Frank Billings Kellogg (1856–1937) was born in Potsdam, New York. His family moved to Minnesota when he was young, and he read and practiced law in Rochester, Minnesota. In his career as an attorney he first represented large manufacturing concerns and then became a trust-busting prosecutor during the administration of Theodore Roosevelt. He was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1916 and in 1924 named ambassador to the Court of St. James’s in London. He was one of several important negotiators of the 1924 Dawes Plan, which attempted to modify German reparations payments for the cost of World War I to France, Belgium, and Britain. In 1925 President Calvin Coolidge appointed Kellogg secretary state.
As secretary, Kellogg sought to continue limitations to naval capabilities among the United States, Britain, and Japan. He negotiated a border dispute between Chile and Peru and signed arbitration treaties with Mexico and nearly 80 other nations. His greatest achievement was the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1927–28, which renounced war as an instrument of national policy. Fifteen nations signed the pact in Paris, and an additional 47 followed. For this work, Kellogg received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1929.
From 1930 to 1935 Kellogg was associate judge of the Permanent Court of International Justice.