Browse people · Page 5 of 35
1,666 profilesBertrand Russell
18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970
Bertrand Russell was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, and public intellectual who made foundational contr...
Bessie Head
6 July 1937 – 17 April 1986
Bessie Head (1937-1986) was a writer born in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, who worked as a teacher and journalist befo...
Bessie Smith
15 April 1894 – 26 September 1937
Bessie Smith was an American blues singer widely regarded as the 'Empress of the Blues'. One of the most popular and inf...
Bethlehem Tilahun Alemu
1980 – present
Bethlehem Tilahun Alemu is an Ethiopian entrepreneur who founded the footwear company soleRebels in Addis Ababa, making...
Bette Davis
5 April 1908 – 6 October 1989
Bette Davis was an American actress known for her intense, versatile performances across more than a hundred films spann...
Betty Friedan
4 February 1921 – 4 February 2006
Betty Friedan was an American feminist writer and activist whose 1963 book The Feminine Mystique is widely credited with...
Beyoncé
4 September 1981 – present
Beyoncé is an American singer, songwriter and businesswoman from Houston, Texas. She first became known in the late 1990...
Bhagat Singh
28 September 1907 – 23 March 1931
Bhagat Singh was an Indian revolutionary and socialist who became one of the most influential figures of the Indian inde...
Bhaskara II
c. 1114 – c. 1185
Bhaskara II (c. 1114 - c. 1185), also known as Bhaskaracharya, was an Indian mathematician and astronomer regarded as th...
Bill Clinton
19 August 1946 – present
Bill Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001, after tw...
Bill Gates
28 October 1955 – present
American software pioneer and philanthropist, co-founder of Microsoft, who later turned to global health and development...
Bill Hewlett
20 May 1913 – 12 January 2001
Bill Hewlett was an American engineer and entrepreneur who co-founded the Hewlett-Packard Company with David Packard in...
Bill Russell
12 February 1934 – 31 July 2022
Bill Russell was an American basketball player and coach who won eleven NBA championships with the Boston Celtics betwee...
Billie Holiday
7 April 1915 – 17 July 1959
Billie Holiday was an American jazz and swing singer known for her distinctive phrasing and emotional depth. One of the...
Billie Jean King
22 November 1943 – present
Billie Jean King is an American former world number one tennis player who won 39 Grand Slam titles across singles, doubl...
Bismillah Khan
21 March 1916 – 21 August 2006
Ustad Bismillah Khan was an Indian musician credited with popularizing the shehnai, a reed instrument, as a classical co...
Björk
21 November 1965 – present
Björk is an Icelandic singer, songwriter and producer who first recorded as a child in Reykjavík and came to internation...
Björn Borg
6 June 1956 – present
Björn Borg is a Swedish former tennis player who won eleven Grand Slam singles titles, including five consecutive Wimble...
Blaise Pascal
19 June 1623 – 19 August 1662
French mathematician, physicist, and religious philosopher who built one of the first mechanical calculators, pioneered...
Bob Dylan
24 May 1941 – present
Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, author, and artist widely regarded as one of the greatest songwriters of all...
Bob Marley
6 February 1945 – 11 May 1981
Bob Marley was a Jamaican singer, songwriter, and musician who became the most widely known performer of reggae music an...
Bobby Sands
9 March 1954 – 5 May 1981
Bobby Sands was a member of the Provisional Irish Republican Army from Northern Ireland, born in 1954. Imprisoned at HM...
Bong Joon-ho
14 September 1969 – present
Bong Joon-ho is a South Korean film director and screenwriter whose work mixes genre storytelling with social commentary...
Booker T. Washington
c. 1856 – 14 November 1915
Booker T. Washington (1856-1915) was an American educator, author, and orator who was born into slavery in Virginia and...
Boris Yeltsin
1 February 1931 – 23 April 2007
Boris Yeltsin was a Russian politician who served as the first President of the Russian Federation from 1991 to 1999. He...
Brenda Fassie
3 November 1964 – 9 May 2004
Brenda Fassie (1964–2004) was a South African pop singer whose 1983 hit Weekend Special with Brenda and the Big Dudes ma...
Bridget Riley
24 April 1931 – present
Bridget Riley is an English painter and a leading figure of the Op Art movement. Famous for her precise black-and-white...
Bruce Lee
27 November 1940 – 20 July 1973
Bruce Lee was a Hong Kong American martial artist, actor and film-maker who trained in Wing Chun in Hong Kong and later...
Bruce Springsteen
23 September 1949 – present
Bruce Springsteen is an American singer-songwriter known for narrative songs about working-class American life and for l...
Buchi Emecheta
21 July 1944 – 25 January 2017
Buchi Emecheta was a Nigerian-British novelist who wrote more than twenty books, including Second-Class Citizen, The Bri...
Buckminster Fuller
12 July 1895 – 1 July 1983
Richard Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983) was an American architect, systems theorist, designer, and inventor best known fo...
Buddy Holly
7 September 1936 – 3 February 1959
Buddy Holly was an American singer, songwriter, and pioneer of rock and roll whose brief career produced enduring hits s...
Buster Keaton
4 October 1895 – 1 February 1966
Buster Keaton was an American actor, comedian, and filmmaker known as a master of silent film comedy. Nicknamed 'The Gre...
Buzz Aldrin
20 January 1930 – present
Buzz Aldrin is an American former astronaut, engineer and fighter pilot who was the lunar module pilot of Apollo 11 and...
C. N. R. Rao
30 June 1934 – present
Chintamani Nagesa Ramachandra Rao is an Indian chemist whose research centres on solid-state and structural chemistry, i...
C. V. Raman
7 November 1888 – 21 November 1970
Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman (1888-1970) was an Indian physicist who discovered the Raman effect, the inelastic scatteri...
Cahit Arf
11 October 1910 – 26 December 1997
Cahit Arf was a Turkish mathematician known for the Arf invariant of a quadratic form in characteristic two, the Hasse–A...
Canaletto
28 October 1697 – 19 April 1768
Canaletto (Giovanni Antonio Canal, 1697-1768) was a Venetian painter famous for his precise, luminous view paintings (ve...
Canan Dağdeviren
1985 – present
Canan Dağdeviren is a Turkish materials scientist and engineer who works on flexible, conformable electronic devices for...
Cao Xueqin
c. 1715 – c. 1763
Cao Xueqin (c. 1715-1763) was a Chinese writer of the Qing dynasty, author of Dream of the Red Chamber (Honglou Meng), w...
Caravaggio
29 September 1571 – 18 July 1610
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610) was an Italian painter whose dramatic use of light and shadow (chiaroscuro...
Cardinal Richelieu
9 September 1585 – 4 December 1642
Armand Jean du Plessis, Cardinal Richelieu (1585-1642), was a French clergyman and statesman who served as chief ministe...
Carl Friedrich Gauss
30 April 1777 – 23 February 1855
Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777-1855) was a German mathematician, astronomer, and physicist, often called the 'Prince of Math...
Carl Lewis
1 July 1961 – present
Carl Lewis is an American former track and field athlete who won nine Olympic gold medals and eight world championship t...
Carl Linnaeus
23 May 1707 – 10 January 1778
Swedish botanist and physician who formalized binomial nomenclature, the modern system of naming organisms, and is known...
Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach
8 March 1714 – 14 December 1788
Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach was a German composer, the second surviving son of Johann Sebastian Bach, and a central figure...
Carl Sagan
9 November 1934 – 20 December 1996
Carl Sagan (1934-1996) was an American astronomer, planetary scientist and science communicator who did influential rese...
Carlos Fuentes
11 November 1928 – 15 May 2012
Carlos Fuentes was a Mexican novelist, essayist and diplomat, one of the central figures of the Latin American literary...