People

Tenzin Gyatso, Tibetan Buddhist religious leader, former Tibetan political leader, and recipient of the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize.

Abdul El-Sayed is an American public health administrator, author, and politician, and Michigan’s 2026 Democratic nominee for the United States Senate.

16th U.S. president who led the Union through the Civil War, drove the end of slavery, and was assassinated in 1865.

Achilles is a Greek mythological hero whose wrath, mortality, and enduring reception connect epic poetry, ethics, art, and philosophy.

English mathematician whose 1843 notes on Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine became foundational texts in the history of computing.

Scottish philosopher and economist (1723–1790), author of The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations, often regarded as a founder of modern economics.

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) was the leader of the Nazi Party and dictator of Germany from 1933 to 1945, whose policies caused World War II and the Holocaust.

Mythical Greek king and commander at Troy whose quarrel with Achilles and murder at home shaped epic and tragedy.

Agatha Christie was an English novelist and playwright whose detective fiction created Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple and reached a worldwide readership.

Japanese filmmaker (1910–1998) whose samurai epics and humanist dramas, including Rashomon and Seven Samurai, reshaped world cinema.

Al-Khwarizmi was a ninth-century scholar whose works shaped algebra, numerical calculation, astronomy, and mathematical geography.

Alan Turing was a British mathematician and codebreaker whose work established foundations of computer science, artificial intelligence, and mathematical biology.

Albert Camus was a French writer and journalist whose fiction and essays explored absurdity, revolt, and moral responsibility; he received the 1957 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Albert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist who developed relativity and made foundational contributions to quantum theory and statistical physics.

Alexander Fleming was a Scottish physician and bacteriologist who discovered penicillin and lysozyme and shared the 1945 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

Alexander the Great was king of Macedon from 336 to 323 BCE and conquered the Persian Empire, reshaping the political and cultural geography of the ancient world.

French novelist and playwright whose historical adventures, including The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo, achieved international renown.

English-born film director (1899–1980) known as the "Master of Suspense," whose thrillers shaped modern cinema, from British silent films to Hollywood classics.

Swedish inventor and industrialist who developed dynamite and bequeathed most of his fortune to establish the Nobel Prizes.

Alfred Russel Wallace was a British naturalist who independently developed natural selection and helped establish evolutionary biogeography.

Andrey Kolmogorov was a Soviet mathematician who established modern probability’s axiomatic foundations and made major contributions to analysis, dynamical systems, turbulence, and algorithmic information.

Andrey Markov was a Russian mathematician whose work on dependent random variables established the foundations of Markov chains.

American Pop artist and filmmaker whose work explored consumer goods, celebrity, reproduction, and the boundaries between art and commerce.

Anita Mui (1963–2003) was a Hong Kong singer and actress known for her Cantopop recordings, theatrical performances, and film roles.

Canadian poet, essayist, translator and classicist; 2026 Nobel laureate in Literature.

Taiwanese politician and feminist activist who served as the Republic of China’s first female vice president from 2000 to 2008.

American photographer and conservationist known for black-and-white landscapes, the Zone System, and advocacy for national parks.

American physician-scientist whose career linked immunology research, HIV/AIDS programs, and federal responses to infectious diseases.

French chemist whose quantitative experiments, oxygen theory, and reform of chemical nomenclature helped establish modern chemistry.

Russian short-story writer, playwright, and physician whose understated fiction and innovative drama helped shape modern literature and theatre.

Antonie van Leeuwenhoek was a Dutch microscopist whose observations of bacteria and other microscopic organisms helped establish microbiology.

American-Yemeni cleric and al-Qaeda propagandist killed in a U.S. drone strike in Yemen in 2011.

Archimedes was an ancient Greek mathematician and inventor whose surviving works established major results in geometry, mechanics, and hydrostatics.

Aristotle was an ancient Greek philosopher whose investigations of reasoning, nature, ethics, and politics shaped intellectual traditions across many centuries.

Arthur Samuel was an American computer scientist whose learning checkers programs helped establish machine learning as a field of research.

German philosopher whose account of reality as will shaped philosophical pessimism, aesthetics, and the ethics of compassion.

French mathematician whose work helped establish rigorous calculus and the foundations of complex analysis.

Bai Suocheng was a Kokang political and military leader in Myanmar who was sentenced to death in China in 2025 and died before execution.

American politician and author who served as the 44th U.S. president from 2009 to 2017, the first African American to hold the office.

Barbara McClintock was an American cytogeneticist who discovered mobile genetic elements in maize and received the 1983 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

Seventeenth-century Dutch philosopher whose naturalistic system united metaphysics, ethics, biblical criticism, and political theory.

Benjamin Franklin was an American printer, writer, scientist, inventor, diplomat, and statesman who helped establish the United States.

Israeli politician and Likud leader, and the country’s longest-serving prime minister.

German mathematician whose work transformed geometry, complex analysis, integration, and the study of prime numbers.

Former Chinese politician who led Chongqing and served as commerce minister before receiving a life sentence in 2013.

American singer-songwriter, poet and performer whose work reshaped popular music from the 1960s onward; awarded the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Calypso is a goddess-nymph in Greek mythology who detains Odysseus on Ogygia and offers him immortality before the gods compel her to release him.

Can Xue is the pen name of Deng Xiaohua, a Chinese experimental fiction writer and literary critic known for dreamlike narratives.

Late Han statesman, military leader, and poet whose consolidation of northern China laid the foundations of Cao Wei.

Qing-dynasty novelist whose Dream of the Red Chamber transformed Chinese fiction and inspired the scholarly field of Redology.

Carl Friedrich Gauss was a German mathematician, astronomer, and physicist whose work shaped number theory, geometry, statistical estimation, and geomagnetism.

Swiss psychiatrist and founder of analytical psychology, known for the collective unconscious, archetypes and individuation.

Swedish naturalist and physician who standardized binomial species names and developed influential systems of biological classification.

Catherine II of Russia (1729–1796), empress regnant who expanded the Russian Empire and patronized Enlightenment ideas and the arts.

Chinese-born Canadian entrepreneur, Binance co-founder and former chief executive, commonly known as CZ.

Frankish king and emperor whose conquests and reforms reshaped early medieval western Europe.

Charles Darwin was an English naturalist whose theory of evolution by natural selection transformed the scientific understanding of life’s diversity and shared ancestry.

English novelist and journalist (1812–1870) whose serialized novels exposed Victorian social injustice and helped shape the modern image of Christmas.

Charles III is King of the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth realms, whose public life spans royal service, charity, and environmental advocacy.

Charles K. Kao was an electrical engineer whose research established the feasibility of low-loss optical fibers for long-distance telecommunications.