Nobel Timeline

1901

First Nobel Peace Prize awarded to
Jean Henry Dunant, founder of the
International Committee of the Red
Cross, Geneva and originator of the
Geneva Convention, and Frédéric Passy,
founder and President of first French
peace society.

1906

Theodore Roosevelt is the first
statesman and sitting U.S. president to
win a Nobel Peace Prize. The New York
Times later commented that "a broad
smile illuminated the face of the globe
when the prize was awarded ... to the
most warlike citizen of these United
States."

1914

The Prize is witheld for the first time
since it's creation. In the statutes of
the Nobel Foundation it says: "If none
of the works under consideration is
found to be of the importance indicated
in the first paragraph, the prize money
shall be reserved until the following
year." The Nobel Peace Prize was not
awarded during either World War I or
World War II.

1919

Woodrow Wilson becomes the second
sitting U.S. president to win the Prize
when he was honored for his Fourteen
Points peace program and his work in
achieving inclusion of the Covenant
of the League of Nations in the 1919
Treaty of Versailles.

1931

Jane Addams finally cinches the
Prize after being nominated 91 times
between 1916 and 1931. She was
an American sociologist and the
International President of the Women's
International League for Peace and
Freedom.

1939

Adolf Hitler nominated by E.G.C. Brandt,
member of the Swedish parliament.
Brandt changed his mind, however, and
the nomination was withdrawn in a
letter dated 1 February 1939.

1945

Cordell Hull, former U.S. Secretary of
State and prominent participant in the
origination of United Nations, is awarded
the prize.

1945
Joseph Stalin nominated for his efforts
to end World War II. He would be
nominated again in 1948 but never
awarded the prize.

1948

Mahatma Gandhi considered by the
Norwegian Nobel Committee for
a posthumus award after he was
assassinated in January. Instead, they
decided to make no award that year on
the grounds that "there was no suitable
living candidate."

1953

Winston Churchill is awarded the Nobel
Prize in Literature, not the Nobel Peace
Prize as is commonly believed.

1964

Martin Luther King Jr. is honored with
the Prize. Gunnar Jahn, Chairman of
the Nobel Committee, explained in the
presentation speech: "He is the first
person in the Western world to have
shown us that a struggle can be waged
without violence. He is the first to make
the message of brotherly love a reality
in the course of his struggle, and he has
brought this message to all men, to all
nations and races."

1973

U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger
is awarded the prize jointly with Le
Duc Tho, a politician in the Democratic
Republic of Vietnam, for their efforts in
negotiating the Paris Peace Accords. Le
Duc Tho said he was not in the position
to accept the Prize, citing the situation
in Vietnam and making him the first
and only laureate to decline the award.

1979

Mother Theresa is awarded the prize
"for work undertaken in the struggle to
overcome poverty and distress in the
world, which also constitute a threat to
peace."

1990

Mikhail Gorbachev is awarded the Prize
for "for his leading role in the peace
process which today characterizes
important parts of the international
community."

1994

Yasser Arafat, President of the
Palestinian National Authority, Shimon
Peres, Foreign Minister of Israel, and
Yitzhak Rabin, Prime Minister of Israel,
controversially split the Prize "for
their efforts to create peace in the
Middle East" after negotiating the
Oslo Agreement. Francis Sejersted,
Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel
Committee, set a precedent in his 1994
presentation speech by stating "[E]
very award must contain an element of
entering into a process, a process with
a promise of peace. The Nobel Peace
Prize is awarded both in recognition of
efforts which have been made, and to
encourage still further efforts. There
can be no doubt that that is also how
Alfred Nobel intended the prize to
work."

2002

Jimmy Carter awarded the Prize "for
his decades of untiring effort to find
peaceful solutions to international
conflicts, to advance democracy and
human rights, and to promote economic
and social development."

2007

Al Gore wins the Prize, along with the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change, "for their efforts to build up
and disseminate greater knowledge
about man-made climate change, and
to lay the foundations for the measures
that are needed to counteract such
change."