Barack Hussein Obama II (born August 4, 1961) in Hawaii, is the  44th and is the current President of The United States. He is the first African-American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a  United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned after his election to the presidency in November 2008.

President Obama is a graduate of  Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he was the president of the Harvard Law Review.   He worked as a  civil rights attorney in Chicago and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004.

Obama served 3 terms in the Illinois Senete from 1997 to 2004.  His presidential campaign began in February 2007, and after a close campaign in the 08 Democratic Presidential primaries against Hillary Clinton where he won his party's nomination. In the 2008 general election he defeated Republican nominee  John McCain and was  inaugurated President on January 20, 2009.

 In October 2009, President Obama was named the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize laureate.