Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4 , 1961 ) is an American attorney and politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017 . A member of the Democratic Party , he was the first African American to be elected to the presidency . He previously served as a U.S. senator from Illinois from 2005 to 2008 and an Illinois state senator from 1997 to 2004 . Obama was born in Honolulu , Hawaii . After graduating from Columbia University in 1983 , he worked as a community organizer in Chicago . In 1988 , he enrolled in Harvard Law School , where he was the first black president of the '' Harvard Law Review '' . After graduating , he became a civil rights attorney and an academic , teaching constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004 . He represented the 13th district for three terms in the Illinois Senate from 1997 until 2004 , when he ran for the U.S. Senate . He received national attention in 2004 with his March primary win , his well-received July Democratic National Convention keynote address , and his landslide November election to the Senate . In 2008 , he was nominated for president a year after his campaign began , after a close primary campaign against Hillary Clinton . He was elected over Republican John McCain and was inaugurated on January 20 , 2009 . Nine months later , he was named the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize laureate
2009 Nobel Peace Prize
2009 Nobel Peace Prize
Barack Obama