Sir Charles Edward Kingsford Smith, often called by his nickname Smithy, was an early Australian aviator. In 1928, he earned global fame when he made the first trans-Pacific flight from the United States to Australia. He also made the first...

Alexander Aleksandrovich Alekhine was a Russian and French chess player and the fourth World Chess Champion. He is widely considered one of the greatest chess players ever. By the age of 22, Alekhine was already among the strongest chess...

Prof Arthur Holmes was a British geologist who made two major contributions to the understanding of geology. He pioneered the use of radiometric dating of minerals and was the first earth scientist to grasp the mechanical and thermal implic...

José Raúl Capablanca y Graupera was a Cuban chess player who was world chess champion from 1921 to 1927. A chess prodigy, he is considered by many as one of the greatest players of all time, widely renowned for his exceptional endgame skill...

Alfred Lothar Wegener was a German polar researcher, geophysicist and meteorologist. During his lifetime he was primarily known for his achievements in meteorology and as a pioneer of polar research, but today he is most remembered as th...

Otto Hahn was a German chemist and pioneer in the fields of radioactivity and radiochemistry. He was exclusively awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1944 for the discovery and the radiochemical proof of nuclear fission. He is referred t...

The Honourable Charles Stewart Rolls was, together with Frederick Henry Royce, a co-founder of the Rolls-Royce car manufacturing firm. Rolls started one of Britain's first car dealerships when he started importing and selling French made ve...

Guglielmo Marconi was an Italian inventor, best known for his development of a radio telegraph system, which served as the foundation for the establishment of numerous affiliated companies worldwide. He shared the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physic...

Luigi Lucheni was an Italian anarchist who assassinated the Austrian Empress, Elisabeth (commonly referred to as Sissi, Viennese for Elisabeth), in 1898. Lucheni believed in propaganda of the deed, a philosophy advocating spreading beliefs...

Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin was a Russian composer and pianist. Scriabin, who was influenced early in his life by the works of Frédéric Chopin, composed works that are characterised by a highly tonal idiom (these works are associated wi...

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...

Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, writer, social critic, political activist, and Nobel laureate. At various points in his life, Russell considered himself a libe...

Marcel-Valentin-Louis-Eugène-Georges Proust was a French intellectual, novelist, essayist and critic, best known as the author of In Search of Lost Time (in French À la recherche du temps perdu, also translated previously as Remembrance of...

The Wright brothers, Orville (1871–1948) and Wilbur (1867–1912), were two American brothers, inventors, and aviation pioneers who are credited with inventing and building the world's first successful airplane and making the first controlled...

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...