Hideki Tojo was a general of the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA), the leader of the Imperial Rule Assistance Association, and the 27th Prime Minister of Japan during much of World War II, from October 17, 1941, to July 22, 1944. As Prime Minis...

George Catlett Marshall Jr. was an American statesman and soldier. He was Chief of Staff of the United States Army under presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman, and served as Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense under T...

Paul Klee was a Swiss German artist. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included Expressionism, Cubism, and Surrealism. Klee was a natural draftsman who experimented with and eventually deeply explored color...

Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was a Georgian-born Soviet revolutionary and political leader. He governed the Soviet Union as dictator from the mid-1920s until his death in 1953, serving as Premier of the Soviet Union from 1941 to 1953 and as...

Henri-Émile-Benoît Matisse was a French artist, known for both his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known primarily as a painter. Matisse is commonly regarde...

Emanuel Lasker was a German chess player, mathematician, and philosopher who was World Chess Champion for 27 years (from 1894 to 1921). In his prime Lasker was one of the most dominant champions, and he is still generally regarded as one of...

Wassily Kandinsky was a Russian painter and art theorist. One of the most famous 20th-century artists, he is credited with painting the first modern abstract works. Kandinsky was born in Moscow but spent his childhood in Odessa. He enrolled...

Joseph Rudyard Kipling was an English short-story writer, poet, and novelist. He wrote tales and poems of British soldiers in India and stories for children. He was born in Bombay, in the Bombay Presidency of British India, and was taken by...

Johan Julius Christian Sibelius was a Finnish composer of classical music and one of the most notable composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His music played an important role in the formation of the Finnish national identity....

Franz Ferdinand was an Archduke of Austria-Este, Austro-Hungarian and Royal Prince of Hungary and of Bohemia and, from 1896 until his death, heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne. His assassination in Sarajevo precipitated Aust...

Edvard Munch was a Norwegian Symbolist painter, printmaker and an important forerunner of expressionistic art. His best-known composition, The Scream, is part of a series The Frieze of Life, in which Munch explored the themes of life, love,...

Georges-Pierre Seurat was a French post-Impressionist painter and draftsman. He is noted for his innovative use of drawing media and for devising the painting techniques known as chromoluminarism and pointillism. Seurat's artistic personali...

Giacomo Puccini was the most important composer of Italian opera after Verdi. He wrote in the verismo style, a counterpart to the movement of Realism in literature and a trend that favored subjects and characters from everyday life for oper...

Thomas Woodrow Wilson was the twenty-eighth President of the United States (1856-1924). A devout Presbyterian, and leading intellectual of the Progressive Era, he served as President of Princeton University and then became the Governor of N...

Antoine Henri Becquerel was a physicist, Nobel laureate, and the first person to discover evidence of radioactivity. For work in this field he, along with Marie Curie and Pierre Curie, received the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics. The SI unit f...