Process of Nomination and Selection
The Nobel Committee for Physics sends confidential forms to persons who are competent and qualified to nominate.
Qualified Nominators
The right to submit proposals for the award of a Nobel Prize in Physics shall, by statute, be enjoyed by:
1. Swedish and foreign members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences;
2. Members of the Nobel Committee for Physics;
3. Nobel Laureates in Physics;
4. Permanent and assistant professors in the sciences of Physics at the universities and institutes of technology of Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Iceland and Norway, and Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm;
5. Holders of corresponding chairs in at least six universities or university colleges selected by the Academy of Sciences with a view to ensuring the appropriate distribution over the different countries and their seats of learning; and
6. Other scientists from whom the Academy may see fit to invite proposals.
Decisions as to the selection of the teachers and scientists referred to in paragraphs 5 and 6 above shall be taken each year before the end of the month of September.
Selection of Nobel Laureates
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences is responsible for the selection of the Nobel Laureates in Physics from among the candidates recommended by the Nobel Committee for Physics. The Nobel Committee is the working body that screens the nominations and selects the final candidates. It consists of five members, but for many years, the Committee has included adjunct members with the same voting rights as members.
SELECTION PROCESS
September – Nomination forms are sent out. The Nobel Committee sends out confidential forms to around 3,000 people — selected professors at universities around the world, Nobel Laureates in Physics and Chemistry, and members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, among others.
February – Deadline for submission. The completed nomination forms must reach the Nobel Committee no later than 31 January of the following year. The Committee screens the nominations and selects the preliminary candidates. About 250–350 names are nominated as several nominators often submit the same name.
March-May – Consultation with experts. The Nobel Committee sends the names of the preliminary candidates to specially appointed experts for their
assessment of the candidates' work.
June-August – Writing of the report. The Nobel Committee puts together the report with recommendations to be submitted to the Academy. The report is signed by all members of the Committee.September – Committee submits recommendations. The Nobel Committee submits its report with recommendations on the final candidates to the members of the Academy. The report is discussed at two meetings of the Physics Section of the Academy.
October – Nobel Laureates are chosen. In early October, the Academy selects the Nobel Laureates in Physics through a majority vote. The decision is final and without appeal. The names of the Nobel Laureates are then announced.
December – Nobel Laureates receive their prize. The Nobel Prize Award Ceremony takes place on 10 December in Stockholm, where the Nobel Laureates receive their Nobel Prize, which consists of a Nobel Medal and Diploma, and a document confirming the prize amount.
The Physics Prize has been Awarded to 194 Nobel Laureates since 1901
“The said interest shall be divided into five equal parts, which shall be apportioned as follows: /- - -/ one part to the person who shall have made the most important discovery or invention within the field of physics ...”
(Excerpt from the will of Alfred Nobel)
Physics was the prize area which Alfred Nobel mentioned first in his will. At the end of the nineteenth century, many people considered physics as the foremost of the sciences, and perhaps Nobel saw it this way as well. His own research was also closely tied to physics.
CHEMISTRY
The Chemistry Prize has been awarded to 163 Nobel Laureates since 1901
CHEMISTRY PRIzE
1. The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1908
3.Shinya Yamanaka
Shinya Yamanaka
(Excerpt from the will of Alfred Nobel)
Alfred Nobel had broad cultural interests. During his early youth, he developed his literary interests which lasted throughout his life. His library consisted of a rich and broad selection of literature in different languages. During the last years of his life, he tried his hand as an author and began writing fiction. Literature was the fourth prize area Nobel mentioned in his will.
Died: 7 August 1941, Calcutta, India
Residence at the time of the award: India
Prize motivation: "because of his profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse, by which, with consummate skill, he has made his poetic thought, expressed in his own English words, a part of the literature of the West"
Language: Bengali and English
John Steinbeck
Born: 27 February 1902, Salinas, CA, USA
Died: 20 December 1968, New York, NY, USA
Residence at the time of the award: USA
Prize motivation: "for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humour and keen social perception"
Ernest Miller Hemingway
Born: 21 July 1899, Oak Park, IL, USA
Died: 2 July 1961, Ketchum, ID, USA
Residence at the time of the award: USA
Prize motivation: "for his mastery of the art of narrative, most recently demonstrated in The Old Man and the Sea, and for the influence that he has exerted on contemporary style"
Language: English
(pen-name of Guan Moye)
Born: 1955, Gaomi, China
Residence at the time of the award: China
Prize motivation: "who with hallucinatory realism merges folk tales, history and the contemporary"
The Nobel Prize in Literature 1982
Prize motivation: "for his novels and short stories, in which the fantastic and the realistic are combined in a richly composed world of imagination, reflecting a continent's life and conflicts"
Language: Spanish
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill
Born: 30 November 1874, Woodstock, United Kingdom
Died: 24 January 1965, London, United Kingdom
Residence at the time of the award: United Kingdom
Prize motivation: "for his mastery of historical and biographical description as well as for brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values"
Language: English
The Peace Prize has been Awarded to 124 Nobel Laureates since 1901
“The said interest shall be divided into five equal parts, which shall be apportioned as follows: /- - -/ one part to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.”
(Excerpt from the will of Alfred Nobel)
Alfred Nobel was interested in social issues and was engaged in the peace movement. His acquaintance with Bertha von Suttner (who was later awarded the 1905 Nobel Peace Prize) influenced his own views on peace. Perhaps his peace interest was also because his inventions were used in warfare and assassination attempts? Peace was the fifth and final prize area that Nobel mentioned in his will.
The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded by a committee of five persons who are chosen by the Norwegian Storting (Parliament of Norway), Oslo, Norway.
Most Popular Peace Laureates:
The Nobel Peace Prize 1964
Martin Luther King Jr.
Born: 15 January 1929, Atlanta, GA, USA
Died: 4 April 1968, Memphis, TN, USA
Residence at the time of the award: USA
Role: Leader of "Southern Christian Leadership Conference"
Field: Human rights
For Civil Rights and Social Justice
Martin Luther King dreamt that all inhabitants of the United States would be judged by their personal qualities and not by the color of their skin. In April 1968 he was murdered by a white racist. Four years earlier, he had received the Peace Prize for his nonviolent campaign against racism.
King adhered to Gandhi's philosophy of nonviolence. In 1955 he began his struggle to persuade the US Government to declare the policy of racial discrimination in the southern states unlawful. The racists responded with violence to the black people's nonviolent initiatives.
In 1963, 250,000 demonstrators marched to the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, where King gave his famous "I have a dream" speech. The following year, President Johnson got a law passed prohibiting all racial discrimination.
But King had powerful opponents. The head of the FBI, John Edgar Hoover, had him placed under surveillance as a communist, and when King opposed the administration's policy in Vietnam, he fell into disfavour with the President. It has still not been ascertained whether King's murderer acted on his own or was part of a conspiracy.
The Nobel Peace Prize 1979
Mother Teresa
Born: 26 August 1910, Uskup (now Skopje), Ottoman Empire (now Republic of Macedonia)
Died: 5 September 1997, Calcutta, India
Residence at the time of the award: India
Role: Leader of Missionaries of Charity, Calcutta
Saint in the Gutter - and Saint in Heaven?
At the age of twelve, the Catholic Albanian girl Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu heard a call. God demanded that she devote her life to Him. She entered a nunnery, received an education, and was sent to Calcutta in India to be a teacher. Her new name was Teresa. In India she received a second call from God: to help the poor while living among them. She founded a new sisterhood, Missionaries of Charity. Mother Teresa and her helpers built homes for orphans, nursing homes for lepers and hospices for the terminally ill in Calcutta. Mother Teresa's organization also engaged in aid work in other parts of the world.
The modest nun became known all over the world, and money poured in. But she was also criticized. It was alleged that dying people in the hospices were refused pain relief, whereas Mother Teresa herself accepted hospital treatment. She also held a conservative view on abortion. She was regarded as a spokesperson for the Vatican. In 2003, the Pope took the first step towards her canonization.
Nelson Mandela
Born: 18 July 1918, Qunu, South Africa
Residence at the time of the award: South Africa
Prize motivation: "for their work for the peaceful termination of the apartheid regime, and for laying the foundations for a new democratic South Africa"
Field: Negotiation, human rights
Rolihlahla Mandela was born into the Madiba clan in Mvezo, Transkei, on July 18, 1918, to Nonqaphi Nosekeni and Nkosi Mphakanyiswa Gadla Mandela, principal counsellor to the Acting King of the Thembu people, Jongintaba Dalindyebo.
His father died when he was a child and the young Rolihlahla became a ward of Jongintaba at the Great Place in Mqhekezweni. Hearing the elder’s stories of his ancestor’s valour during the wars of resistance, he dreamed also of making his own contribution to the freedom struggle of his people.
He attended primary school in Qunu where his teacher Miss Mdingane gave him the name Nelson, in accordance with the custom to give all school children “Christian” names.
He completed his Junior Certificate at Clarkebury Boarding Institute and went on to Healdtown, a Wesleyan secondary school of some repute, where he matriculated.
Nelson Mandela began his studies for a Bachelor of Arts Degree at the University College of Fort Hare but did not complete the degree there as he was expelled for joining in a student protest. He completed his BA through the University of South Africa and went back to Fort Hare for his graduation in 1943.
On his return to the Great Place at Mkhekezweni the King was furious and said if he didn’t return to Fort Hare he would arrange wives for him and his cousin Justice. They ran away to Johannesburg instead arriving there in 1941. There he worked as a mine security officer and after meeting Walter Sisulu, an estate agent, who introduced him to Lazar Sidelsky. He then did his articles through the firm of attorneys Witkin Eidelman and Sidelsky.
Meanwhile he began studying for an LLB at the University of the Witwatersrand. By his own admission he was a poor student and left the university in 1948 without graduating. He only started studying again through the University of London and also did not complete that degree.
In 1989, while in the last months of his imprisonment, he obtained an LLB through the University of South Africa. He graduated in absentia at a ceremony in Cape Town.
Nelson Mandela, while increasingly politically involved from 1942, only joined the African National Congress in 1944 when he helped formed the ANC Youth League.
In 1944 he married Walter Sisulu’s cousin Evelyn Mase, a nurse. They had two sons Madiba Thembekile ‘Thembi’ and Makgatho and two daughters both called Makaziwe, the first of whom died in infancy. They effectively separated in 1955 and divorced in 1958.
Nelson Mandela rose through the ranks of the ANCYL and through its work the ANC adopted in 1949 a more radical mass-based policy, the Programme of Action.
In 1952 he was chosen at the National Volunteer-in-Chief of the Defiance Campaign with Maulvi Cachalia as his Deputy. This campaign of civil disobedience against six unjust laws was a joint programme between the ANC and the South African Indian Congress. He and 19 others were charged under the Suppression of Communism Act for their part in the campaign and sentenced to nine months hard labour suspended for two years.
A two-year diploma in law on top of his BA allowed Nelson Mandela to practice law and in August 1952 he and Oliver Tambo established South Africa’s first black law firm, Mandela and Tambo.
At the end of 1952 he was banned for the first time. As a restricted person he was only able to secretly watch as the Freedom Charter was adopted at Kliptown on 26 June 1955.
Nelson Mandela was arrested in a countrywide police swoop of 156 activists on 5 December 1955, which led to the 1956 Treason Trial. Men and women of all races found themselves in the dock in the marathon trial that only ended when the last 28 accused, including Mr. Mandela were acquitted on 29 March 1961.
On 21 March 1960 police killed 69 unarmed people in a protest at Sharpeville against the pass laws. This led to the country’s first state of emergency on 31 March and the banning of the ANC and the Pan Africanist Congress on 8 April. Nelson Mandela and his colleagues in the Treason Trial were among the thousands detained during the state of emergency.
During the trial on 14 June 1958 Nelson Mandela married a social worker Winnie Madikizela. They had two daughters Zenani and Zindziswa. The couple divorced in 1996.
Days before the end of the Treason Trial Nelson Mandela travelled to Pietermaritzburg to speak at the All-in Africa Conference, which resolved he should write to Prime Minister Verwoerd requesting a non-racial national convention, and to warn that should he not agree there would be a national strike against South Africa becoming a republic. As soon as he and his colleagues were acquitted in the Treason Trial Nelson Mandela went underground and began planning a national strike for 29, 30 and 31 March. In the face of a massive mobilization of state security the strike was called off early. In June 1961 he was asked to lead the armed struggle and helped to establish Umkhonto weSizwe (Spear of the Nation).
On 11 January 1962 using the adopted name David Motsamayi, Nelson Mandela left South Africa secretly. He travelled around Africa and visited England to gain support for the armed struggle. He received military training in Morocco and Ethiopia and returned to South Africa in July 1962. He was arrested in a police roadblock outside Howick on 5 August while returning from KwaZulu-Natal where he briefed ANC President Chief Albert Luthuli about his trip.
He was charged with leaving the country illegally and inciting workers to strike. He was convicted and sentenced to five years imprisonment which he began serving in Pretoria Local Prison. On 27 May 1963 he was transferred to Robben Island and returned to Pretoria on 12 June. Within a month police raided a secret hide-out in Rivonia used by ANC and Communist Party activists and several of his comrades were arrested.
In October 1963 Nelson Mandela joined nine others on trial for sabotage in what became known as the Rivonia Trial. Facing the death penalty his words to the court at the end of his famous ‘Speech from the Dock’ on 20 April 1964 became immortalized:
“I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”
On 11 June 1964 Nelson Mandela and seven other accused Walter Sisulu, Ahmed Kathrada, Govan Mbeki, Raymond Mhlaba, Denis Goldberg, Elias Motsoaledi and Andrew Mlangeni were convicted and the next day were sentenced to life imprisonment. Denis Goldberg was sent to Pretoria Prison because he was white while the others went to Robben Island.
Nelson Mandela’s mother died in 1968 and his eldest son Thembi in 1969. He was not allowed to attend their funerals.
On 31 March 1982 Nelson Mandela was transferred to Pollsmoor Prison in Cape Town with Sisulu, Mhlaba and Mlangeni. Kathrada joined them in October. When he returned to the prison in November 1985 after prostate surgery Nelson Mandela was held alone. Justice Minister Kobie Coetsee had visited him in hospital. Later Nelson Mandela initiated talks about an ultimate meeting between the apartheid government and the ANC.
In 1988 he was treated for Tuberculosis and was transferred on 7 December 1988 to a house at Victor Verster Prison near Paarl. He was released from its gates on Sunday 11 February 1990, nine days after the unbanning of the ANC and the PAC and nearly four months after the release of the remaining Rivonia comrades. Throughout his imprisonment he had rejected at least three conditional offers of release.
Nelson Mandela immersed himself into official talks to end white minority rule and in 1991 was elected ANC President to replace his ailing friend Oliver Tambo. In 1993 he and President FW de Klerk jointly won the Nobel Peace Prize and on 27 April 1994 he voted for the first time in his life.
On 10 May 1994 he was inaugurated South Africa’s first democratically elected President. On his 80th birthday in 1998 he married Graça Machel, his third wife.
True to his promise Nelson Mandela stepped down in 1999 after one term as President. He continued to work with the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund he set up in 1995 and established the Nelson Mandela Foundation and The Mandela-Rhodes Foundation.
In April 2007 his grandson Mandla Mandela became head of the Mvezo Traditional Council at a ceremony at the Mvezo Grea
The Nobel Peace Prize 1991
Burma's Modern Symbol of Freedom
The Burmese Peace Prize Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi is the daughter of the legendary liberation movement leader Aung San. Following studies abroad, she returned home in 1988. From then on, she led the opposition to the military junta that had ruled Burma since 1962. She was one of the founders of the National League for Democracy (NLD), and was elected secretary general of the party. Inspired by Mahatma Gandhi, she opposed all use of violence and called on the military leaders to hand over power to a civilian government. The aim was to establish a democratic society in which the country's ethnic groups could cooperate in harmony.
In the election in 1990, the NLD won a clear victory, but the generals prevented
Barack H. Obama - Facts
Barack Obama was born to a white American mother, Ann Dunham, and a black Kenyan father,Barack Obama Sr., who were both young college students at the University of Hawaii. When his father left for Harvard, she and Barack stayed behind, and his father ultimately returned alone to Kenya, where he worked as a government economist. Barack's mother remarried an Indonesian oil manager and moved to Jakarta when Barack was six. He later recounted Indonesia as simultaneously lush and a harrowing exposure to tropical poverty. He returned to Hawaii, where he was brought up largely by his grandparents. The family lived in a small apartment - his grandfather was a furniture salesman and an unsuccessful insurance agent and his grandmother worked in a bank - but Barack managed to get into Punahou School, Hawaii's top prep academy. His father wrote to him regularly but, though he traveled around the world on official business for Kenya, he visited only once, when Barack was ten.
Obama attended Columbia University, but found New York's racial tension inescapable. He became a community organizer for a small Chicago church-based group for three years, helping poor South Side residents cope with a wave of plant closings. He then attended Harvard Law School, and in 1990 became the first African-American editor of the Harvard Law Review. He turned down a prestigious judicial clerkship, choosing instead to practice civil-rights law back in Chicago, representing victims of housing and employment discrimination and working on voting-rights legislation. He also began teaching at the University of Chicago Law School, and married Michelle Robinson, a fellow attorney. Eventually he was elected to the Illinois state senate, where his district included both Hyde Park and some of the poorest ghettos on the South Side.
In 2004 Obama was elected to the U.S. Senate as a Democrat, representing Illinois, and he gained national attention by giving a rousing and well-received keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention in Boston. In 2008 he ran for President, and despite having only four years of national political experience, he won. In January 2009, he was sworn in as the 44th President of the United States, and the first African-American ever elected to that position. Obama was reelected to a second term in November 2012.
Elie Wiesel (born September 30, 1928 in the then-Kingdom of Romania), the Andrew Mellon Professor of the Humanities at Boston University, is one of the most influential and honored witnesses to the Holocaust perpetrated against European Jewry by the Nazi regime of Adolf Hitler, also known as The Shoah (1985). A writer whose best-known book is his Holocaust memoir "Night", Wiesel was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 1985, the highest honor that the U.S. Congress can bestow. The following year, he won the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize for his tireless campaigning for human rights.In addition to being a witness to The Shoah and a public supporter of the state of Israel, other causes Wiesel has championed include the plight of Soviet and Ethiopian Jews, Nicaragua's Miskito Indians, and the Kurds. He opposed apartheid in South Africa, denounced genocide in Bosnia and is calling for international intervention in Darfur, Sudan.
Now almost 80 years old, Wiesel continues to teach, writer and give public speeches.
The Nobel Peace Prize 1984
Desmond Mpilo Tutu (born 7 October 1931) is a South African social rights activist and retired Anglican bishop who rose to worldwide fame during the 1980s as an opponent of apartheid. He was the first black South African Archbishop of Cape Town and primate of the Church of the Province of Southern Africa (now the Anglican Church of Southern Africa).Tutu's admirers see him as a man who since the demise of apartheid has been active in the defence of human rights and uses his high profile to campaign for the oppressed, though his consistent opposition to Israel and the United States has made him controversial. He has campaigned to fight AIDS, tuberculosis, poverty, racism, sexism, the imprisonment of Chelsea Manning, homophobia and transphobia. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984; the Albert Schweitzer Prize for Humanitarianism in 1986; the Pacem in Terris Award in 1987; the Sydney Peace Prize in 1999; the Gandhi Peace Prize in 2007;[1] and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009. He has also compiled several books of his speeches and sayings.
The Nobel Committee for Physics sends confidential forms to persons who are competent and qualified to nominate.
Qualified Nominators
The right to submit proposals for the award of a Nobel Prize in Physics shall, by statute, be enjoyed by:
1. Swedish and foreign members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences;
2. Members of the Nobel Committee for Physics;
3. Nobel Laureates in Physics;
4. Permanent and assistant professors in the sciences of Physics at the universities and institutes of technology of Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Iceland and Norway, and Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm;
5. Holders of corresponding chairs in at least six universities or university colleges selected by the Academy of Sciences with a view to ensuring the appropriate distribution over the different countries and their seats of learning; and
6. Other scientists from whom the Academy may see fit to invite proposals.
Decisions as to the selection of the teachers and scientists referred to in paragraphs 5 and 6 above shall be taken each year before the end of the month of September.
Selection of Nobel Laureates
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences is responsible for the selection of the Nobel Laureates in Physics from among the candidates recommended by the Nobel Committee for Physics. The Nobel Committee is the working body that screens the nominations and selects the final candidates. It consists of five members, but for many years, the Committee has included adjunct members with the same voting rights as members.
Who is eligible for the Nobel Prize in Physics?
The candidates eligible for the Physics Prize are those nominated by qualified persons who have received an invitation from the Nobel Committee to submit names for consideration. No one can nominate himself or herself.SELECTION PROCESS
September – Nomination forms are sent out. The Nobel Committee sends out confidential forms to around 3,000 people — selected professors at universities around the world, Nobel Laureates in Physics and Chemistry, and members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, among others.
February – Deadline for submission. The completed nomination forms must reach the Nobel Committee no later than 31 January of the following year. The Committee screens the nominations and selects the preliminary candidates. About 250–350 names are nominated as several nominators often submit the same name.
March-May – Consultation with experts. The Nobel Committee sends the names of the preliminary candidates to specially appointed experts for their
assessment of the candidates' work.
June-August – Writing of the report. The Nobel Committee puts together the report with recommendations to be submitted to the Academy. The report is signed by all members of the Committee.September – Committee submits recommendations. The Nobel Committee submits its report with recommendations on the final candidates to the members of the Academy. The report is discussed at two meetings of the Physics Section of the Academy.
October – Nobel Laureates are chosen. In early October, the Academy selects the Nobel Laureates in Physics through a majority vote. The decision is final and without appeal. The names of the Nobel Laureates are then announced.
December – Nobel Laureates receive their prize. The Nobel Prize Award Ceremony takes place on 10 December in Stockholm, where the Nobel Laureates receive their Nobel Prize, which consists of a Nobel Medal and Diploma, and a document confirming the prize amount.
PHYSICS
PHYSICSPRIzE!The Physics Prize has been Awarded to 194 Nobel Laureates since 1901
“The said interest shall be divided into five equal parts, which shall be apportioned as follows: /- - -/ one part to the person who shall have made the most important discovery or invention within the field of physics ...”
(Excerpt from the will of Alfred Nobel)
Physics was the prize area which Alfred Nobel mentioned first in his will. At the end of the nineteenth century, many people considered physics as the foremost of the sciences, and perhaps Nobel saw it this way as well. His own research was also closely tied to physics.
CHEMISTRY
The Chemistry Prize has been awarded to 163 Nobel Laureates since 1901
“The said interest shall be divided into five equal parts, which shall be apportioned as follows: /- - -/ one part to the person who shall have made the most important chemical discovery or improvement ...”
(Excerpt from the will of Alfred Nobel)
Chemistry was the most important science for Alfred Nobel’s own work. The development of his inventions as well as the industrial processes he employed were based upon chemical knowledge. Chemistry was the second prize area that Nobel mentioned in his will.
1. The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1908
Ernest Rutherford - Facts
Ernest Rutherford
Born: 31 August 1871, Nelson, New Zealand
Died: 19 October 1937, Cambridge, United Kingdom
Affiliation at the time of the award: Victoria University, Manchester, United Kingdom
Prize motivation: "for his investigations into the disintegration of the elements, and the chemistry of radioactive substances"
Field: Nuclear chemistry
Born: 31 August 1871, Nelson, New Zealand
Died: 19 October 1937, Cambridge, United Kingdom
Affiliation at the time of the award: Victoria University, Manchester, United Kingdom
Prize motivation: "for his investigations into the disintegration of the elements, and the chemistry of radioactive substances"
Field: Nuclear chemistry
2.Marie Curie - Facts
Marie Curie, née Sklodowska
Born: 7 November 1867, Warsaw, Russian Empire (now Poland)
Died: 4 July 1934, Sallanches, France
Prize motivation: "in recognition of the extraordinary services they have rendered by their joint researches on the radiation phenomena discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel"
Field: Nuclear physics
3.The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2012Born: 7 November 1867, Warsaw, Russian Empire (now Poland)
Died: 4 July 1934, Sallanches, France
Prize motivation: "in recognition of the extraordinary services they have rendered by their joint researches on the radiation phenomena discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel"
Field: Nuclear physics
Robert J. Lefkowitz
Born: 1943, New York, NY, USA
Affiliation at the time of the award: Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, NC, USA
Prize motivation: "for studies of G-protein-coupled receptors"
4. The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2012
Born: 1955, Little Falls, MN, USA
Affiliation at the time of the award: Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA, USA
Prize motivation: "for studies of G-protein-coupled receptors"
5. The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1954
Linus Carl Pauling
Born: 28 February 1901, Portland, OR, USA
Died: 19 August 1994, Big Sur, CA, USA
Affiliation at the time of the award: California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Pasadena, CA, USA
Prize motivation: "for his research into the nature of the chemical bond and its application to the elucidation of the structure of complex substances"
Field: Theoretical chemistry, chemical bonding
The atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were a turning point in Pauling's life. Together with other scientists he spoke and wrote against the nuclear arms race, and he was a driving force in the Pugwash movement. It sought to reduce the role of nuclear arms in international politics and was awarded the Peace Prize in 1995.
In 1959, Linus Pauling drafted the famous "Hiroshima Appeal", the concluding document issued after the Fifth World Conference against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs. He was one of the prime movers who urged the nuclear powers the USA, the Soviet Union and Great Britain to conclude a nuclear test ban treaty, which entered into force on 10 October 1963. On the same day, the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced that Linus Pauling had won the Peace Prize that had been held over from 1962.
MEDICINE PRIzE
The Medicine Prize has been Awarded to 201 Nobel Laureates since 1901
“The said interest shall be divided into five equal parts, which shall be apportioned as follows: /- - -/ one part to the person who shall have made the most important discovery within the domain of physiology or medicine ...”(Excerpt from the will of Alfred Nobel)
Alfred Nobel had an active interest in medical research. Through Karolinska Institutet, he came into contact with Swedish physiologist Jöns Johansson around 1890. Johansson worked in Nobel’s laboratory in Sevran, France during a brief period the same year. Physiology or medicine was the third prize area Nobel mentioned in his will.
Sir John B. Gurdon
MEDICINE PRIZE 2012 Gurdon challenged the dogma that the specialised cell is irreversibly committed to its fate.
Photo: U. Montan
Sir John B. Gurdon
Born: 1933, Dippenhall, United Kingdom
Affiliation at the time of the award: Gurdon Institute, Cambridge, United Kingdom
Prize motivation: "for the discovery that mature cells can be reprogrammed to become pluripotent"
pluripotent"
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2012
Shinya Yamanaka
Shinya Yamanaka
Born: 1962, Osaka, Japan
Affiliation at the time of the award: Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan, Gladstone Institutes, San Francisco, CA, USA
Prize motivation: "for the discovery that mature cells can be reprogrammed to become pluripotent"
Most Popular Medicine LaureatesBorn: 1943, New York, NY, USA
Affiliation at the time of the award: Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, NC, USA
Prize motivation: "for studies of G-protein-coupled receptors"
4. The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2012
Born: 1955, Little Falls, MN, USA
Affiliation at the time of the award: Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA, USA
Prize motivation: "for studies of G-protein-coupled receptors"
5. The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1954
Born: 28 February 1901, Portland, OR, USA
Died: 19 August 1994, Big Sur, CA, USA
Affiliation at the time of the award: California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Pasadena, CA, USA
Prize motivation: "for his research into the nature of the chemical bond and its application to the elucidation of the structure of complex substances"
Field: Theoretical chemistry, chemical bonding
Chemist and Peace Activist
One person, Linus Pauling, has won two undivided Nobel Prizes. In 1954 he won the Prize for Chemistry. Eight years later he was awarded the Peace Prize for his opposition to weapons of mass destruction.The atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were a turning point in Pauling's life. Together with other scientists he spoke and wrote against the nuclear arms race, and he was a driving force in the Pugwash movement. It sought to reduce the role of nuclear arms in international politics and was awarded the Peace Prize in 1995.
In 1959, Linus Pauling drafted the famous "Hiroshima Appeal", the concluding document issued after the Fifth World Conference against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs. He was one of the prime movers who urged the nuclear powers the USA, the Soviet Union and Great Britain to conclude a nuclear test ban treaty, which entered into force on 10 October 1963. On the same day, the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced that Linus Pauling had won the Peace Prize that had been held over from 1962.
MEDICINE PRIzE
The Medicine Prize has been Awarded to 201 Nobel Laureates since 1901
“The said interest shall be divided into five equal parts, which shall be apportioned as follows: /- - -/ one part to the person who shall have made the most important discovery within the domain of physiology or medicine ...”(Excerpt from the will of Alfred Nobel)
Alfred Nobel had an active interest in medical research. Through Karolinska Institutet, he came into contact with Swedish physiologist Jöns Johansson around 1890. Johansson worked in Nobel’s laboratory in Sevran, France during a brief period the same year. Physiology or medicine was the third prize area Nobel mentioned in his will.
Sir John B. Gurdon
MEDICINE PRIZE 2012 Gurdon challenged the dogma that the specialised cell is irreversibly committed to its fate.
Photo: U. Montan
Sir John B. Gurdon
Born: 1933, Dippenhall, United Kingdom
Affiliation at the time of the award: Gurdon Institute, Cambridge, United Kingdom
Prize motivation: "for the discovery that mature cells can be reprogrammed to become pluripotent"
pluripotent"
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2012
Shinya Yamanaka
Shinya Yamanaka
Born: 1962, Osaka, Japan
Affiliation at the time of the award: Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan, Gladstone Institutes, San Francisco, CA, USA
Prize motivation: "for the discovery that mature cells can be reprogrammed to become pluripotent"
Sir Alexander Fleming
Sir Alexander Fleming
Born: 6 August 1881, Lochfield, Scotland
Died: 11 March 1955, London, United Kingdom
Affiliation at the time of the award: London University, London, United Kingdom
Prize motivation: "for the discovery of penicillin and its curative effect in various infectious diseases"
2.Ivan Petrovich Pavlov
Born: 14 September 1849, Ryazan, Russia
Died: 27 February 1936, Leningrad, Russia
Affiliation at the time of the award: Military Medical Academy, St. Petersburg, Russia
Prize motivation: "in recognition of his work on the physiology of digestion, through which knowledge on vital aspects of the subject has
Born: 6 August 1881, Lochfield, Scotland
Died: 11 March 1955, London, United Kingdom
Affiliation at the time of the award: London University, London, United Kingdom
Prize motivation: "for the discovery of penicillin and its curative effect in various infectious diseases"
2.Ivan Petrovich Pavlov
Born: 14 September 1849, Ryazan, Russia
Died: 27 February 1936, Leningrad, Russia
Affiliation at the time of the award: Military Medical Academy, St. Petersburg, Russia
Prize motivation: "in recognition of his work on the physiology of digestion, through which knowledge on vital aspects of the subject has
3.Shinya Yamanaka
Shinya Yamanaka
Born: 1962, Osaka, Japan
Affiliation at the time of the award: Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan, Gladstone Institutes, San Francisco, CA, USA
Prize motivation: "for the discovery that mature cells can be reprogrammed to become pluripotent"
4.Sir John B. Gurdon
Born: 1933, Dippenhall, United Kingdom
Affiliation at the time of the award: Gurdon Institute, Cambridge, United Kingdom
Prize motivation: "for the discovery that mature cells can be reprogrammed to become pluripotent"
5.James Dewey Watson
Born: 6 April 1928, Chicago, IL, USA
Affiliation at the time of the award: Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA
Prize motivation: "for their discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material"
6.Robert Koch
Born: 11 December 1843, Clausthal (now Clausthal-Zellerfeld), Germany
Died: 27 May 1910, Baden-Baden, Germany
Affiliation at the time of the award: Institute for Infectious Diseases, Berlin, Germany
Prize motivation: "for his investigations and discoveries in relation to tuberculosis"
7.Elizabeth H. Blackburn
Born: 26 November 1948, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
Affiliation at the time of the award: University of California, San Francisco, CA, USA
Prize motivation: "for the discovery of how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase
Affiliation at the time of the award: Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan, Gladstone Institutes, San Francisco, CA, USA
Prize motivation: "for the discovery that mature cells can be reprogrammed to become pluripotent"
4.Sir John B. Gurdon
Born: 1933, Dippenhall, United Kingdom
Affiliation at the time of the award: Gurdon Institute, Cambridge, United Kingdom
Prize motivation: "for the discovery that mature cells can be reprogrammed to become pluripotent"
5.James Dewey Watson
Born: 6 April 1928, Chicago, IL, USA
Affiliation at the time of the award: Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA
Prize motivation: "for their discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material"
6.Robert Koch
Born: 11 December 1843, Clausthal (now Clausthal-Zellerfeld), Germany
Died: 27 May 1910, Baden-Baden, Germany
Affiliation at the time of the award: Institute for Infectious Diseases, Berlin, Germany
Prize motivation: "for his investigations and discoveries in relation to tuberculosis"
7.Elizabeth H. Blackburn
Born: 26 November 1948, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
Affiliation at the time of the award: University of California, San Francisco, CA, USA
Prize motivation: "for the discovery of how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase
8.Francis Harry Compton Crick
The Literature Prize has been Awarded to 109 Nobel Laureates since 1901
“The said interest shall be divided into five equal parts, which shall be apportioned as follows: /- - -/ one part to the person who shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction ...”
Alfred Nobel had broad cultural interests. During his early youth, he developed his literary interests which lasted throughout his life. His library consisted of a rich and broad selection of literature in different languages. During the last years of his life, he tried his hand as an author and began writing fiction. Literature was the fourth prize area Nobel mentioned in his will.
Most Popular Literature Laureates:
The Nobel Prize in Literature 1913
Rabindranath Tagore
Born: 7 May 1861, Calcutta, IndiaDied: 7 August 1941, Calcutta, India
Residence at the time of the award: India
Prize motivation: "because of his profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse, by which, with consummate skill, he has made his poetic thought, expressed in his own English words, a part of the literature of the West"
Language: Bengali and English
The Nobel Prize in Literature 1962
John Steinbeck - Facts
Born: 27 February 1902, Salinas, CA, USA
Died: 20 December 1968, New York, NY, USA
Residence at the time of the award: USA
Prize motivation: "for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humour and keen social perception"
The Nobel Prize in Literature 1954
Ernest Miller Hemingway
Born: 21 July 1899, Oak Park, IL, USA
Died: 2 July 1961, Ketchum, ID, USA
Residence at the time of the award: USA
Prize motivation: "for his mastery of the art of narrative, most recently demonstrated in The Old Man and the Sea, and for the influence that he has exerted on contemporary style"
Language: English
The Nobel Prize in Literature 2012
Mo Yan
Born: 1955, Gaomi, China
Residence at the time of the award: China
Prize motivation: "who with hallucinatory realism merges folk tales, history and the contemporary"
The Nobel Prize in Literature 1982
Gabriel García Márquez
Born: 6 March 1928, Aracataca, Colombia
Residence at the time of the award: ColombiaPrize motivation: "for his novels and short stories, in which the fantastic and the realistic are combined in a richly composed world of imagination, reflecting a continent's life and conflicts"
Language: Spanish
The Nobel Prize in Literature 1953
Born: 30 November 1874, Woodstock, United Kingdom
Died: 24 January 1965, London, United Kingdom
Residence at the time of the award: United Kingdom
Prize motivation: "for his mastery of historical and biographical description as well as for brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values"
Language: English
The Peace Prize has been Awarded to 124 Nobel Laureates since 1901
(Excerpt from the will of Alfred Nobel)
Alfred Nobel was interested in social issues and was engaged in the peace movement. His acquaintance with Bertha von Suttner (who was later awarded the 1905 Nobel Peace Prize) influenced his own views on peace. Perhaps his peace interest was also because his inventions were used in warfare and assassination attempts? Peace was the fifth and final prize area that Nobel mentioned in his will.
The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded by a committee of five persons who are chosen by the Norwegian Storting (Parliament of Norway), Oslo, Norway.
Most Popular Peace Laureates:
The Nobel Peace Prize 1964
Martin Luther King Jr.
Born: 15 January 1929, Atlanta, GA, USA
Died: 4 April 1968, Memphis, TN, USA
Residence at the time of the award: USA
Role: Leader of "Southern Christian Leadership Conference"
Field: Human rights
For Civil Rights and Social Justice
Martin Luther King dreamt that all inhabitants of the United States would be judged by their personal qualities and not by the color of their skin. In April 1968 he was murdered by a white racist. Four years earlier, he had received the Peace Prize for his nonviolent campaign against racism.
King adhered to Gandhi's philosophy of nonviolence. In 1955 he began his struggle to persuade the US Government to declare the policy of racial discrimination in the southern states unlawful. The racists responded with violence to the black people's nonviolent initiatives.
In 1963, 250,000 demonstrators marched to the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, where King gave his famous "I have a dream" speech. The following year, President Johnson got a law passed prohibiting all racial discrimination.
But King had powerful opponents. The head of the FBI, John Edgar Hoover, had him placed under surveillance as a communist, and when King opposed the administration's policy in Vietnam, he fell into disfavour with the President. It has still not been ascertained whether King's murderer acted on his own or was part of a conspiracy.
The Nobel Peace Prize 1979
Born: 26 August 1910, Uskup (now Skopje), Ottoman Empire (now Republic of Macedonia)
Died: 5 September 1997, Calcutta, India
Residence at the time of the award: India
Role: Leader of Missionaries of Charity, Calcutta
Saint in the Gutter - and Saint in Heaven?
At the age of twelve, the Catholic Albanian girl Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu heard a call. God demanded that she devote her life to Him. She entered a nunnery, received an education, and was sent to Calcutta in India to be a teacher. Her new name was Teresa. In India she received a second call from God: to help the poor while living among them. She founded a new sisterhood, Missionaries of Charity. Mother Teresa and her helpers built homes for orphans, nursing homes for lepers and hospices for the terminally ill in Calcutta. Mother Teresa's organization also engaged in aid work in other parts of the world.
The modest nun became known all over the world, and money poured in. But she was also criticized. It was alleged that dying people in the hospices were refused pain relief, whereas Mother Teresa herself accepted hospital treatment. She also held a conservative view on abortion. She was regarded as a spokesperson for the Vatican. In 2003, the Pope took the first step towards her canonization.
The Nobel Peace Prize 1993
Born: 18 July 1918, Qunu, South Africa
Residence at the time of the award: South Africa
Prize motivation: "for their work for the peaceful termination of the apartheid regime, and for laying the foundations for a new democratic South Africa"
Field: Negotiation, human rights
Rolihlahla Mandela was born into the Madiba clan in Mvezo, Transkei, on July 18, 1918, to Nonqaphi Nosekeni and Nkosi Mphakanyiswa Gadla Mandela, principal counsellor to the Acting King of the Thembu people, Jongintaba Dalindyebo.
His father died when he was a child and the young Rolihlahla became a ward of Jongintaba at the Great Place in Mqhekezweni. Hearing the elder’s stories of his ancestor’s valour during the wars of resistance, he dreamed also of making his own contribution to the freedom struggle of his people.
He attended primary school in Qunu where his teacher Miss Mdingane gave him the name Nelson, in accordance with the custom to give all school children “Christian” names.
He completed his Junior Certificate at Clarkebury Boarding Institute and went on to Healdtown, a Wesleyan secondary school of some repute, where he matriculated.
Nelson Mandela began his studies for a Bachelor of Arts Degree at the University College of Fort Hare but did not complete the degree there as he was expelled for joining in a student protest. He completed his BA through the University of South Africa and went back to Fort Hare for his graduation in 1943.
On his return to the Great Place at Mkhekezweni the King was furious and said if he didn’t return to Fort Hare he would arrange wives for him and his cousin Justice. They ran away to Johannesburg instead arriving there in 1941. There he worked as a mine security officer and after meeting Walter Sisulu, an estate agent, who introduced him to Lazar Sidelsky. He then did his articles through the firm of attorneys Witkin Eidelman and Sidelsky.
Meanwhile he began studying for an LLB at the University of the Witwatersrand. By his own admission he was a poor student and left the university in 1948 without graduating. He only started studying again through the University of London and also did not complete that degree.
In 1989, while in the last months of his imprisonment, he obtained an LLB through the University of South Africa. He graduated in absentia at a ceremony in Cape Town.
Nelson Mandela, while increasingly politically involved from 1942, only joined the African National Congress in 1944 when he helped formed the ANC Youth League.
In 1944 he married Walter Sisulu’s cousin Evelyn Mase, a nurse. They had two sons Madiba Thembekile ‘Thembi’ and Makgatho and two daughters both called Makaziwe, the first of whom died in infancy. They effectively separated in 1955 and divorced in 1958.
Nelson Mandela rose through the ranks of the ANCYL and through its work the ANC adopted in 1949 a more radical mass-based policy, the Programme of Action.
In 1952 he was chosen at the National Volunteer-in-Chief of the Defiance Campaign with Maulvi Cachalia as his Deputy. This campaign of civil disobedience against six unjust laws was a joint programme between the ANC and the South African Indian Congress. He and 19 others were charged under the Suppression of Communism Act for their part in the campaign and sentenced to nine months hard labour suspended for two years.
A two-year diploma in law on top of his BA allowed Nelson Mandela to practice law and in August 1952 he and Oliver Tambo established South Africa’s first black law firm, Mandela and Tambo.
At the end of 1952 he was banned for the first time. As a restricted person he was only able to secretly watch as the Freedom Charter was adopted at Kliptown on 26 June 1955.
Nelson Mandela was arrested in a countrywide police swoop of 156 activists on 5 December 1955, which led to the 1956 Treason Trial. Men and women of all races found themselves in the dock in the marathon trial that only ended when the last 28 accused, including Mr. Mandela were acquitted on 29 March 1961.
On 21 March 1960 police killed 69 unarmed people in a protest at Sharpeville against the pass laws. This led to the country’s first state of emergency on 31 March and the banning of the ANC and the Pan Africanist Congress on 8 April. Nelson Mandela and his colleagues in the Treason Trial were among the thousands detained during the state of emergency.
During the trial on 14 June 1958 Nelson Mandela married a social worker Winnie Madikizela. They had two daughters Zenani and Zindziswa. The couple divorced in 1996.
Days before the end of the Treason Trial Nelson Mandela travelled to Pietermaritzburg to speak at the All-in Africa Conference, which resolved he should write to Prime Minister Verwoerd requesting a non-racial national convention, and to warn that should he not agree there would be a national strike against South Africa becoming a republic. As soon as he and his colleagues were acquitted in the Treason Trial Nelson Mandela went underground and began planning a national strike for 29, 30 and 31 March. In the face of a massive mobilization of state security the strike was called off early. In June 1961 he was asked to lead the armed struggle and helped to establish Umkhonto weSizwe (Spear of the Nation).
On 11 January 1962 using the adopted name David Motsamayi, Nelson Mandela left South Africa secretly. He travelled around Africa and visited England to gain support for the armed struggle. He received military training in Morocco and Ethiopia and returned to South Africa in July 1962. He was arrested in a police roadblock outside Howick on 5 August while returning from KwaZulu-Natal where he briefed ANC President Chief Albert Luthuli about his trip.
He was charged with leaving the country illegally and inciting workers to strike. He was convicted and sentenced to five years imprisonment which he began serving in Pretoria Local Prison. On 27 May 1963 he was transferred to Robben Island and returned to Pretoria on 12 June. Within a month police raided a secret hide-out in Rivonia used by ANC and Communist Party activists and several of his comrades were arrested.
In October 1963 Nelson Mandela joined nine others on trial for sabotage in what became known as the Rivonia Trial. Facing the death penalty his words to the court at the end of his famous ‘Speech from the Dock’ on 20 April 1964 became immortalized:
“I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”
On 11 June 1964 Nelson Mandela and seven other accused Walter Sisulu, Ahmed Kathrada, Govan Mbeki, Raymond Mhlaba, Denis Goldberg, Elias Motsoaledi and Andrew Mlangeni were convicted and the next day were sentenced to life imprisonment. Denis Goldberg was sent to Pretoria Prison because he was white while the others went to Robben Island.
Nelson Mandela’s mother died in 1968 and his eldest son Thembi in 1969. He was not allowed to attend their funerals.
On 31 March 1982 Nelson Mandela was transferred to Pollsmoor Prison in Cape Town with Sisulu, Mhlaba and Mlangeni. Kathrada joined them in October. When he returned to the prison in November 1985 after prostate surgery Nelson Mandela was held alone. Justice Minister Kobie Coetsee had visited him in hospital. Later Nelson Mandela initiated talks about an ultimate meeting between the apartheid government and the ANC.
In 1988 he was treated for Tuberculosis and was transferred on 7 December 1988 to a house at Victor Verster Prison near Paarl. He was released from its gates on Sunday 11 February 1990, nine days after the unbanning of the ANC and the PAC and nearly four months after the release of the remaining Rivonia comrades. Throughout his imprisonment he had rejected at least three conditional offers of release.
Nelson Mandela immersed himself into official talks to end white minority rule and in 1991 was elected ANC President to replace his ailing friend Oliver Tambo. In 1993 he and President FW de Klerk jointly won the Nobel Peace Prize and on 27 April 1994 he voted for the first time in his life.
On 10 May 1994 he was inaugurated South Africa’s first democratically elected President. On his 80th birthday in 1998 he married Graça Machel, his third wife.
True to his promise Nelson Mandela stepped down in 1999 after one term as President. He continued to work with the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund he set up in 1995 and established the Nelson Mandela Foundation and The Mandela-Rhodes Foundation.
In April 2007 his grandson Mandla Mandela became head of the Mvezo Traditional Council at a ceremony at the Mvezo Grea
The Burmese Peace Prize Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi is the daughter of the legendary liberation movement leader Aung San. Following studies abroad, she returned home in 1988. From then on, she led the opposition to the military junta that had ruled Burma since 1962. She was one of the founders of the National League for Democracy (NLD), and was elected secretary general of the party. Inspired by Mahatma Gandhi, she opposed all use of violence and called on the military leaders to hand over power to a civilian government. The aim was to establish a democratic society in which the country's ethnic groups could cooperate in harmony.
In the election in 1990, the NLD won a clear victory, but the generals prevented
Barack H. Obama - Facts
Obama attended Columbia University, but found New York's racial tension inescapable. He became a community organizer for a small Chicago church-based group for three years, helping poor South Side residents cope with a wave of plant closings. He then attended Harvard Law School, and in 1990 became the first African-American editor of the Harvard Law Review. He turned down a prestigious judicial clerkship, choosing instead to practice civil-rights law back in Chicago, representing victims of housing and employment discrimination and working on voting-rights legislation. He also began teaching at the University of Chicago Law School, and married Michelle Robinson, a fellow attorney. Eventually he was elected to the Illinois state senate, where his district included both Hyde Park and some of the poorest ghettos on the South Side.
In 2004 Obama was elected to the U.S. Senate as a Democrat, representing Illinois, and he gained national attention by giving a rousing and well-received keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention in Boston. In 2008 he ran for President, and despite having only four years of national political experience, he won. In January 2009, he was sworn in as the 44th President of the United States, and the first African-American ever elected to that position. Obama was reelected to a second term in November 2012.
Elie Wiesel (born September 30, 1928 in the then-Kingdom of Romania), the Andrew Mellon Professor of the Humanities at Boston University, is one of the most influential and honored witnesses to the Holocaust perpetrated against European Jewry by the Nazi regime of Adolf Hitler, also known as The Shoah (1985). A writer whose best-known book is his Holocaust memoir "Night", Wiesel was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 1985, the highest honor that the U.S. Congress can bestow. The following year, he won the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize for his tireless campaigning for human rights.In addition to being a witness to The Shoah and a public supporter of the state of Israel, other causes Wiesel has championed include the plight of Soviet and Ethiopian Jews, Nicaragua's Miskito Indians, and the Kurds. He opposed apartheid in South Africa, denounced genocide in Bosnia and is calling for international intervention in Darfur, Sudan.
Now almost 80 years old, Wiesel continues to teach, writer and give public speeches.
The Nobel Peace Prize 1984
Desmond Tutu
Desmond Mpilo Tutu (born 7 October 1931) is a South African social rights activist and retired Anglican bishop who rose to worldwide fame during the 1980s as an opponent of apartheid. He was the first black South African Archbishop of Cape Town and primate of the Church of the Province of Southern Africa (now the Anglican Church of Southern Africa).Tutu's admirers see him as a man who since the demise of apartheid has been active in the defence of human rights and uses his high profile to campaign for the oppressed, though his consistent opposition to Israel and the United States has made him controversial. He has campaigned to fight AIDS, tuberculosis, poverty, racism, sexism, the imprisonment of Chelsea Manning, homophobia and transphobia. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984; the Albert Schweitzer Prize for Humanitarianism in 1986; the Pacem in Terris Award in 1987; the Sydney Peace Prize in 1999; the Gandhi Peace Prize in 2007;[1] and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009. He has also compiled several books of his speeches and sayings.
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