In this essay, the author narrates the story of discovering a new academic field, peace research, in the late 1960s, at the time of the American war in Vietnam, a discovery which changed his life. He was greatly influenced by pioneers such as Bert Röling and Ekkehart Krippendorff. While researching for a PhD thesis, he found that peace research was not without its nineteenth-century (and earlier) predecessors and also that the history of the peace idea and movement was poorly documented. He became particularly interested in the life and work of Jan Bloch (Poland/Russia), Bertha von Suttner (Austria) and Bart de Ligt (Netherlands). He was inspired by them, undertook ‘pilgrimages’ retracing their steps, organised conferences and published about them. He found it surprising and unacceptable that these (and many other) peace and anti-war heroes were not better known, let alone honoured and celebrated. Instead, the military is venerated, whose influence and presence pervade all societies. Making the history of peace and nonviolence better known and visible through peace museums, as ideal instruments of peace education for a broad public, became a passion to the author. Ideally, such museums not only inform but also inspire and encourage visitors to believe that peace (understood in the first instance as absence of war) is possible, and that everyone can contribute to this. As part of the development of a culture of peace he took great interest in promoting the history and heritage of peace through the development of city peace trails and, more generally, of peace tourism (offering a counterpart to war and battlefield tourism). Peace education is effective, hopeful, and life-affirming but its potential is hampered by lack of funding. ‘The world is over-armed and peace is underfunded’ said former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. The world is greatly in need of peace philanthropists such as Alfred Nobel and Andrew Carnegie from whose vision and munificence more than a century ago the world continues to benefit.