1948: No-one. Unwilling to alter rules that the prize could not be awarded posthumously, the committee declared there to be ‘no suitable living candidate’ in the year Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated.
1961: Dag Hammarskjold. Despite its Gandhi stance, the committee awarded the prize to the Swedish diplomat, the second secretary general of the United Nations, after his death months earlier in a plane crash en route to ceasefire negotiations in Zambia. He remains the only posthumous laureate.
1973: Henry Kissinger. The former US secretary of state, national security adviser and architect of the Richard Nixon administration’s policies in Vietnam was awarded the prize jointly with Vietnamese revolutionary Le Duc Tho for a ceasefire that would ultimately prove short-lived.
1994: Yasser Arafat, Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres. In an award meant to celebrate the prize’s commitment to honouring those who turn from a path of violence to peace, Kare Kristiansen, a Norwegian member of the committee, resigned in protest, dubbing Palestinian leader Arafat a terrorist
2002: Jimmy Carter. The one-term US president was awarded the prize for what the committee described as decades of peaceful solutions to conflicts. The prize coincided with the then US president George Bush making preparations for the invasion of Iraq.
2004: Wangari Maathai. The Kenyan activist was honoured for promoting sustainable development, democracy and peace, but had been accused of claiming HIV/Aids was spread deliberately in Africa by Western scientists.
2007: Al Gore. The former US vice-president and presidential candidate shared the prize with the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, but attracted controversy on the grounds the environmental work was not related to conflict.
2008: Martti Ahtisaari. The committee was largely tipped to award the prize to a Chinese dissident (it eventually did two years later) but threw a traditional curveball to honour the Finnish diplomat and former prime minister instead.
2009: Barack Obama. The US president received the prize months into his first term for commitments to reduce nuclear proliferation. Mindful of how detractors back home could use the prize as a stick to beat him with, Obama gave an acceptance speech extolling the power of the US military to do good.
2010: Liu Xiaobo. The Chinese government said dissident Liu did not promote international friendship, disarmament and peace meetings, the stated goals of the prize. The political prisoner was also criticised for supporting the US invasions of Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan
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