Rafael Altamira y Crevea
(Madrid, 1895 - 1955)

Rafael Altamira y Crevea began to study law in Valencia in 1881.
In 1886, he started his Ph.D. in Madrid, where he came into contact with the founders of the Institución Libre de Enseñanza (ILE), with Francisco Giner de los Ríos in particular, with whom he established a relationship that marked his intellectual and personal development.

He identified himself with Krausism and the ILE, and combined the practice of law with the publication of his first scientific studies and his teaching at the Universidad Central and the Museo Pedagógico.

In 1896, he became professor of History of Spanish Law at the University of Oviedo. Between June 1909 and March 1910, he traveled to various Latin American countries leading a university delegation to establish cooperation in cultural and scientific fields.  The success of the mission earned him numerous honors and awards. In 1910, he was appointed general director of Primary Education and obtained the professorship of History of Civil and Political Institutions in Latin America at the University of Madrid in 1914.

Between 1910 and 1918, he conducted a seminar on the methodology of history at the Centro de Estudios Históricos, and represented the Junta para Ampliación de Estudios (JAE) in several international congresses. In 1921, he accepted a position at the JAE, but resigned in 1923. In 1920, he was appointed by the Assembly of the League of Nations to a commission of lawyers responsible for drawing up the draft of the Permanent Court of International Justice at The Hague, the high court to which he was elected magistrate in 1921 and was reelected until the court ceased its activities in 1941. The Civil War forced him into exile. During his last years, he resumed a busy academic activity, publishing several scientific works and teaching at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma, México D.F., the city where he died in 1951.