Born Philip John Baker, he was a politician, diplomat, academic, an outstanding amateur athlete, and campaigner for disarmament and received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1959.
His Canadian-born Quaker father, Joseph Allen Baker, moved to England to set up a manufacturing business and himself served on the London County Council and in the House of Commons.
Philip was educated at Bootham School, York and then in the US at Haverford College, attended King's College, Cambridge 1910 - 1912. Became President of the Cambridge Union Society and the Cambridge University Athletic Club.
Selected and ran for Britain at the 1912 Stockholm Olympic Games Team manager and competitor for the British track team in the 1920 and 1924 Olympics. In 1920 he won a silver medal in the 1500 metres at Antwerp.
In World War I, Noel-Baker organised and led the Friends' Ambulance Unit attached to the fighting front in France from 1914to 1915, then adjutant to the First British Ambulance Unit for Italy 1915 to 1918. He received military medals from France and Italy as well as Britain.
After the war, Noel-Baker was involved in the formation of the League of Nations, serving as assistant to Lord Robert Cecil, the assistant to Sir Eric Drummond, the league's first secretary-general. He also spent time as an academic early in his career, as a professor of international law at the University of London from 1924 to 1929 and as a lecturer at Yale University from 1933 to 1934.