Sharp is part of a tradition of academics whose work finds expression among political interventionists outside the academy — think of Noam Chomsky’s writing on United States foreign policy or Cornel West’s work on racial inequality. But Sharp himself will not presume to know which countries need reform. “I don’t talk about what needs changing or where,” he says quietly in his soft Midwestern voice. “It’s up to the people themselves to decide to change.”

Sharp’s modesty can at times seem at odds with his stature. His office is tiny and cluttered and dusty, full of boxes left unpacked from the day he moved to it in 2004. “I’m sorry for the mess,” he says at one point, pointing to the boxes and piles of books. When he remarks that he still can’t find his Oxford English Dictionary, I tell him it’s available online and he looks bemused. Sharp’s office is not a tech-enabled zone. There is a sign hanging on the wall — written by Raqib, who has been with him for 10 years — instructing him how to send an e-mail. “To open a blank file. . . . ” He does not use Facebook or Twitter or even read his organization’s Web site. The Albert Einstein Institution consists of him, Raqib and an assistant she found working at a coffee shop around the corner. Sharp’s only sanctuary away from his work is his orchid room, which visitors are not invited to visit.

But to listen to those whom Sharp has inspired is to understand his place among the great teachers of peaceful resistance. “If there is one powerful message to send to the world — that nonviolent social change is the way to change it for the better — then there is nobody else who deserves the Nobel Peace Prize more than Gene,” says Srdja Popovic, a young Serb who first encountered Sharp’s work during the revolt against Slobodan Milosevic in 2000, and who now runs the Center for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies in Belgrade. Popovic calls Sharp “the Master” and uses his theories while teaching activists around the world, including those in Syria, Iran and the Maldives. (In Sharp’s office hangs a poster that reads, “GOTOV JE!” — “He’s finished!” — the rallying cry that Popovic and his comrades sent to thousands of cellphones during their first attempt at overthrowing the Serbian dictator.)

And according to Dr. Mary Elizabeth King, a professor of peace and conflict studies at the University for Peace, an affiliate of the United Nations, “Gene has, in my opinion, probably done more for building peace than any person alive. Because without broader knowledge of how to fight for social change and justice without violence, it is unlikely that more peaceable societies will evolve. Postconflict societies need Gene’s writings to help prevent a relapse into civil war.”

Sharp is uncomfortable talking about himself, and he shifts in his chair when I ask him about his early years. He was raised by a Protestant clergyman who moved the family around a lot before settling in Columbus, Ohio, when Sharp was 15. “My childhood was not important,” he says, adding that he was aware of racial inequality and participated in a luncheonette sit-in. “I knew there was a war and a Nazi system,” he says. “That, and the atomic bomb influenced me, I suppose. And later, as an undergraduate, Gandhi.”