Full Name=Shimon Peres; Profession=Israeli statesman, three-time prime minister, ninth president of Israel, foreign and defense minister, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate for the Oslo Accords; Nationality=Israeli; Born=2 August 1923; Birthplace=Wiszniew (also rendered Wiszniewo), Poland (now Vishnyeva, Belarus); Generation=Greatest Generation (G.I. Generation), widely regarded as part of Israel’s founding generation of leaders; Chinese Zodiac=Pig, specifically the Water Pig year of 1923; Zodiac Sign=Leo (solar Leo, with August 2 falling between July 23 and August 22); Age in 2026 = 103 (he would have turned 103 years old on August 2, 2026, had he lived); Marital Status=Married (later widower); spouse Sonia Peres née Gelman, whom he married in May 1945 and who died on 20 January 2011; Children=three children: daughter Zvia and sons Yoni and Chemi Peres. Description=Born Szymon Perski, Shimon Peres moved from Poland/Belarus to Palestine with his family in 1934, grew up in Tel Aviv, became active in the Hanoar Haoved youth movement, helped found kibbutz Alumot, and rose to prominence in the pre-state Haganah and later the Ministry of Defense, where he played a key role in building Israel’s armed forces and secret nuclear program; over more than six decades in public life he served as prime minister from 1984–1986 and 1995–1996, foreign minister and other senior cabinet posts, and finally as Israel’s ninth president from 2007 to 2014, while championing technological innovation, economic development, and dialogue with Arab neighbors; as a chief negotiator of the Oslo peace process with the Palestine Liberation Organization he shared the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize with Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat, and in his later years he founded the Peres Center for Peace and Innovation and was widely described as the last active member of Israel’s founding generation, an elder statesman whose legacy combines hard-line security experience with a visionary belief in regional coexistence and a “New Middle East”; Cause of Death=complications of a major stroke with cerebral bleeding suffered in mid-September 2016, dying at age 93 on 28 September 2016 at Sheba Medical Center in Ramat Gan near Tel Aviv, Israel.