hostage crisis, a standoff that lasted 444 days.

Carter, the oldest living former president after George H.W. Bush died in 2018 at 94, was the first American president to have been born in a hospital.

Only 56 years old when he left the Oval Office, Carter would spend the next four decades focusing on good works that made him an almost universally revered figure, sometimes called America’s greatest ex-president — a sharp contrast to his relatively low popularity when he exited the White House in January 1981.

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For years, he and his wife could be found on construction sites hoisting beams and pounding nails to build homes for the disadvantaged with the nonprofit organization Habitat for Humanity.

Around the world, Carter was recognized after his presidency for his tireless work promoting peaceful resolutions to conflict and advancing democracy, human rights and social justice, primarily through the Carter Center, which he and the former first lady established at Emory University in Atlanta in 1982.

Working through the center, the Carters traveled to developing countries to monitor elections, help build democratic institutions, lobby for victims of human rights abuses and spearhead efforts to eradicate diseases.

Credit CitationL NBC NEWS