# The 15 Greatest Nobel Peace Prize Laureates of All Time

> Prisoners, preachers, farmers and heads of state have all collected the same medal. Deciding which of them earned it most is the hard part.

*By YPB Team · Published August 12, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/the-15-greatest-nobel-peace-prize-laureates-of-all-time*

---

## Current results (0 votes)

1. **Nelson Mandela**
   Shared the 1993 prize for negotiating the end of apartheid after twenty-seven years in prison.
2. **Martin Luther King Jr.**
   Won in 1964 at 35, then the youngest laureate, for the nonviolent campaign against segregation.
3. **Mother Teresa**
   Won in 1979 for four decades of work with the destitute and dying in Calcutta.
4. **Malala Yousafzai**
   The youngest laureate ever, awarded in 2014 at 17 for campaigning for girls' education after being shot for it.
5. **Theodore Roosevelt**
   The first American laureate, awarded in 1906 for mediating the end of the Russo-Japanese War.
6. **The Dalai Lama**
   Won in 1989 for pursuing Tibetan autonomy without violence over three decades of exile.
7. **Albert Schweitzer**
   The 1952 laureate, a theologian and organist who spent his life as a doctor in Gabon.
8. **Norman Borlaug**
   The 1970 laureate whose wheat breeding is credited with saving hundreds of millions from famine.
9. **Desmond Tutu**
   The 1984 laureate who used the pulpit against apartheid and later chaired the truth commission.
10. **Jimmy Carter**
   Won in 2002, more than twenty years after leaving office, for decades of mediation and disease eradication.
11. **Wangari Maathai**
   The 2004 laureate whose Green Belt Movement planted tens of millions of trees in Kenya.
12. **Fridtjof Nansen**
   The polar explorer who won in 1922 for organising relief and passports for stateless refugees.
13. **Jane Addams**
   The first American woman to win, in 1931, for settlement-house work and international peace campaigning.
14. **Kofi Annan**
   Shared the 2001 prize with the United Nations for reorienting the organisation around human rights.
15. **Elie Wiesel**
   The 1986 laureate whose testimony as a Holocaust survivor became a lifelong argument against indifference.

Tags: historical-figures, all-time, nobel prize