Famous Nobel Prize Winners a to z

Jane Addams co-founded one of the first settlements in the United States, the Hull House in Chicago, Illinois, and was named a co-winner of the 1931 Nobel Peace Prize.

Sidney Altman is a Nobel Prize-winning Canadian-American molecular biologist.

Kofi Annan is best known for his role as secretary-general of the United Nations.

Yasser Arafat was chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization from 1969 until his death in 2004, a tumultuous period in which clashes with neighboring Israel were prevalent.

Svante Arrhenius was a Nobel Prize winning scientist known for his revolutionary theories in various fields, including physics, chemistry and astronomy.

American economist Kenneth Arrow is known for his contributions to welfare economics and to general economic equilibrium theory. He won a Nobel Prize in 1972.

American neuroscientist Richard Axel is best known for his work on the olfactory system, exploring how the brain interprets smell.

Pharmacologist Julius Axelrod’s studies of neurotransmission of adrenalin and amphetamines led to his investigations into drugs for treatment of mental illness.

Social activist and pacifist Emily Greene Balch won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1946 for being a lifetime advocate of the persecuted and oppressed.

Sir Frederick Grant Banting was a Canadian scientist and doctor, whose research led to the discovery of insulin to treat diabetic patients.

20th century Irish novelist, playwright and poet Samuel Beckett penned the play Waiting for Godot. In 1969, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Henri Becquerel was a French physicist who discovered radioactivity, an achievement for which he won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1903.

Saul Bellow was a celebrated novelist who won the Pulitzer, the Nobel Prize for Literature and the National Book Award for Fiction three times.

J. Michael Bishop is a Nobel Prize winning physician and scholar who made groundbreaking discoveries in cancer research.

Cellular and molecular biologist Günter Blobel won the Nobel Prize in 1999 for his discoveries about proteins and their placement in the cell.

Niels Bohr was a Nobel Prize-winning physicist and humanitarian whose revolutionary theories on atomic structures helped shape research worldwide.

Sydney Brenner is a Nobel Prize-winning molecular biologist and a science writer.

Russian-born American poet Joseph Brodsky was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1987 for his important lyric and elegiac poems.

Herbert C. Brown was a scientist and professor who won the Nobel Prize for his work in organic chemistry.

Michael S. Brown is a molecular geneticist who was co-awarded a 1985 Nobel Prize for his work on the metabolism of cholesterol in the human body.

James M. Buchanan is an American economist best known for his work on public choice theory, for which he receive the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1986.

Prolific author Pearl S. Buck earned a Pulitzer Prize for her novel The Good Earth. She was also the first female to win a Nobel Prize for Literature.

Ralph Bunche was a U.S. diplomat, a key member of the United Nations for more than two decades, and the winner of the 1950 Nobel Prize for Peace.

Macfarlane Burnet was an Australian physician and researcher who made groundbreaking discoveries in the fields of immunology and virology.

Algerian born writer Albert Camus won the Nobel Prize for literature in part due to his embrace of existentialism in books like The Stranger.

Jimmy Carter was the 39th president of the United States (1977-81) and later was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.

French jurist and lawyer René Cassin is best known for his involvement in the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Robert Cascoyne-Cecil, 1st Viscount Cecil of Chelwood, is best known as one of the chief architects behind the League of Nations.

Physicist Steven Chu was co-winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1997 for his work on cooling atoms, and became the U.S. Secretary of Energy in 2009.

John Warcup Cornforth is an Australian scientist who won the 1975 Nobel Prize for his research in stereochemistry and enzyme-based synthesis.

Francis Crick is responsible for discovering, along with James Watson, the double-helix structure of the DNA strand.

Marie Curie was a Polish-born French physicist famous for her work on radioactivity and twice a winner of the Nobel Prize.

French physicist Pierre Curie was of founding fathers of modern physics and is best known for being a pioneer in radioactive studies.

Kim Dae-jung was president of South Korea from 1998 to 2003. He arranged an historic summit with North Korean ruler Kim Jong Il.

Charles G. Dawes was a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize who became the 30th U.S. vice president under Calvin Coolidge.

Renato Dulbecco was an Italian virologist best known winning the Nobel Prize for pioneering the growing of viruses in culture in the 1950s.

Shirin Ebadi is an Iranian lawyer and human-rights activist. She was the first female judge in Iran, and won the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize.

Albert Einstein was a German-born physicist who developed the theory of relativity. He is considered the most influential physicist of the 20th century.

Willem Einthoven was a physiologist who discovered the electrical properties of the heart and developed the EKG.

Anwar el-Sadat was the one-time president of Egypt (1970-1981) who shared the 1978 Nobel Peace Prize for establishing peace agreements with Israel.

American biochemist and pharmacologist Gertrude B. Elion helped develop drugs to treat leukemia and prevent kidney transplant rejection. She won a Nobel Prize for medicine in 1988.

T.S. Eliot was an American-born English poet, playwright, and literary critic, arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century.

Robert F. Engle is a co-recipient of the 2003 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, honored for developing methods to analyze unpredictable movements in the financial market.

William Faulkner was a Nobel Prize-winning novelist of the American South, who wrote challenging prose and created the fictional Yoknapatawpha County. He is known for novels like Sartoris.

Physicist Enrico Fermi built the prototype of a nuclear reactor and worked on the Manhattan Project to develop the first atomic bomb.

Alexander Fleming was a doctor and bacteriologist who discovered penicillin, receiving the Nobel Prize in 1945.

British novelist William Golding wrote the critically acclaimed classic Lord of the Flies, and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1983.

Mikhail Gorbachev was the first president of the Soviet Union, serving from 1990 to 1991. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace for contributing to the break-up of the USSR.

Al Gore was the 45th Vice President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. He is also known for his work regarding environmental issues.

Economist F.A. Hayek was noted for his criticisms of the Keynesian welfare state and of totalitarian socialism. In 1974 he shared the Nobel Prize for Economics.

Seamus Henry is a renowned Irish poet and professor who won the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Nobel Prize winner Ernest Hemingway is seen as one of the great American 20th century novelists, and is known for works like A Farewell to Arms and The Old Man and the Sea.

American biologist A.D. Hershey won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1969 for his research done on viruses that infect bacteria.

Bernardo Alberto Houssay was an Argentinian doctor whose research on the role of pituitary hormones regulating blood sugar won him a Nobel Prize.

Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is the world's first elected black female president and Africa's first elected female head of state.

Imre Kertész is a Hungarian writer who survived the Holocaust and went on to win the 2002 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Jack Kilby was an American physicist and electrical engineer who co-created the integrated circuit.

Martin Luther King Jr. was a Baptist minister and social activist, who led the Civil Rights Movement in the United States from the mid-1950s until his death by assassination in 1968.

Henry Kissinger is an American political scientist and diplomat who won the Nobel Peace Prize for efforts to broker a peaceful settlement of the Vietnam War.

Dalai Lama, Tibet's political leader, has strived to make Tibet an independent and democratic state from China. He and his followers are exiled to India.

Immunologist and pathologist Karl Landsteiner received the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for his discovery of the major blood types.