Nobel Peace Prize Award for 1961 to 1964

About the Nobel Peace Prize Award from 1961 to 1964 including winners Hammarskjold and Pauling, their works, and history.

PEACE

1961 Dag Hammarskjold (1905--1961), Swedish

Work: Service as secretary-general of the U.N. Nobel Laureate: Taking degrees in the humanities, economics, and the law, Hammarskjold spent the depression years on an unemployment commission and in the Finance Ministry. He became deputy foreign minister in 1951 and represented his country in the U.N. He was elected secretary-general in 1953 and reelected in 1957. His low-key style emphasized behind-the-scenes diplomacy over broad public gestures. Outraged over the Suez Crisis of 1956, he threatened to resign unless all belligerents admitted Lester Pearson's peace-keeping force into the area. In 1958 his suggestion to send U.N. observation teams into Mideast trouble spots eased tensions in Lebanon and Jordan. While trying to sort out problems in the Congo, Hammarskjold was killed in a plane crash in Katanga. Nobel Lore: Nominated by Ralph Bunche and Adlai Stevenson, Hammarskjold died before the Nobel vote, but was awarded the prize posthumously, even though Nobel had made it clear that the honor was intended for living persons only.

1962 Linus C. Pauling (1901- ), American

Work: Campaigned for international nuclear test ban

Nobel Laureate: After studying atomic and quantum physics in Europe, Pauling returned to his alma mater Caltech as a professor of chemistry. There he began research in molecular structure and chemical bonds, work which earned him a Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1954. His research into the causes of sickle-cell anemia furthered his interest in hereditary defects, and this in turn focused his attention on the dangers of nuclear fallout. He gathered signatures of 10,000 scientists from 49 countries on a petition, known as the Pauling Appeal, which called for an international pact to ban all nuclear testing. On Oct. 23, 1962, the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. formally ceased atmospheric testing; the same day Pauling's selection was announced by the Nobel committee. More recently Pauling has championed massive doses of vitamin C as a cure for the common cold. In 1969 he became a chemistry professor at Stanford University.

Nobel Lore: Pauling is the only laureate to walk away with two undivided Nobel Prizes. Pauling's selection was criticized in some quarters, because the professor had been accused of being a Communist during the McCarthy red scare days of the 1950s. Carped the New York Herald Tribune in an editorial: "Award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Dr. Pauling, whatever the committee's reasons, inevitably associates this semisacrosanct honor with the extravagant posturings of a placarding peacenik."

1963 International Red Cross

League of Red Cross Societies

Work: Relief for refugees

1964 Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929--1968), American

Work: Nonviolent agitation for black civil rights in the U.S.