People
Rulers, scientists, reformers and explorers who changed their times.
Featured in People
Start with these, then follow the links inside each article wherever they lead.
Cleopatra
Cleopatra VII Thea Philopator was Queen of the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt from 51 to 30 BC, and the last active Hellenistic pharaoh. A member of the Ptolemaic dynasty, she was a descendant of its founder, Ptolemy I Soter, a Macedonian Greek general and companion of Alexander the Great.
Julius Caesar
Gaius Julius Caesar was a Roman general, statesman, and author who was the dictator of the Roman Republic almost continuously from 49 BC until his assassination in 44 BC. A member of the First Triumvirate, he led the Roman armies through the Gallic Wars and defeated his political rival Pompey in Caesar's civil war. He consolidated power and was titled as dictator perpetuo in 44 BC, helping create the political conditions that led to the collapse of the Roman Republic and the emergence of the Roman Empire.
Genghis Khan
Genghis Khan, also known as Chinggis Khan, was the founder and first khan of the Mongol Empire. After spending most of his life uniting the Mongol tribes, he launched a series of military campaigns, conquering large parts of China and Central Asia.
Napoleon
Napoleon Bonaparte, later known by his regnal name Napoleon I, was Emperor of the French from 18 May 1804 until his first abdication in 1814, with a brief restoration during the Hundred Days in 1815. He rose to prominence as a general during the French Revolution and led a series of military campaigns across Europe and the Middle East during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was the 16th president of the United States, serving from 1861 until his assassination in 1865. He led the United States through the American Civil War, defeating the Confederacy and playing a major role in the abolition of slavery.
Mahatma Gandhi
Mohandas Karamchand GandhiN-dee; 2 October 1869, 30 January 1948) was an Indian lawyer, anti-colonial nationalist, and political ethicist who employed nonviolent resistance to lead the successful campaign for India's independence from British rule, and to later inspire movements for civil rights and freedom across the world. The honorific Mahātmā (Sanskrit: "great-souled", "venerable"), first applied to him in 1914 in South Africa, is now used throughout the world.
Nelson Mandela
Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was a South African anti-apartheid revolutionary, politician, and philanthropist, who served as President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999. He was the country's first black head of state and the first elected in a fully representative democratic election.
Marie Curie
Maria Salomea Skłodowska Curie, better known as Marie Curie, was a Polish and naturalised-French physicist and chemist. She shared the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics with her husband, Pierre Curie, "for their joint researches on the radioactivity phenomena discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel".
Isaac Newton
Sir Isaac Newton4 January 1643 [O.S. 25 December 1642], 31 March [O.S. 20 March] 1727) was an English polymath who was a mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian, author and inventor. He was a key figure in the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment that followed.
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist best known for developing the theory of relativity. Einstein also made important contributions to quantum theory.
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have descended from a common ancestor is now generally accepted and considered a fundamental scientific concept.
Galileo Galilei
Galileo di Vincenzo Bonaiuti de' Galilei, commonly referred to as Galileo Galilei or mononymously as Galileo, was an Italian astronomer, physicist, engineer and polymath. He was born in Pisa, then part of the Duchy of Florence.
Ada Lovelace
Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace, also known as Ada Lovelace, was an English mathematician and writer chiefly known for work on Charles Babbage's proposed mechanical general-purpose computer, the analytical engine. She was the first to recognise the machine had applications beyond pure calculation.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr. was an American civil rights activist and Baptist minister who was a prominent leader of the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968.
Queen Victoria
Victoria was Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until her death in 1901. Her reign of 63 years and 216 days, which was longer than those of any of her predecessors, constituted the Victorian era, a period of industrial, political, scientific, and military change within the United Kingdom marked by a great expansion of the British Empire.
Alexander the Great
Alexander III of Macedon, most commonly known as Alexander the Great, was king of the ancient Greek kingdom of Macedon from 336 BC until his death. He was the son of Philip II, born to him by his fourth wife, Olympias, and ascended to the throne at the age of 20 after Philip was assassinated.
Ibn Battuta
Ibn Battuta was a Maghrebi Muslim traveller, explorer, and scholar from Tangier, Morocco. Over a 30-year period (1325-1354) he visited much of Africa, Asia, and the Iberian Peninsula.
Mansa Musa
Mansa Musa was the ninth Mansa of the Mali Empire, which reached its territorial peak during his reign. Musa's reign is often regarded as the zenith of Mali's power and prestige, although he features less in Mandinka oral traditions than his predecessors.
Harriet Tubman
Harriet Tubman was an American abolitionist and social activist. After escaping slavery, Tubman made some 13 missions to rescue approximately 70 enslaved people, including her family and friends, using the network of antislavery activists and safe houses known collectively as the Underground Railroad.
Nikola Tesla
Nikola Tesla was a Serbian-American engineer, futurist, and inventor. He is known for his contributions to the design of the modern alternating current (AC) electricity supply system.
Rosalind Franklin
Rosalind Elsie Franklin was an English chemist and X-ray crystallographer. Her work was central to the understanding of the molecular structures of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid), RNA (ribonucleic acid), viruses, coal, and graphite.
Joan of Arc
Joan of Arc is a patron saint of France, honored as a defender of the French nation for her role in the siege of Orléans and her insistence on the coronation of Charles VII of France during the Hundred Years' War. Stating that she acted under divine guidance, she became a military leader who gained recognition as a savior of France.
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill was a British statesman, military officer, and writer who was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945, during the Second World War, and again from 1951 to 1955. For some 62 of the years between 1900 and 1964, he was a member of Parliament (MP) and represented a total of five constituencies over that time.
Hypatia
Hypatia was a Neoplatonist philosopher, astronomer, and mathematician who lived in Alexandria, at that time in the province of Egypt and a major city of the Roman Empire.
Elizabeth I
Elizabeth I was Queen of England and Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death in 1603. She was the last and longest reigning monarch of the House of Tudor.
Qin Shi Huang
Qin Shi Huang was the founder of the Qin dynasty and the first emperor of China (Chinese: 皇帝; pinyin: Huángdì). He invented the title huángdì rather than reuse the existing title for "king" (Chinese: 王; pinyin: wáng); the new title was used by monarchs in China and other countries for the next two millennia.
Charlemagne
Charlemagne was King of the Franks from 768, King of the Lombards from 774, and Emperor of what is now known as the Carolingian Empire from 800. He united most of Western and Central Europe and was the first recognised emperor to rule from the west after the fall of the Western Roman Empire approximately three centuries earlier.
Suleiman the Magnificent
Suleiman I, commonly known as Suleiman the Magnificent, was the Ottoman sultan from 1520 to 1566. The longest reign among the Ottoman sultans, his rule brought about a notable peak in the Ottoman Empire's economic, military and political power, and raised the number of the empire's subjects to at least 25 million people.
Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass was an American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman.
Emmeline Pankhurst
Emmeline Pankhurst was a British political activist who organised the British suffragette movement and helped women to win the right to vote in Great Britain and Ireland in 1918, partially due to her role in the White Feather Campaign. In 1999, Time named her as one of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th Century, stating that "she shaped an idea of women for our time" and "shook society into a new pattern from which there could be no going back".
Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus was an Italian explorer and navigator from the Republic of Genoa who completed four Spanish transatlantic voyages in the name of the Catholic Monarchs, opening the way for the widespread European exploration and colonization of the Americas. His expeditions were the first known European contact with the Caribbean and Central and South America.
Zheng He
Zheng He was a Chinese admiral and diplomat from the early Ming dynasty. His extensive explorations along the Indian Ocean led to a major increase in China's political and commercial influence.
Johannes Gutenberg
Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg was a German inventor and craftsman who invented the movable-type printing press. Though movable type was already in use in East Asia, Gutenberg's invention of the printing press enabled a much faster rate of printing.
Avicenna
Ibn Sina, commonly known in the West as Avicenna ( A(H)V-ih-SEN-ə), was a preeminent philosopher and physician of the Muslim world. He was a seminal figure of the Islamic Golden Age, serving in the courts of various Iranian rulers, and was influential to medieval European medical and Scholastic thought.
Katherine Johnson
Creola Katherine Johnson was an American mathematician and human computer whose calculations of orbital mechanics as a NASA employee were critical to the success of the first and subsequent U.S. crewed spaceflights. During her 33-year career at NASA and its predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, she earned a reputation for mastering complex manual calculations and helped pioneer the use of computers to perform tasks previously requiring humans.
Wangarĩ Maathai
Wangarĩ Maathai was a Kenyan social, environmental, and political activist who founded the Green Belt Movement, an environmental non-governmental organization focused on planting trees, environmental conservation, and women's rights. In 2004, she became the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize.