Category: Nobel Peace Prize Recipient

Jane Addams
Jane Addams


Jane Addams was a settlement social worker, public philosopher, sociologist, author, and leader in women's suffrage and world peace. She was the second woman and the first American woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, in 1931, and is recognized as the founder of the social work profession in the United States. Addams was born on September 6, 1860, in Cedarville, Illinois. Her father, John Addams, was a founding member of the Illinois Republican Party and served as an Illinois State Senator from 1855 to 1870. He was friends […]
Emily Greene Balch
Emily Greene Balch


Emily Greene Balch was an American sociologist, political scientist and economist, and a leader in the women’s peace movement. She received the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1946 jointly with John Raleigh Mott for her work with the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF). Blach was born January 8, 1867, in Jamaica Plain, now part of Boston, Massachusetts. She graduated from Bryn Mawr College in 1889, a member of the first graduating class there. She completed an independent study in sociology from 1889-1890, used a fellowship from Bryn […]
Shirin Ebadi
Shirin Ebadi


Shirin Ebadi is an Iranian lawyer, former judge and human rights activist who founded the Defenders of Human Rights Center in Iran. In 2003, Ebadi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts for democracy and human rights, especially for the rights of women and children. She was the first Iranian and the first Muslim woman to receive the prize. Ebadi was born in Hamadan, Iran, on June 21,1947. She graduated from the University of Tehran with a law degree in 1969 and then with a doctorate degree in […]
Wangari Maathai
Wangari Maathai


Wangari Muta Maathai was a Kenyan environmental political activist who was the first African woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, in 2004. She founded the Green Belt Movement, an environmental non-governmental organization focused on the planting of trees, environmental conservation and women's rights. Maathai was born April 1, 1940, in the village of Ihithe, Nyeri District, in Kenya. Her family was Kikuyu, the most populous ethnic group in Kenya. She was one of some 300 Kenyans selected to study in the United States in 1960 through a program funded […]
Mairead Maguire
Mairead Maguire


Mairead Maguire is a peace activist from Northern Ireland and a co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize with Betty Williams in 1976 for their work as co-founders of the Women for Peace, which later became the Community for Peace People, an organization dedicated to encouraging a peaceful resolution to violence in Northern Ireland. Maguire was born on January 27, 1944, in Belfast, Northern Ireland. She attended a private Catholic school until the age of 14, after which her family could not afford the tuition. After working as a babysitter, she […]
Rigoberta Menchu
Rigoberta Menchu


Rigoberta Menchú has been a passionate spokesperson for the rights of indigenous peoples. She won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1992 for her work on behalf of the indigenous groups of Guatemala, her native country. However, her work has made her a leading voice for the rights of indigenous peoples throughout the Western Hemisphere. Rigoberta Menchú was born on January 9, 1959, in Chimel, a village in the Quiché province in the mountainous northwest region of Guatemala. Menchú started working on southern coastal cotton and coffee plantations when she was […]
Nadia Murad
Nadia Murad


Nadia Murad is an Iraqi Yazidi human rights activist and a co-recipient of the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize with Denis Mukwege for “their efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war and armed conflict.” She is the first Iraqi and Yazidi to be awarded a Nobel Prize. Murad was born on March 10, 1993, in Kocho, Iraq. In 2014, she was kidnapped by Islamic State fighters who attacked her village and killed several hundred people, including her mother and six of her siblings. Held as […]
Maria Ressa
Maria Ressa


Maria Ressa is a Filipino and American journalist and a co-recipient of the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize “for their efforts to safeguard freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace.” Ressa was born on Oct. 2, 1963, in Manila, Philippines, and moved with her family to New Jersey when she was 10 years old. She graduated from Princeton University in 1986 with a bachelor’s degree in English and certificates in theater and dance. She was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to study political theater at the University […]
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf


Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has served as the 24th president of Liberia and the first elected female head of state in Africa since 2006. In 2011, Sirleaf received a Nobel Peace Prize for her peace work in Liberia and work for women's rights. Sirleaf was born in Monrovia on October 29, 1938. She grew up in Liberia and attended high school at the College of West Africa in Monrovia. She studied at Madison Business College, the University of Colorado and Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, where she obtained a master's […]
Bertha von Suttner
Bertha von Suttner


Bertha von Suttner, writer and peace activist, was the sixth person and the first woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize, in 1905. Suttner was born June 9, 1843, in Prague, Austria, to a noble family. Her father died before her birth, and she was raised by her mother, whose financial mismanagement necessitated that Suttner, at age 30, take a position as teacher-companion to the Suttner daughters. There, she fell in love with her charges' brother, Arthur, who was seven years her junior. She left employment with the family and […]