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.
1860-1935
Kofi Annan is best known for his role as secretary-general of the United Nations.
1938-
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.
1929-2004
Social activist and pacifist Emily Greene Balch won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1946 for being a lifetime advocate of the persecuted and oppressed.
1867-1961
1913-1992
1914-2009
1913-1992
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.
1904-1971
Jimmy Carter was the 39th president of the United States (1977-81) and later was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.
1924-
French jurist and lawyer René Cassin is best known for his involvement in the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
1887-1976
Charles G. Dawes was a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize who became the 30th U.S. vice president under Calvin Coolidge.
1865-1951
F.W. de Klerk was president of South Africa from 1989 to 1994, during which time he worked with Nelson Mandela to successfully end the country's apartheid system of racial segregation.
1936-
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.
1947-
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.
1918-1981
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.
1931-
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.
1948-
1937-
Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is the world's first elected black female president and Africa's first elected female head of state.
1938-
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.
1929-1968
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.
1923-
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.
1935-
Wangari Maathai was a Kenyan political and environmental activist and her country's assistant minister of environment, natural resources and wildlife.
1940-2011
Sean MacBride was an Irish politician and the former chief of staff of the IRA
1904-1988
Nelson Mandela became the first black president of South Africa in 1994. A symbol of global peacemaking, he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993.
1918-
1880-1959
Mother Teresa was the founder of the Order of the Missionaries of Charity, a Roman Catholic congregation of women dedicated to helping the poor.
1910-1997
Barack Obama is the 44th and current president of the United States, and the first African American to serve as U.S. president. First elected to the presidency in 2008, he won a second term in 2012.
1961-
1901-1994
President of Israel Shimon Peres was also twice prime minister of Israel and won a Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating the Oslo Accords with Rabin and Arafat.
1923-
1922-1995
1949-
Louis Renault was a French jurist and educator and co-winner in 1907 of the Nobel Prize for Peace.
1843-1918
A New York governor who became the 26th U.S. president, Theodore Roosevelt is remembered for his foreign policy, corporate reforms and ecological preservation.
1858-1919
1908-2005
Aung San Suu Kyi is an opposition leader in her home country of Myanmar and the winner of the 1991 Nobel Prize for Peace.
1945-
1875-1965
1941-
1911-1990
1944-
Desmond Tutu is a South African Anglican cleric who is known for his role in the opposition to apartheid in South Africa.
1931-
Labor activist and later Polish president Lech Walesa helped form and lead communist Poland's first independent trade union, Solidarity and won a Nobel Prize.
1943-
Elie Wiesel is a Nobel-Prize winning writer, teacher and activist known for the memoir Night, in which he recounts his experiences surviving the Holocaust.
1928-
Woodrow Wilson, the 28th U.S. resident, led America through World War I and crafted the Versailles Treaty's "Fourteen Points," the last of which was creating a League of Nations to ensure world peace. Wilson also created the Federal Reserve and signed the 19th Amendment, allowing women to vote.
1856-1924
1940-