Ralph Bunche, American political scientist, academic, and diplomat, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1904)

Ralph Johnson Bunche was an American political scientist, diplomat, and leading actor in the mid-20th-century decolonization process and US civil rights movement, who received the 1950 Nobel Peace Prize for his late 1940s mediation in Palestine. He is the first black Nobel laureate and the first person of African descent to be awarded a Nobel Prize. He was involved in the formation and early administration of the United Nations (UN), and played a major role in both the decolonization process and numerous UN peacekeeping operations.

The Nobel Peace Prize is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Swedish industrialist, inventor, and armaments manufacturer Alfred Nobel, along with the prizes in Chemistry, Physics, Physiology or Medicine, and Literature. Since March 1901, it has been awarded annually to people who have "done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses." The Oxford Dictionary of Contemporary History describes it as "the most prestigious prize in the world."