Science Fair Project Encyclopedia The Right Honourable David
Trimble (born October 15, 1944) is a Northern Irish politician,
leader of the Ulster Unionist Party and the former First
Minister of Northern Ireland. He shared the 1998 Nobel Peace
Prize with John Hume of the Social Democratic and Labour Party.
Trimble was born in 1944. He was educated in Bangor and at
Queen's University, Belfast. He qualified as a barrister and
began to lecture in law in 1968. He was elected to the Northern
Ireland Convention in 1975 as a Vanguard Progressive Unionist
Party member for South Belfast and for a time he served as the
party's deputy leader. When the Vanguard party collapsed he
joined the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) in 1978 and became party
secretary. He was elected to Westminster in a by-election in
Upper Bann in 1990. In 1995 Trimble was unexpectedly elected
leader of the UUP, defeating the front-runner John Taylor. His
election as party leader came in the aftermath of his leading
role in the forcing of a highly contr