Sir Edwin Landseer Lutyens was an English architect known for imaginatively adapting traditional architectural styles to the requirements of his era. He designed many English country houses, war memorials and public buildings. In his biogra...

Harry Houdini was a Hungarian-born American magician and escapologist, stunt performer, actor and film producer noted for his sensational escape acts. He was also a skeptic who set out to expose frauds purporting to be supernatural phenomen...

Béla Viktor János Bartók was a Hungarian composer, pianist and collector of Eastern European and Middle Eastern folk music. Bartók is considered one of the greatest composers of the 20th century. He was one of the founders of the field of e...

Amalie Emmy Noether was a German mathematician who made important contributions to abstract algebra and theoretical physics. She invariably used the name "Emmy Noether" in her life and publications. She was described by Pavel Alexandrov, Al...

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was a German-American architect. He was commonly referred to as Mies, his surname. Along with Alvar Aalto, Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius and Frank Lloyd Wright, he is regarded as one of the pioneers of modernist arch...

Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin, KBE (16 April 1889 – 25 December 1977) was an English comic actor, filmmaker, and composer who rose to fame in the era of silent film. Chaplin became a worldwide icon through his screen persona "the Tramp" and i...

Sir William Lawrence Bragg was an Australian-born British physicist and X-ray crystallographer, discoverer (1912) of Bragg's law of X-ray diffraction, which is basic for the determination of crystal structure. He was joint recipient (with h...

Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet, who lived in Paris for most of his adult life and wrote in both English and French. He is widely regarded as among the most influential writer...

Wernher von Braun was a German, later American, aerospace engineer, and space architect. He was the leading figure in the development of rocket technology in Germany and the father of rocket technology and space science in the United States...

Kim Il-sung was the leader of North Korea from its founding in 1948 until his death, when he was succeeded by his son Kim Jong-il. He held the posts of Prime Minister from 1948 to 1972 and President from 1972 to his death, in addition to Ge...

Benedict XVI, né Joseph Ratzinger (April 16, 1927) is Pope of the Roman Catholic Church. In 1981, as Cardinal Ratzinger, he was appointed prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith by Pope John Paul II, made a Cardinal Bishop...

James Dewey Watson is an American molecular biologist, geneticist, and zoologist, best known as one of the co-discoverers of the structure of DNA in 1953 with Francis Crick. Watson, Crick, and Maurice Wilkins were awarded the 1962 Nobel Pri...

Aretha Louise Franklin was an American singer, songwriter, actress, pianist, and civil rights activist. Franklin began her career as a child singing gospel at New Bethel Baptist Church in Detroit, Michigan, where her father C. L. Franklin w...

Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber is a highly successful English composer of musical theatre. He was the most popular theatre composer of the late 20th century and is arguably the most popular theatre composer of all time, with multiple showpieces th...

Quentin Jerome Tarantino is an American film director, writer, and actor. His films are characterized by nonlinear storylines, satirical subject matter, an aestheticization of violence, extended scenes of dialogue, ensemble casts consisting...