Julian Paul Assange (/əˈsɒnʒ/; born Julian Paul Hawkins, 3 July 1971) is an Australian computer programmer and the founder of WikiLeaks, an organisation which he founded in 2006. He has won accolades including the Sam Adams Award and Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism.
Assange founded WikiLeaks in 2006, but came to global prominence in 2010, when WikiLeaks published a series of leaks provided by Chelsea Manning. These leaks included the Collateral Murder video (April 2010), the Afghanistan war logs (July 2010), the Iraq war logs (October 2010), and CableGate (November 2010). Following the 2010 leaks, the United States government launched a criminal investigation into WikiLeaks and asked allied nations for assistance.