Mohamed ElBaradeiمحمد البرادعي

ElBaradei was born in Cairo on 17 June 1942. His father, Mostafa ElBaradei, was a lawyer who served as president of the Egyptian Bar Association and was an outspoken defender of civil liberties and the rule of law — at times putting him at odds with the government of Gamal Abdel Nasser — and he raised his son to stand by his principles. Following in his father's footsteps, ElBaradei earned a law degree from the University of Cairo in 1962 and went on to a doctorate in international law from New York University in 1974. He joined the Egyptian Diplomatic Service in 1964, serving at Egypt's missions to the United Nations in New York and Geneva on legal and arms-control matters.

ElBaradei joined the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in 1984, rising through senior legal and policy roles, and in December 1997 he became its Director General — a post he held until November 2009. The IAEA's mission is to ensure that nuclear technology is used peacefully and not diverted to weapons, and ElBaradei became its public face during the fraught years surrounding Iraq and Iran. In the run-up to the 2003 Iraq War, he reported to the UN Security Council that the agency had found no evidence of a revived Iraqi nuclear-weapons programme — a conclusion that was later borne out — even as that stance brought him into tension with the United States. He earned a worldwide reputation as a patient, independent monitor on the most dangerous of questions.

In October 2005, ElBaradei and the IAEA were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts to prevent nuclear energy from being used for military purposes and to ensure that, where it is used peacefully, it is used as safely as possible. The Nobel committee framed the honour as a call for the world to meet the renewed threat of nuclear arms through the broadest possible international cooperation. The following year, in 2006, his own country recognised him with the Order of the Nile (the "Greatest Nile Collar"), Egypt's highest state honour. At the end of his IAEA tenure he was named Director General Emeritus.

After retiring from the IAEA, ElBaradei returned to Egypt in 2010 and soon became a leading figure in a national movement for democratic reform. When mass protests against the Mubarak government erupted in January 2011, he flew home from Vienna to join the demonstrators, was briefly placed under house arrest, and was endorsed by a range of opposition groups as a potential interim leader in negotiations. That same year he published a memoir of his nuclear diplomacy, "The Age of Deception." In July 2013, after the army removed President Mohamed Morsi following huge protests, ElBaradei was sworn in as interim Vice President for foreign relations — but he resigned just weeks later, in August 2013, in protest at a deadly crackdown on demonstrators, and returned to Vienna. The episodes placed him at the heart of Egypt's most turbulent modern moments.

• Who he is: an Egyptian lawyer, diplomat, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate.
• Arabic name: محمد البرادعي (Mohamed ElBaradei).
• Born: 17 June 1942, Cairo.
• Education: law degree, University of Cairo (1962); doctorate in international law, NYU (1974).
• IAEA: Director General from December 1997 to November 2009 (later Director General Emeritus).
• Iraq & Iran: a trusted neutral monitor; reported no evidence of a revived Iraqi nuclear-weapons programme.
• Nobel Peace Prize: awarded jointly with the IAEA in 2005.
• Egypt's honour: received the Order of the Nile in 2006.
• Egyptian politics: a leader of democratic reform; briefly interim Vice President in 2013, then resigned.

Sources include Encyclopaedia Britannica, the IAEA, the Nobel Prize organisation, EBSCO Research Starters, and news accounts of ElBaradei's career and role in Egypt's 2011 and 2013 events.