The following table shows all of the people given Humanist of the Year awards by the American Humanist Association from 1953 until 2016. Those underlined have been mentioned in The Scientific Spirit of American Humanism.
| 1953: Anton J. Carlson | 1969: R. Buckminster Fuller | 1985: John Kenneth Galbraith | 2001: Stephen Jay Gould |
| 1954: Arthur F. Bentley | 1970: A. Philip Randolph | 1986: Faye Wattleton | 2002: Steven Weinberg |
| 1955: James P. Warbasse | 1971: Albert Ellis | 1987: Margaret Atwood | 2003: Sherwin T. Wine |
| 1956: C. Judson Herrick | 1972: B. F. Skinner | 1988: Leo Pfeffer | 2004: Daniel C. Dennett |
| 1957: Margaret Sanger | 1973: Thomas Szasz | 1989: Gerald A. Larue | 2005: Murray Gell-Mann |
| 1958: Oscar Riddle | 1974: Mary Calderone & Joseph Fletcher | 1990: Ted Turner | 2006: Steven Pinker |
| 1959: Brock Chisholm | 1975: Henry Morgentaler & Betty Friedan | 1991: Werner Fornos & Lester R. Brown | 2007: Joyce Carol Oates |
| 1960: Leo Szilard | 1976: Jonas E. Salk | 1992: Kurt Vonnegut | 2008: Pete Stark |
| 1961: Linus Pauling | 1977: Corliss Lamont | 1993: Richard D. Lamm | 2009: PZ Myers |
| 1962: Julian Huxley | 1978: Margaret E. Kuhn | 1994: Lloyd Morain & Mary Morain | 2010: Bill Nye |
| 1963: Hermann J. Muller | 1979: Edwin H. Wilson | 1995: Ashley Montagu | 2011: Rebecca Newberger Goldstein |
| 1964: Carl Rogers | 1980: Andrei Sakharov | 1996: Richard Dawkins | 2012: Gloria Steinem |
| 1965: Hudson Hoagland | 1981: Carl Sagan | 1997: Alice Walker | 2013: Dan Savage |
| 1966: Erich Fromm | 1982: Helen Caldicott | 1998: Barbara Ehrenreich | 2014: Barney Frank |
| 1967: Abraham H. Maslow | 1983: Lester A. Kirkendall | 1999: Edward O. Wilson | 2015: Lawrence Krauss |
| 1968: Benjamin Spock | 1984: Isaac Asimov | 2000: Bill Schulz | 2016: Jared Diamond |
