John Calvin Coolidge, Jr. was the thirtieth President of the United States (1923–1929). A Republican lawyer from Vermont, Coolidge worked his way up the ladder of Massachusetts state politics, eventually becoming governor of that state. His...

Louis Blériot was a French aviator, inventor and engineer. In 1909 he completed the first flight across a large body of water in a heavier-than-air craft when he crossed the English Channel, receiving a prize of 1000 British pounds for doin...

Edward Hopper was a prominent American realist painter and printmaker. While he was most popularly known for his oil paintings, he was equally proficient as a watercolorist and printmaker in etching. Both in his urban and rural scenes, his...

Franz Kafka was a German-speaking Bohemian Jewish novelist and short story writer, widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature. His work, which fuses elements of realism and the fantastic, typically features isola...

Amedeo Clemente Modigliani was an Italian painter and sculptor who worked mainly in France. He is known for portraits and nudes in a modern style characterized by elongation of faces and figures that were not received well during his lifeti...

In 1911, Rietveld started his own furniture factory, while studying architecture. Rietveld designed the 'Red and Blue Chair' in 1918, influenced by the 'De Stijl' movement, of which he became a member in 1919, the same year in which he beca...

Richard Buckminster Fuller was an American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor and futurist. Fuller published more than 30 books, coining or popularizing terms such as "Spaceship Earth", "Dymaxion" house/car, ephemeraliz...

Alexander "Sandy" Calder was an abstract painter and sculptor famous for working in wire and originating the dangling, moving artworks known as mobiles. Alexander Calder grew up in a family of artists, but he began his career by studying me...

Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economical and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway...

Antoine Marie Jean-Baptiste Roger, comte de Saint-Exupéry, was a French writer, poet, aristocrat, journalist, and pioneering aviator. He became a laureate of several of France's highest literary awards and also won the U.S. National Book Aw...

Eric Arthur Blair, known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English novelist, essayist, journalist and critic. His work is marked by lucid prose, awareness of social injustice, opposition to totalitarianism, and commitment to democratic...

Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the key figures in the philosophy of existentialism and phenomenology, and one...

Alan Mathison Turing OBE FRS was an English mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher, and theoretical biologist. Turing was highly influential in the development of theoretical computer science, providing a for...

Gerald R. Ford, 38th President of the United States (1974-1977), became President of the United States on August 9, 1974, under extraordinary circumstances. Owing to the Watergate scandal, Ford's predecessor, Richard Nixon, had resigned und...

Lyman Strong Spitzer, Jr. was an American theoretical physicist, astronomer and mountaineer. As a scientist, he carried out research into star formation, plasma physics, and in 1946, conceived the idea of telescopes operating in outer space...