Johannes Diderik van der Waals was a Dutch scientist and thermodynamicist famous for his work on the equation of state for gases and liquids which describe the relation between the pressure, volume, and temperature of fluids (gases and liq...

The Dowager Empress Cixi popularly known in China as the Western Empress Dowager, and officially known posthumously as Empress Xiaoqin Xian, was a powerful and charismatic figure who was the de facto ruler of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, rulin...

Samuel Langhorne Clemens, known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer. He was lauded as the "greatest humorist this country has produced", and William Faulkner called him "the fa...

Andrew Carnegie was a Scottish American industrialist who led the enormous expansion of the American steel industry in the late 19th century. He was also one of the highest profile philanthropists of his era and had given away almost 90 per...

Alexandre Gustave Eiffel was a French civil engineer. A graduate of École Centrale Paris, he made his name with various bridges for the French railway network, most famously the Garabit viaduct. He is best known for the world-famous Eiffel...

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was an American poet. Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts. Although part of a prominent family with strong ties to its community, Dickinson lived much of her life in reclusive isolation. After studying at...

John Kerr was a Scottish physicist and a pioneer in the field of electro-optics. He is best known for the discovery of what is now called the Kerr effect. Kerr's most important experimental work was the discovery of double refraction in...

Gustave Flauber, French novelist. Flaubert is regarded as one of the supreme masters of the realistic novel. He was a scrupulous, slow writer, intent on the exact word (le mot juste) and complete objectivity. The son of a surgeon, he studie...

Ernst Werner von Siemens was a German inventor and industrialist. He is world known for his advances in various technologies, and chose to work on perfecting technologies that have already been established. Siemens invented a telegraph that...

Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace, born Augusta Ada Byron and now commonly known as Ada Lovelace, was an English mathematician and writer chiefly known for her work on Charles Babbage's early mechanical general-purpose computer, the An...

Franklin Pierce, the 14th President of the United States (1853-1857), came to office during a period of growing tension between the North and South. A politician of limited ability, Pierce was behind one of the most crucial pieces of legisl...

Benjamin Disraeli was a British Prime Minister, parliamentarian, Conservative statesman and literary figure. Starting from comparatively humble origins, he served in government for three decades, twice as Prime Minister of the United Kingdo...

Christian Andreas Doppler was an Austrian mathematician and physicist. He is celebrated for his principle — known as the Doppler effect — that the observed frequency of a wave depends on the relative speed of the source and the observer. He...

Louis-Hector Berlioz was a French Romantic composer, best known for his compositions Symphonie fantastique, Grande messe des morts (Requiem), Les Troyens, and La damnation de Faust. Berlioz made significant contributions to the modern orche...

William II (Willem Frederik George Lodewijk van Oranje-Nassau) was King of the Netherlands, Grand Duke of Luxembourg, and Duke of Limburg from 7 October 1840 until his death. On 7 October 1840, on his father's abdication, he acceded the thr...