Nobel Prize

Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.), thirty-ninth president of the United States, was born October 1, 1924, in the small farming town of Plains, Georgia, and grew up in the nearby community of Archery. His father, James Earl Carter, Sr., was a farmer and businessman; his mother, Lillian Gordy, a registered nurse. He was educated…

Jane Addams (born Laura Jane Addams, September 6, 1860-May 21, 1935) won worldwide recognition in the first third of the twentieth century as a pioneer social worker in America, as a feminist, and as an internationalist. She was born in Cedarville, Illinois, the eighth of nine children. Her father was a prosperous miller and local…

Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei is the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), an intergovernmental organization that is part of the United Nations system. He was appointed to the office effective 1 December 1997, and reappointed to a third term in September 2005. From 1984, Dr. ElBaradei was a senior staff member of the…

Arthur Henderson (September 13, 1863-October 20, 1935) was born in Glasgow, the son of David Henderson, a manual worker. When his father died in 1872, leaving the family in poverty, Arthur left school to work in a photographer’s shop. Upon his mother’s remarriage the family moved to Newcastle-upon-Tyne, where Arthur returned to school for three…

Dag Hjalmar Agne Carl Hammarskjöld (July 29, 1905-September 18, 1961) was the youngest of four sons of Agnes (Almquist) Hammarskjöld and Hjalmar Hammarskjöld, prime minister of Sweden, member of the Hague Tribunal, governor of Uppland, chairman of the Board of the . In a brief piece written for a radio program in 1953, Dag Hammarskjöld…

Elie Ducommun (February 19, 1833-December 7, 1906), Swiss journalist, eloquent lecturer, business executive, steadfast advocate of peace, was born in Geneva, the son of a clock maker whose original home was in Neuchâtel. Early in his boyhood he gave evidence of his capacity to make the most of his remarkable talent and intelligence by intense…

Carl von Ossietzky (October 3, 1889-May 4, 1938) was born in Hamburg, though his father, a civil servant, had originally come from a village near the German-Polish border. Seven years after Ossietzky’s father died in 1891, his mother married Gustav Walther, a Social Democrat, who was influential in shaping Ossietzky’s later political attitudes. Ossietzky’s academic…

Linus Pauling (February 28, 1901- ), the only person who has won two undivided Nobel Prizes, was born in Portland, Oregon, the son of a pharmacist, Henry H.W. Pauling, and Lucy (Darling) Pauling. He attended Washington High School in Portland but because of a technicality did not receive his diploma until 1962, long after he…

Rigoberta Menchú was born on January 9, 1959 to a poor Indian peasant family and raised in the Quiche branch of the Maya culture. In her early years she helped with the family farm work, either in the northern highlands where her family lived, or on the Pacific coast, where both adults and children went…

Charles Albert Gobat (May 21, 1843-March 16, 1914) was born at Tramelan, Switzerland, the son of a Protestant pastor and the nephew of Samuel Gobat, a missionary who became bishop of Jerusalem. A brilliant student, he studied at the Universities of Basel, Heidelberg, Bern, and Paris, taking his doctorate in law, summa cum laude, from…