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the last state president of apartheid South Africa and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, was born in Johannesburg on 18 March 1936, the son of a leading National Party (NP) politician. Widely known, from his initials, as F. W., the younger de Klerk practiced law before entering politics. After being elected as a member of Parliament for the Vereeniging constituency in 1972, he rose rapidly through the ranks of the NP until he became leader of the party in early 1989 and state president in September that year. He held that position until May 1994, when Nelson Mandela succeeded him. He then became one of two deputy-presidents under Mandela until mid-1996, when he left the government of national unity and became leader of the opposition in Parliament. He retired as leader of the NP and from politics in September 1997.

De Klerk was a key figure in ...

F. W. De Klerk was born to an Afrikaner family with a long history of involvement in South African politics. His own political career began during adolescence, when he joined the youth section of the Afrikaner-dominated National Party.

In 1958 De Klerk received a law degree from Potchef- stroom University. He practiced law in Veereniging from 1961 until 1972, all the while serving as chairman of the local chapter of the National Party. He then abandoned his law career and became a member of Parliament in South Africa. De Klerk rose quickly through the party’s rank and file, with appointments to numerous cabinet posts. As a minister he had little patience for antiapartheid protests but was known as a conciliator within the party.

After South African president Pieter Willem Botha had a heart attack in 1989 De Klerk became the leader of the National Party Later that ...

Egyptian Nobel Laureate, diplomat, international civil servant, and scholar who served as the director general (DG) of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) between 1997 and 2009, was born in Cairo. His father was Mostafa ElBaradei, a lawyer and president of the Egyptian Bar Association, who campaigned for a free press and an independent legal system. ElBaradei studied law at the University of Cairo (1962), and completed his PhD in international law at the New York University School of Law (1974).

ElBaradei joined the Egyptian Diplomatic Service in 1964; his postings included the Egyptian Permanent Missions to the United Nations (UN) in New York and Geneva. Between 1974 and 1978 he served as a special assistant to the Egyptian foreign minister Working under another Egyptian diplomat who would later leave his mark on the UN Boutros Boutros Ghali he attended the Camp David ...

peace activist, social worker, women's rights advocate, and 2011Nobel Laureate, was born on 1 February 1972 in central Liberia and raised in the country's capital, Monrovia. Her father worked as the head radio technician and liaison to the United States for the government of Liberia's National Security Agency. Her father was hired under President William Tolbert, was arrested and jailed for nine months when Samuel Doe seized power in 1980, and was reinstated upon his release. He resigned with the election of Charles Taylor in 1997 and became head of security at St. Peters Catholic Church. Her mother was a dispensing pharmacist at several hospitals in Monrovia before the outbreak of war.

Gbowee graduated from B.W. Harris Episcopal High, one of Monrovia's best high schools. In March 1990 she began classes at the University of Liberia with the dream of becoming a doctor ...

South African novelist, short story writer, essayist, and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, was born on 20 November 1923 in the small gold mining town of Springs east of Johannesburg Both her parents were Jewish immigrants her father Isidore was a watchmaker and jeweler from the Lithuanian Latvian border her mother Nan came from England Her father with his foreign accent and ways was disparaged in the family he also absorbed the dominant racial models of the time while her mother took more readily to anglicized colonial mores Gordimer grew up in a nonreligious environment though she attended a convent school for the sake of its superior education Early on she was a dancer and sometimes a truant exploring the physical possibilities of veld and mine dumps with innate energy and relish At the age of eleven however her mother withdrew her from school on the putative ...

In a 1965 interview, Nadine Gordimer assessed her political consciousness with a self-scrutiny that characterized much of her political writing: “I have come to the abstractions of politics through the flesh and blood of individual behavior. I didn’t know what politics was about until I saw it all happening to people.” In her novels and short stories, Gordimer has captured the “flesh and blood of individual behavior” in minute and sentient detail, chronicling daily life in South Africa under Apartheid and portraying the human face of resistance.

Gordimer grew up in a small gold mining town near Johannesburg South Africa the daughter of a Lithuanian Jewish father and an English mother Although she read voraciously as a child she was removed from school at age ten because of a perceived heart ailment and had little formal schooling Trailing her mother to afternoon teas the lively Gordimer spent her time observing ...

French-Mauritian writer and Nobel Prize winner, was born on 13 April 1940 in Nice, France, to Raoul and Simone Le Clézio. His father, a native Mauritian of French descent, was a medical officer in British Guyana and then Nigeria. Le Clézio’s mother went to Nice to visit her parents at the start of World War II; Le Clézio lived in Nice until he was seven. As a child, Le Clézio read voraciously in his grandparents’ library, devouring dictionaries and encyclopedias, as well as classics of English, Spanish, and French literature. He began writing at the age of seven, while on the boat to see his father in Nigeria. After spending two years in Nigeria, Le Clézio returned to Nice in 1950.

Le Clézio s childhood experiences of war and colonialism were to exert a lasting influence on his imagination and writing He would remember living in occupied France during ...

renowned Egyptian author and Nobel laureate for literature in 1988, was born on 11 December 1911 to a middle-class, conservative Muslim family in the Gamiliyya quarter of Old Cairo. He was named for the pioneering Coptic obstetrician Naguib Mikhail Mahfouz, who conducted his mother’s difficult delivery; and he spent the first twelve years of his life with his parents and six siblings in al-Gamiliyya, a traditional hara neighborhood alley in which rich poor and middle class alike resided and rubbed shoulders on a daily basis Among his family Mahfouz s father was stern but gentle natured and while his mother fulfilled her conservative roles she also led a relatively free daily life and often toted along the young Mahfouz on excursions to explore historical sites around Cairo It was their traditional neighborhood which provided the setting and template and colorful characters for many of his most famous and ...

On presenting the Nobel Prize for Literature to Naguib Mahfouz in 1988, the Swedish Academy of Letters announced, “Through works rich in nuance—now clear-sightedly realistic, now evocatively ambiguous—[Mahfouz] has formed an Arabian narrative art that applies to all mankind.” The academy stated that Mahfouz’s body of writing “speaks to us all” by addressing universal themes such as injustice, the desire for freedom, and the place of the individual in society.

Critics have described Mahfouz’s literary career as a journey through the history of the European novel. For over four decades he wrote approximately one book a year. Scholars claim his early works resemble the romanticism of Victor Hugo. Mahfouz fully admits the influence of Sir Walter Scott in Radubi (1943), in which he uses the history of ancient Pharaonic Egypt as an allegory for the later British occupation. His best-known work, the three-volume Cairo Trilogy (1956–1957 ...

The first black president of South Africa, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela became a worldwide symbol of resistance to the injustice of his country’s Apartheid system. Imprisoned for more than twenty-seven years, and before that banned from all public activity and hounded by police for nearly a decade, Mandela led a struggle for freedom that mirrored that of his black compatriots. After his 1990 release from Victor Verster prison, his work to end apartheid won him the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize (which he shared with South African president F. W. de Klerk) and then the presidency itself a year later.

Mandela’s father, Chief Henry Mandela, was a member of the Thembu people’s royal lineage; his mother was one of the chief’s four wives. Mandela was born in Mvezo, Umtata, but grew up in Qunu, a small village in what is now the Eastern Cape Province At the age of ...

The son of a hospital clerk, Anwar Sadat was born in Mit Abu al-Kawm, a village on the Nile delta. He was part of the first generation of Egyptian soldiers recruited from the middle class rather than the elite, and graduated from Cairo Military Academy in 1938. During World War II (1939–1945), Sadat was twice arrested for conspiring with the Germans’ campaign to drive the British from Egypt. In 1950 he joined the Free Officers Committee Organization, chaired by Gamal Abdel Nasser. In 1952 he participated in Nasser’s overthrow of the Egyptian monarchy.

After Nasser was elected president of Egypt in 1956, Sadat held various offices in the government, including two terms as vice president (1964–1966 and 1969–1970). After Nasser’s death in September 1970 Sadat became president Although his political opponents considered him an interim leader he was elected president less than a ...

Egyptian army officer, nationalist, and president, was born in the village of Mit Abu al-Kum, Minufiyya Province, on 25 December 1918. An educated effendi, his father was an army clerk who served in the Sudan where he met Sadat’s mother. Sadat’s early years were spent in Mit Abu al-Kum under his grandmother’s care; the reunited nuclear family moved to Cairo in 1925 upon his father’s return from the Sudan. Sadat’s educational experience was diverse: early schooling in the village kuttab and briefly in a Coptic school in a neighboring village before moving to Cairo and attendance at a number of primary and secondary schools in Cairo before receiving his General Certificate of Education in 1936. He was admitted to the Royal Military Academy in 1936 as part of the first class admitted on a competitive basis. He graduated in 1938 and was commissioned into the Egyptian ...

Nigerian writer and the first African to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, was born Oluwole Akinwande Soyinka on 13 July 1934 in Abeokuta Nigeria One of the most prominent writers and public intellectuals in the world his international fame rests as much on his writings as on his widely admired fearless advocacy of human rights and social justice both in his native Nigeria and in other countries in Africa Primarily a playwright and dramatist Soyinka has written in virtually all of the literary genres and he has written rather prodigiously his corpus comprising more than forty five works of drama fiction poetry translation and nonfictional criticism memoirs and philosophical reflection Now in the eighth decade of his life he has spent six of those decades in a sustained unbroken work of social activism that stands as a necessary complement to the primacy of his life and career as ...

When awarding the prize the Nobel committee described Wole Soyinka the creator of over twenty major works at that time as one of the finest poetical playwrights that have written in English and also remarked that his writing was full of life and urgency Soyinka pronounced Sho yin ka is the recipient of numerous other prestigious awards including several honorary doctorates from universities throughout the world Apart from his stature as a pioneer in African drama written in English Soyinka has produced a vast body of work as poet dramatist theater director novelist essayist autobiographer political commentator critic and theorist of art and culture Above all he has remained a responsible citizen committed to the values of human freedom truth and justice Social commitment he remarks is a citizen s commitment and embraces equally the carpenter the mason the banker the farmer the customs officer etc not forgetting the critic ...

South African medical researcher and Nobel Prize winner active in the United States, was born in Pretoria, Transvaal (South African Republic, later South Africa), on 30 January 1899, the son of Arnold Theiler, a veterinarian, and Emma Jegge.

Theiler studied at Rhodes University College, Grahamstown, before entering the two-year premedical program at the University of Cape Town; he graduated in 1918. He left for London in 1919 and underwent medical training at Saint Thomas’ Hospital, University of London, receiving a diploma of tropical medicine and hygiene in 1922; he was denied the MD because the university did not recognize his studies at Cape Town. He never received an academic degree.

While taking a course at the London School of Tropical Medicine, he met Oscar Teague of Harvard University, who offered him a position there. Theiler moved to the Harvard University School of Tropical Medicine in 1922 where ...

Egyptian Nobel Prize–winning chemist, was born on 26 February 1946 in Damanhur, Egypt, the only son of Hassan Ahmed Zewail, a civil servant and businessman, and Rawhia Rabiʿe Dar. He and three younger sisters grew up in Rashid (also known as Rosetta) and were educated in state schools. Zewail earned a master’s degree (1968) at the University of Alexandria and a PhD in chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania (1974). From 1974 until 1976 he was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1976 he joined the faculty of the California Institute of Technology, serving as Linus Pauling Professor of Chemistry and professor of physics since 1995. He also served as the director of the National Science Foundation Laboratory for Molecular Sciences at Caltech from 1996 to 2007. In 2005 he became director of the Physical Biology Center for Ultrafast ...