George Shultz, who served as U.S. secretary of state in the Ronald Reagan administration, died Saturday at the age of 100.

His death was announced on Sunday by the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, where Shultz had worked for more than three decades.

"Our colleague was a great American statesman and a true patriot in every sense of the word. He will be remembered in history as a man who made the world a better place," Condoleezza Rice, a former secretary of state and current director of the Hoover Institution, said in a statement issued by the Hoover Institution.

Shultz is one of only two Americans to have held four different federal cabinet-level positions. He served as secretary of labor, director of the Office of Management and Budget, and secretary of the treasury in the Richard Nixon administration. He was secretary of state in the Reagan era from 1982 to 1989.

Analysts noted that Shultz, a firm believer in diplomacy, helped steer the Cold War to a peaceful end. He played a crucial role in negotiating the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty between Washington and Moscow, which leaders of both sides signed in 1987.

Citing Russian violations, the Donald Trump administration formally withdrew from the treaty in August 2019. Born in New York City in December 1920, Shultz graduated from Princeton University before serving in the U.S. Marine Corps in World War II. 

He later earned a PhD in industrial economics in 1949 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.