Browse people
1,666 profiles14th Dalai Lama
6 July 1935 – present
Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, is the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism and was the political leader of Tibet un...
A. Philip Randolph
15 April 1889 – 16 May 1979
A. Philip Randolph was an American labor leader and civil rights activist who organized the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car...
A. R. Rahman
6 January 1967 – present
A. R. Rahman is an Indian composer, singer and record producer known for film scores in Tamil and Hindi cinema and for i...
Aaron Ciechanover
1 October 1947 – present
Aaron Ciechanover is an Israeli biologist and physician known for his work on ubiquitin-mediated protein degradation. Wo...
Aaron Copland
14 November 1900 – 2 December 1990
Aaron Copland was an American composer, composition teacher, writer and conductor, often referred to as the Dean of Amer...
Abbas Kiarostami
22 June 1940 – 4 July 2016
Abbas Kiarostami was an Iranian film director, screenwriter, photographer, and poet regarded as one of the most influent...
Abbas the Great
27 January 1571 – 19 January 1629
Abbas I, known as Abbas the Great, was the fifth Safavid shah of Iran and is generally considered the strongest ruler of...
Abdel Halim Hafez
21 June 1929 – 30 March 1977
Abdel Halim Hafez was an Egyptian singer and film actor, one of the central figures of Arabic popular music in the mid-t...
Abdülhamid II
21 September 1842 – 10 February 1918
Abdülhamid II was the 34th sultan of the Ottoman Empire, reigning from 1876 to 1909. He oversaw the promulgation of the...
Abdullah Ibrahim
9 October 1934 – 15 June 2026
Abdullah Ibrahim is a South African pianist and composer, born in Cape Town and known early in his career as Dollar Bran...
Abdulrazak Gurnah
20 December 1948 – present
Abdulrazak Gurnah is a Tanzanian-born British novelist and academic who left Zanzibar as a refugee in the late 1960s and...
Abdus Salam
29 January 1926 – 21 November 1996
Abdus Salam was a Pakistani theoretical physicist who shared the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics for his contribution to the...
Abebe Bikila
7 August 1932 – 25 October 1973
Abebe Bikila was an Ethiopian marathon runner and member of the Imperial Bodyguard who became the first athlete from sub...
Abel Tasman
1603 – 10 October 1659
Abel Janszoon Tasman was a Dutch seafarer and explorer in the service of the Dutch East India Company (VOC). On his 1642...
Abraham Darby
14 April 1678 – 8 March 1717
Abraham Darby I was an English ironmaster and Quaker who in 1709 became the first to smelt iron ore with coke instead of...
Abraham Lincoln
12 February 1809 – 15 April 1865
Sixteenth president of the United States, who preserved the Union through the Civil War and issued the Emancipation Proc...
Ada Lovelace
10 December 1815 – 27 November 1852
English mathematician and writer, chiefly known for her work on Charles Babbage's proposed mechanical general-purpose co...
Ada Yonath
22 June 1939 – 31 August 2026
Ada Yonath is an Israeli crystallographer at the Weizmann Institute of Science known for determining the structure of th...
Adam Mickiewicz
24 December 1798 – 26 November 1855
Adam Mickiewicz (1798-1855) was a Polish Romantic poet, dramatist and political activist, regarded as Poland's national...
Adam Smith
June 1723 – 17 July 1790
Scottish economist and moral philosopher whose treatise The Wealth of Nations laid the foundations of classical economic...
Adele
5 May 1988 – present
Adele is an English singer and songwriter whose albums 19, 21, 25 and 30 have made her one of the best-selling music art...
Adi Dassler
3 November 1900 – 6 September 1978
Adi Dassler was a German cobbler and entrepreneur who founded the sportswear company Adidas. With his brother Rudolf he...
Adolf Hitler
20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Germany from 1933 to 1945 as leader of the Nazi...
Adonis
1 January 1930 – present
Adonis is the pen name of Ali Ahmad Said Esber, a Syrian-born poet, critic and translator who has lived in Lebanon and F...
Agatha Christie
15 September 1890 – 12 January 1976
English crime writer, creator of Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, and the best-selling novelist of all time.
Agnès Varda
30 May 1928 – 29 March 2019
Agnès Varda was a Belgian-born French film director, photographer, and artist regarded as a pioneer of the French New Wa...
Ahmad Shamlou
12 December 1925 – 23 July 2000
Ahmad Shamlou (1925–2000) was an Iranian poet, writer and journalist, one of the most influential figures of modern Pers...
Ahmed Zaki Yamani
30 June 1930 – 23 February 2021
Ahmed Zaki Yamani (1930–2021) was a Saudi Arabian lawyer and politician who served as Minister of Petroleum and Mineral...
Ahmed Zewail
26 February 1946 – 2 August 2016
Ahmed Hassan Zewail was an Egyptian-American chemist known as the father of femtochemistry. He won the 1999 Nobel Prize...
Ai Weiwei
28 August 1957 – present
Ai Weiwei is a Chinese contemporary artist, architect and documentary filmmaker. His work spans sculpture, installation,...
Akbar the Great
15 October 1542 – 27 October 1605
Third Mughal emperor, who expanded the empire across most of the Indian subcontinent and pursued a policy of religious t...
Akio Morita
26 January 1921 – 3 October 1999
Akio Morita was a Japanese businessman who co-founded Sony with Masaru Ibuka in 1946. He led the company's international...
Akira Kurosawa
23 March 1910 – 6 September 1998
Akira Kurosawa was a Japanese filmmaker and painter who directed thirty films in a career spanning over five decades, an...
Akira Yoshino
30 January 1948 – present
Akira Yoshino is a Japanese chemist who spent his career at the Asahi Kasei Corporation and developed the first safe, co...
Al-Ghazali
c. 1058 – 19 December 1111
Al-Ghazali was a Persian polymath, jurist, theologian, and mystic, widely regarded as one of the most influential thinke...
Al-Waleed bin Talal
7 March 1955 – present
Al-Waleed bin Talal Al Saud is a Saudi businessman and member of the Saudi royal family. He founded Kingdom Holding Comp...
Alan Paton
11 January 1903 – 12 April 1988
Alan Paton was a South African writer and politician, born in Pietermaritzburg in 1903. He ran the Diepkloof Reformatory...
Alan Turing
23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954
English mathematician, computer scientist, logician and cryptanalyst. He was highly influential in the development of th...
Albert Camus
7 November 1913 – 4 January 1960
Albert Camus was a French philosopher, author, and journalist associated with absurdism and existentialist thought. His...
Albert Einstein
14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955
German-born theoretical physicist, widely held to be one of the greatest and most influential scientists of all time. Be...
Albert Luthuli
c. 1898 – 21 July 1967
Albert Luthuli was a South African teacher, Zulu chief, and anti-apartheid activist who served as President-General of t...
Albert Sabin
26 August 1906 – 3 March 1993
Albert Sabin was a Polish-American medical researcher best known for developing the oral polio vaccine, which played a m...
Albert Schweitzer
14 January 1875 – 4 September 1965
Albert Schweitzer was an Alsatian-German theologian, organist, philosopher, physician, and medical missionary. He founde...
Albert Szent-Györgyi
16 September 1893 – 22 October 1986
Albert Szent-Györgyi was a Hungarian biochemist who won the 1937 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discoveri...
Alberto Giacometti
10 October 1901 – 11 January 1966
Alberto Giacometti was a Swiss sculptor, painter, and printmaker best known for his elongated, attenuated human figures....
Albertus Magnus
c. 1200 – 15 November 1280
Albertus Magnus (c. 1200-1280), also known as Albert the Great, was a German Dominican friar, philosopher, and bishop ce...
Albrecht Dürer
21 May 1471 – 6 April 1528
Albrecht Dürer was a German painter, printmaker, and theorist of the Northern Renaissance, based in Nuremberg. His engra...
Aldo Moro
23 September 1916 – 9 May 1978
Aldo Moro was an Italian jurist and Christian Democrat politician who served five terms as Prime Minister of Italy betwe...