Awards

International Humanist Award

The International Humanist Award recognises outstanding achievements and contributions to the progress and defence of Humanism. The International Humanist Award is usually made during IHEU World Humanist Congress.

• 1970: Barry Commoner (USA), environmentalist professor
• 1974: Harold John Blackham (UK), founding member IHEU, IHEU secretary (1952-1966)
• 1978: Vithal Mahadeo Tarkunde (India), former judge of the Bombay High Court
• 1982: Kurt Partzsch (Germany), former Minister for Social Affairs
• 1986: Arnold Clausse (Belgium), professor emeritus of education
• 1986: The Atheist Centre (India), for pioneering social reform activities
• 1988: Andrei Sakharov (USSR), nuclear physicist, developer of the hydrogen bomb for the Soviet military, and winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace
• 1990: Alexander Dubček (Czechoslovakia), leader of Czechoslovakia during the “Prague Spring” of 1968
• 1992: Pieter Admiraal (Netherlands), a Dutch anaesthetist, and euthanasia advocate
• 1999: Professor Paul Kurtz (USA), writer and founder of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry
• 2002: Amartya Sen (India), economist, social theorist, Master of Trinity College (Cambridge), and winner of the 1998 The Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel
• 2005: Jean-Claude Pecker (France), astronomer
• 2008: Philip Pullman (UK), best-selling author of children’s literature, including “His Dark Materials” trilogy
• 2011: Sophie in ‘t Veld, (Netherlands) MEP and vice-chair of the European Parliament Committee on Civil Liberties, and PZ Myers (USA), biology professor at University of Minnesota Morris and blogger
• 2014: Gulalai Ismail (Pakistan), the founder and chair of Aware Girls, a charity which promotes the developmental and human rights of young women in Pakistan and Wole Soyinka (Nigeria), Nobel Prize-winning author