W.E.B. Du Bois was an early African-American civil rights leader and scholar and the first non-white person to receive a doctorate from Harvard University. He was an outspoken critic of the social inequalities that existed in the US during...

The Right Honourable Arthur Neville Chamberlain was a British politician and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1937 to 1940. Chamberlain is perhaps the most ill-regarded British Prime Minister of the 20th century, largely because of...

Alice Hamilton was an American physician, research scientist, and author who is best known as a leading expert in the field of occupational health and a pioneer in the field of industrial toxicology. Subsequent to her graduation from the...

Piet Mondrian was a Dutch painter and theoretician who is regarded as one of the greatest artists of the 20th century. He is known for being one of the pioneers of 20th century abstract art, as he changed his artistic direction from figurat...

Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninov, one of the most famous of Russian composers. Rachmaninov's music is considered Romantic while bearing traces of typically Russian themes and style of composition. Although banned in Soviet Russia for more tha...

Joseph-Maurice Ravel was a, best known for his orchestral work, Boléro, and his famous 1922 orchestral arrangement of Modest Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition. He himself had described Boléro as "a piece for orchestra without music". R...

Pope Pius XII, born Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli, was head of the Catholic Church from 2 March 1939 to his death in 1958. Before his election to the papacy, Pacelli served as secretary of the Department of Extraordinary Eccle...

Albert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist. Einstein developed the theory of relativity, one of the two pillars of modern physics (alongside quantum mechanics). Einstein's work is also known for its influence on the philosophy...

Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov, Soviet politician and diplomat, was a leading figure in the Soviet government from the 1920s, when he rose to power as a protégé of Joseph Stalin, to the 1950s, when he was dismissed from office by Nikita Kh...

John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr. was an American writer. He is widely known for the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Grapes of Wrath (1939) and East of Eden (1952) and the novella Of Mice and Men (1937). As the author of twenty-seven books, includ...

Ralph Kronig was a German American physicist. He is noted for the discovery of particle spin and for his theory of x-ray absorption spectroscopy. His theories include the Kronig–Penney model, the Coster–Kronig transition and the Kramers–Kro...

Albert Speer was a German architect who was, for part of World War II, Minister of Armaments and War Production for the Third Reich. Speer was Adolf Hitler's chief architect before assuming ministerial office. As "the Nazi who said sorry",...

Momofuku Ando, born Go Pek-Hok, was an inventor and businessman who founded Nissin Food Products Co., Ltd. He is known as the inventor of instant noodles (ramen noodles) and the creator of the brands Top Ramen and Cup Noodles....

Anthony Burgess was an English novelist and critic. He was also active as a composer, librettist, poet, playwright, screenwriter, journalist, essayist, travel writer, broadcaster, translator and educationalist. Born John Burgess Wilson in t...

Robert Mugabe became Zimbabwe's first president after the establishment of majority rule and the official granting of independence from Britain in 1980. He still holds that position today. Mugabe was a hero in the struggle for majority rule...