Ahmed Hassan Zewail
Ahmed Hassan Zewail (Arabic: أحمد حسن زويل, IPA: [ˈæħmæd ˈħæsæn zeˈweːl]; born February 26, 1946) is an Egyptian scientist, known as the "father of femtochemistry", he won the 1999 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on femtochemistry and became the first Egyptian scientist who won Nobel Prize in a scientific field. He is the Linus Pauling Chair Professor Chemistry, Professor of Physics and the director of the Physical Biology Centre for the Ultrafast Science and Technology (UST) at the California Institute of Technology.
Allan MacLeod Cormack
Allan MacLeod Cormack (February 23, 1924 – May 7, 1998) was a South African-born American physicist who won the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (along with Godfrey Hounsfield) for his work on x-ray computed tomography (CT).
Cormack was born in Johannesburg, South Africa. He attended the Rondebosch Boys´ High School in Cape Town, where he was active in the debating and tennis teams. He received his B.Sc. in physics in 1944 from the University of Cape Town and his M.Sc. in crystallography in 1945 from the same institution. He was a research student at Cambridge University from 1947-49, and while at Cambridge he met his future wife, Barbara Seavey, an American physics student.
After marrying Seavey, he returned to the University of Cape Town in early 1950 to lecture. Following a sabbatical at Harvard in 1956-57, the couple agreed to move to the United States, and Cormack became a professor at Tufts University in the fall of 1957. Cormack became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1966. Although he was mainly working on particle physics, Cormack´s side interest in x-ray technology led him to develop the theoretical underpinnings of CT scanning. This work was initiated at the University of Cape Town and Groote Schuur Hospital in early 1956 and continued briefly in mid-1957 after returning from his sabbatical. His results were subsequently published in two papers in the Journal of Applied Physics in 1963 and 1964. These papers generated little interest until Hounsfield and colleagues built the first CT scanner in 1971, taking Cormack´s theoretical calculations into a real application. For their independent efforts, Cormack and Hounsfield shared the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. He was member of the International Academy of Science.
Cormack died of cancer in Massachusetts at age 74. He was posthumously awarded the Order of Mapungubwe on the 10 December 2002 for outstanding achievements as a scientist and for co-inventing the CT scanner.
Sydney Brenner
Sydney Brenner, CH FRS (born 13 January 1927) is a South African biologist and a 2002 Nobel prize in Physiology or Medicine laureate, shared with H. Robert Horvitz and John Sulston.
Brenner made significant contributions to work on the genetic code, and other areas of molecular biology while working in the Medical Research Council Unit in Cambridge, England.
He established the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans as a model organism for the investigation of developmental biology, and founded the Molecular Sciences Institute in Berkeley, California, U.S.
Max Theiler
Max Theiler (30 January 1899 – 11 August 1972) was a South African-American virologist and doctor. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1951 for developing a vaccine against yellow fever in 1937.
Born in Pretoria, he was educated in South Africa through completing his degree in medical school. He went to London for post-graduate work at St Thomas's Hospital Medical School, King's College London, and at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, earning a 1922 diploma in tropical medicine and hygiene. That year he moved to the United States to do research at the Harvard University School of Tropical Medicine. He lived there the rest of his life. In 1930 he moved to the Rockefeller Institute in New York, becoming director of the Virus Laboratory.
Desmond Mpilo Tutu
Desmond Mpilo Tutu (born 7 October 1931) is a South African social rights activist and retired Anglican bishop who rose to worldwide fame during the 1980s as an opponent of apartheid. He was the first black South African Archbishop of Cape Town and primate of the Church of the Province of Southern Africa (now the Anglican Church of Southern Africa).
Tutu's admirers see him as a man who since the demise of apartheid has been active in the defence of human rights and uses his high profile to campaign for the oppressed, though his consistent opposition to Israel and the United States has made him controversial. He has campaigned to fight AIDS, tuberculosis, poverty, racism, sexism, the imprisonment of Chelsea Manning, homophobia and transphobia. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984; the Albert Schweitzer Prize for Humanitarianism in 1986; the Pacem in Terris Award in 1987; the Sydney Peace Prize in 1999; the Gandhi Peace Prize in 2007; and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009. He has also compiled several books of his speeches and sayings.
Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela
Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela (Xhosa pronunciation: [xoˈliːɬaɬa manˈdeːla]; born 18 July 1918) is a South African anti-apartheid revolutionary and politician who served as President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999. He was the first black South African to hold the office, and the first elected in a fully representative, multiracial election. His government focused on dismantling the legacy of apartheid through tackling institutionalised racism, poverty and inequality, and fostering racial reconciliation. Politically an African nationalist and democratic socialist, he served as the President of the African National Congress (ANC) from 1991 to 1997. Internationally, Mandela was the Secretary General of the Non-Aligned Movement from 1998 to 1999.
A Xhosa born to the Thembu royal family, Mandela attended Fort Hare University and the University of Witwatersrand, where he studied law. Living in Johannesburg, he became involved in anti-colonial politics, joining the ANC and becoming a founding member of its Youth League. After the Afrikaner nationalists of the National Party came to power in 1948 and began implementing the policy of apartheid, he rose to prominence in the ANC´s 1952 Defiance Campaign, was elected President of the Transvaal ANC Branch and oversaw the 1955 Congress of the People. Working as a lawyer, he was repeatedly arrested for seditious activities and, with the ANC leadership, was prosecuted in the Treason Trial from 1956 to 1961 but was found not guilty. Although initially committed to non-violent protest, in association with the South African Communist Party he co-founded the militant Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) in 1961, leading a bombing campaign against government targets. In 1962 he was arrested, convicted of sabotage and conspiracy to overthrow the government, and sentenced to life imprisonment in the Rivonia Trial.
Mandela served 27 years in prison, first on Robben Island, and later in Pollsmoor Prison and Victor Verster Prison. An international campaign lobbied for his release, which was granted in 1990 amid escalating civil strife. Becoming ANC President, Mandela published his autobiography and led negotiations with President F.W. de Klerk to abolish apartheid and establish multiracial elections in 1994, in which he led the ANC to victory. He was elected President and formed a Government of National Unity in an attempt to defuse ethnic tensions. As President, he promulgated a new constitution and initiated the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to investigate past human rights abuses. Continuing the former government´s liberal economic policy, his administration introduced measures to encourage land reform, combat poverty, and expand healthcare services. Internationally, he acted as mediator between Libya and the United Kingdom in the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing trial, and oversaw military intervention in Lesotho. He declined to run for a second term, and was succeeded by his deputy, Thabo Mbeki. Mandela subsequently became an elder statesman, focusing on charitable work in combating poverty and HIV/AIDS through the Nelson Mandela Foundation.
Mandela has been a controversial figure for much of his life. Right-wing critics denounced him as a terrorist and communist sympathiser. He nevertheless gained international acclaim for his anti-colonial and anti-apartheid stance, having received more than 250 honours, including the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize, the US Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the Soviet Order of Lenin. He is held in deep respect within South Africa, where he is often referred to by his Xhosa clan name, Madiba, or as Tata ("Father"); he is often described as "the father of the nation".
Dr. Mohamed Mostafa ElBaradei
Mohamed Mustafa ElBaradei (Arabic: محمد مصطفى البرادعى, Muḥammad Muṣṭafā al-Barādaʿī, Egyptian Arabic pronunciation: [mæˈħæmmæd mosˈtˤɑfɑ (ʔe)lbæˈɾædʕi]; born 17 June 1942) is an Egyptian law scholar and diplomat who was the acting Vice President of Egypt from 14 July 2013 to 14 August 2013.
He was the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), an intergovernmental organization under the auspices of the United Nations, from 1997 to 2009. He and the IAEA were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005. ElBaradei was also an important figure in recent politics in Egypt, particularly the 2011 revolution which ousted President Hosni Mubarak, and in the 2013 protests and military coup that toppled President Mohamed Morsi.
WANGARI MATHAI
Wangari Muta Maathai (1 April 1940 – 25 September 2011) was a Kenyan environmental and political activist. She was educated in the United States at Mount St. Scholastica and the University of Pittsburgh, as well as the University of Nairobi in Kenya. In the 1970s, Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement, an environmental non-governmental organization focused on the planting of trees, environmental conservation, and women's rights. In 1986, she was awarded the Right Livelihood Award, and in 2004, she became the first African woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for "her contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace". Maathai was an elected member of Parliament and served as assistant minister for Environment and Natural Resources in the government of President Mwai Kibaki between January 2003 and November 2005. Furthermore she was an Honorary Councillor of the World Future Council. In 2011, Maathai died of complications from ovarian cancer.
ALBERT LUTHULI
Albert John Lutuli (commonly spelled Luthuli; c. 1898 – 21 July 1967), also known by his Zulu name Mvumbi, was a South African teacher and politician. Luthuli was elected president of the African National Congress (ANC)
Muhammad Anwar Al Sadat
Frederik Willem de Klerk
KOFI ANNAN
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ
WOLE SOYINKA
NADINE GORDIMER
JOHN MAXWELL COETZEE
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