The International Pantheon Arts Center
Pulau Seni, Thousand Islands, Jakarta,
The 1^st to the 17^th  day of the eighth month
in the year 58 AP (After Present)

Declaration on the
inalienable rights
of artists & intellectuals
soon to be posted on this page by
the members of the Global Academy of the Arts & Sciences.

We, the members of the Global Academy of the Arts & Sciences, alarmed that culture is at the brink of extinction and the world is facing the imminent demise of civilization, have called an unprecedented extraordinary meeting.
 
Distinguished members present are:
 

Pharaoh Menes

The Egyptian pharaoh credited with founding the First dynasty. Menes was seen as a founding figure for much of the history of Ancient Egypt, and was possibly a mythical founding king similar to Romulus and Remus for Ancient Rome.

Hammurabi
The sixth king of Babylon. He became the first king of the Babylonian Empire, extending Babylon's control over Mesopotamia by winning a series of wars against neighboring kingdoms.

Homer
Greek epic poet, author of the epic poems the Iliad and the Odysse. The ancient Greeks generally believed that Homer was a historical individual, but some modern scholars are skeptical: no reliable biographical information has been handed down from classical antiquity

Lao Tzu
philosopher of ancient China and is a central figure in Taoism

Cyrus the Great 
August 529 BC or 530 BC, also known as Cyrus II of Persia and Cyrus the Elder, was a Persian Shāhanshāh (Emperor). He was the founder of the Persian Empire under the Achaemenid dynasty.

Confucius
 "Master Kung," a Chinese thinker and social philosopher, whose teachings and philosophy have deeply influenced Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and Vietnamese thought and life.

Xerxes I of Persia
 King of Persia of the Achaemenid dynasty. Xérxēs is the Greek form of the Persian throne name Xšayāršā, meaning "Ruler of heroes".

Pericles
 was a prominent and influential statesman, orator, and general of Athens during the city's Golden Age—specifically, the time between the Persian and Peloponnesian wars.

Herodotus of Halicarnassus
Greek historian regarded as the "Father of History" in Western culture.

Socrates
Classical Greek philosopher. Credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, in reality he is an enigmatic figure known only through other people's accounts. It is Plato's dialogues that have largely created today's impression of him.
 

Hippocrates
ancient Greek physician of the Age of Pericles, and was considered one of the most outstanding figures in the history of medicine. He is referred to as the "father of medicine" in recognition of his lasting contributions to the field as the founder of the Hippocratic school of medicine.

Plato
 Classical Greek philosopher, who, together with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, helped to lay the foundations of Western philosophy. Plato was also a mathematician, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the western world.

Aristoteles
 Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. He wrote on many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, politics, government, ethics, biology and zoology.

Alexander the Great
known as (Alexander III of Macedon) a Greek king (basileus) of Macedon.
He was one of the most successful military commanders in history, and is presumed undefeated in battle.

Ashoka
 Indian emperor, of the Maurya Dynasty. Often cited as one of India's greatest emperors, Ashoka reigned over most of present-day India after a number of military conquests.

Archimedes of Syracuse
Greek mathematician, physicist, engineer, inventor, and astronomer.

Shih Huang Ti
 The monarch known now as Qin Shi Huangdi, personal name Yíng Zhèng, king of the Chinese State of Qin under the Zhou Dynasty, and then the first emperor of a unified China ruling under the name the First Emperor (Shih Huang-Ti).

Gaius Julius Caesar
 Roman general and dictator of the same name who seized control of the government and laid the political foundations for the transition from the Roman Republic to the Empire.

Kaisar Augustus
born Gaius Octavius Thurinus and known as Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus after adoption, first emperor of the Roman Empire.

Constantius Chlorus
 Flavius Valerius Constantius, emperor of the Western Roman Empire. Commonly called Chlorus (the Pale) an epithet given to him by Byzantine historians. He was the father of Constantine I and initiator of the Constantinian dynasty.

Charlemagne
King of the Franks. He expanded the Frankish kingdoms into a Frankish Empire that incorporated much of Western and Central Europe. During his reign, he conquered Italy and was crowned Imperator Augustus by Pope Leo III as a rival of the Byzantine Emperor in Constantinople.

Genghis Khan
born Temüjin, the Mongol founder, Khan (ruler) and posthumously declared Khagan (emperor) of the Mongol Empire, the largest contiguous empire in history.

Marco Polo
Venetian trader and explorer who gained fame for his worldwide travels, recorded in the book Il Milione ("The Million" or The Travels of Marco Polo) also known as Oriente Poliano (the Orient of the Polos) and the Description of the World.

Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg
German goldsmith and printer who is credited with inventing movable type printing in Europe and mechanical printing globally. His major work, the Gutenberg Bible (also known as the 42-line Bible), has been acclaimed for its high aesthetic and technical quality.

Christopher Columbus
Italian navigator, colonizer and explorer whose voyages across the Atlantic Ocean led to general European awareness of the Western Hemisphere and of the American continents.

Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci
Italian polymath, having been a scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, painter, sculptor, architect, botanist, musician and writer.

Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus
(Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam) Dutch humanist and theologian. Erasmus was a classical scholar who wrote in a "pure" Latin style and enjoyed the sobriquet "Prince of the Humanists." He has been called "the crowning glory of the Christian humanists.

Nicolaus Copernicus
The first astronomer to formulate a scientifically based heliocentric cosmology that displaced the Earth from the center of the universe.

Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni
Michelangelo, Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, poet and engineer. Michelangelo also created two of the most influential works in fresco in the history of Western art: the scenes from Genesis on the ceiling and The Last Judgment on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel in Rome. Later in life he designed the dome of St. Peter's Basilica in the same city and revolutionised classical architecture with his use of the giant order of pilasters.

Ferdinand Magellan
Portuguese maritime explorer who, while in the service of the Spanish Crown, tried to find a westward route to the Spice Islands of Indonesia. Magellan was the first European to enter the Pacific from the eponymous Strait of Magellan, which he discovered. He was also the first European to reach the archipelago of what is now known as the Philippines.
 

Martin Luther
German monk, theologian, university professor and church reformer whose ideas inspired the Protestant Reformation and changed the course of Western civilization.

Henry VIII
King of England and Lord of Ireland, later King of Ireland and claimant to the Kingdom of France. Henry was the second monarch of the House of Tudor, succeeding his father, Henry VII.

Galileo Galilei
A Tuscan (Italian) physicist, mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher who played a major role in the scientific revolution. Galileo has been called the "father of modern observational astronomy", the "father of modern physics", the "father of science", and “the Father of Modern Science.

William Shakespeare
English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. His early plays were mainly comedies and histories, genres he raised to the peak of sophistication and artistry by the end of the sixteenth century. Next he wrote mainly tragedies until about 1608, including Hamlet, King Lear, and Macbeth, considered some of the finest examples in the English language.

Oliver Cromwell
English military and political leader best known for his involvement in making England into a republican Commonwealth and for his later role as Lord Protector of England, Scotland and Ireland. He was one of the commanders of the New Model Army which defeated the royalists in the English Civil War.

Sir Isaac Newton
English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, natural philosopher, alchemist and theologian. His Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, published in 1687, is considered to be the most influential book in the history of science.

Johann Sebastian Bach
German composer and organist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity.

Benjamin Franklin
Founding Fathers of the United States of America. Franklin was a leading author and printer, satirist, political theorist, politician, scientist, inventor, civic activist, statesman and diplomat.

Frederick II
King of Prussia from the Hohenzollern dynasty. In his role as a prince-elector of the Holy Roman Empire, he was Frederick IV (Friedrich IV) of Brandenburg. He became known as Frederick the Great (Friedrich der Große) and was nicknamed der alte Fritz ("Old Fritz").

James Cook
English explorer, navigator and cartographer, ultimately rising to the rank of Captain in the Royal Navy. Cook charted many areas and recorded several islands and coastlines on European maps for the first time.
 

George Washington
The first President of the United States, and led the Continental Army to victory over the Kingdom of Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War. Washington is seen as a symbol of the United States and republicanism in practice. His devotion to civic virtue made him an exemplary figure among early American politicians.

Thomas Jefferson
The third President of the United States, the principal author of the Declaration of Independence, and one of the most influential Founding Fathers for his promotion of the ideals of republicanism in the United States. Jefferson supported the separation of church and state and was the author of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Johann Chrysostom Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. His 600 compositions include works widely acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music. Mozart is among the most enduringly popular of classical composers, and many of his works are part of the standard concert repertoire.

Ludwig van Beethoven
German composer and pianist. He was a crucial figure in the transitional period between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western classical music, and remains one of the most respected and influential composers of all time.

Napoleon Bonaparte
Napoleon I (born Napoleone di Buonaparte, later Napoleon Bonaparte) French military and political leader who had a significant impact on modern European history. He was a general during the French Revolution, the ruler of France as First Consul of the French Republic and Emperor of the French and King of Italy, Mediator of the Swiss Confederation and Protector of the Confederation of the Rhine.

William Clark
American explorer, soldier, Indian agent, and territorial governor. A native of Virginia, he would also grow up in pre-statehood Kentucky before later settling in what later became the state of Missouri.

Meriwether Lewis
American explorer, soldier, and public administrator, best known for his role as the leader of the Lewis and Clark Expedition also known as the Corps of Discovery, with William Clark, whose mission was to explore the territory of the Louisiana Purchase.

Simón Bolívar
Simón José Antonio de la Santísima Trinidad Bolívar y Palacios Blanco
One of the most important leaders of Spanish America's successful struggle for independence from Spain, along with Argentinian general José de San Martín. Bolívar became President of Gran Colombia , President of Peru and President of Bolivia. His legacy contributed decisively to the independence of present-day Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Panamá, Perú and Venezuela.

Samuel Finley Breese Morse
American painter of portraits and historic scenes, the creator of a single wire telegraph system, and co-inventor, with Alfred Vail, of the Morse Code.

Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield
British Conservative statesman and literary figure. He served in government for three decades, twice as Prime Minister—the first and thus far only Jew to do so (although Disraeli was baptised in the Anglican Church at 13). Disraeli's greatest lasting achievement was the creation of the modern Conservative Party after the Corn Laws schism.

Giuseppe Garibaldi
Italian military and political leader. In his twenties, he joined the Carbonari Italian patriot revolutionaries, and had to flee Italy after a failed insurrection. He then contributed to the independence of Uruguay, leading the Italian Legion in the Uruguayan Civil War, and afterwards returned to Italy as a commander in the conflicts of the Risorgimento. He has been dubbed the "Hero of the Two Worlds".

Charles Robert Darwin
English naturalist, eminent as a collector and geologist, who proposed and provided scientific evidence that all species of life have evolved over time from common ancestors through the process he called natural selection.

Abraham Lincoln
President of the United States, successfully led his country through its greatest internal crisis, the Civil War, only to be assassinated less than a week after the war's end. Before his election as President, Lincoln was a lawyer, a member of the United States House of Representatives, and an unsuccessful candidate for election to the Senate.

 William Ewart Gladstone
British Liberal Party statesman and Prime Minister. Gladstone is famous for his intense rivalry with the Conservative Party Leader Benjamin Disraeli. The rivalry was not only political, but also personal. When Disraeli died, Gladstone proposed a state funeral, but Disraeli's will asked for him to be buried next to his wife, to which Gladstone replied.

Charles John Huffam Dickens
English novelist of the Victorian era as well as a vigorous social campaigner. The popularity of Dickens's novels and short stories has meant that not one has ever gone out of print. Many of Dickens's novels first appeared in periodicals and magazines in serialized form — a popular format for fiction at the time — and, unlike many other authors who completed entire novels before serial production commenced.

Otto Eduard Leopold von Bismarck
Count of Bismarck-Schönhausen, Duke of Lauenburg, Prince of Bismarck, Prussian and German statesman of the 19th century. As Minister-President of Prussia he oversaw the unification of Germany. From 1867 on, he was Chancellor of the North German Confederation.
 

Jules Gabriel Verne
French author who pioneered the science-fiction genre. He is best known for his novels Journey to the Center of the Earth , Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea  and Around the World in Eighty Days (written in 1873). Verne wrote about space, air, and underwater travel before navigable aircraft and practical submarines were invented, and before any means of space travel had been devised.

Sitting Bull
Hunkpapa Lakota Sioux holy man, born near the Grand River in South Dakota and killed by police on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation during an attempt to arrest him and prevent him from supporting the Ghost Dance movement.

Mark Twain, Samuel Langhorne Clemens
American humorist, satirist, lecturer and writer. Twain is most noted for his novels Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which has since been called the Great American Novel, and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. He is also known for his quotations. During his lifetime, Twain became a friend to presidents, artists, industrialists and European royalty.

Thomas Alva Edison
American inventor and businessman who developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph and a long lasting light bulb. Dubbed "The Wizard of Menlo Park" by a newspaper reporter, he was one of the first inventors to apply the principles of mass production to the process of invention, and therefore is often credited with the creation of the first industrial research laboratory.

Alexander Graham Bell
Eminent scientist, inventor and innovator who is widely credited with the invention of the telephone. His father, grandfather and brother had all been associated with work on elocution and speech, and both his mother and wife were deaf, profoundly influencing Bell's life's work. His research on hearing and speech further led him to experiment with hearing devices that eventually culminated in Bell being awarded the first U.S. patent for the invention of the telephone.

Mutsuhito (Meiji)
The Meiji Emperor emperor of Japan according to the traditional order of succession. Having ruled during the Meiji era (Enlightened rule), he is now known as Emperor Meiji. As this is not a personal name, more accurately he should be referred to as "the Meiji emperor".

Sigmund Freud
Austrian physician who founded the psychoanalytic school of psychology. Freud is best known for his theories of the unconscious mind and the defense mechanism of repression and for creating the clinical practice of psychoanalysis for curing psychopathology through a particular form of dialogue between a patient and a psychoanalyst.

Theodore Roosevelt
President of the United States. A leader of the Republican Party and of the Progressive Movement, he was a Governor of New York and a professional historian, naturalist, explorer, author, and soldier. He is most famous for his personality: his energy, his vast range of interests and achievements, his model of masculinity, and his "cowboy" persona.

Henry Ford
American founder of the Ford Motor Company and father of modern assembly lines used in mass production. His introduction of the Model T automobile revolutionized transportation and American industry. He was a prolific inventor and was awarded 161 U.S. patents.

Mohandas Karamchand “Mahatma” Gandi
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. Political and spiritual leader of India and the Indian independence movement. Pioneer of Satyagraha—resistance to tyranny through mass civil disobedience, firmly founded upon ahimsa or total non-violence—which led India to independence and inspired movements for civil rights and freedom across the world.

Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill
British politician known chiefly for his leadership of the United Kingdom during World War II. He served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. A noted statesman and orator, Churchill was also an officer in the British Army, a historian, a Nobel Prize-winning writer, and an artist.

Gugilelmo Marconi
For the inventor of radio, see the competing claims in History of radio and the Invention of radio. Marchese Guglielmo Marconi was an Italian inventor, best known for his development of a radiotelegraph system, which served as the foundation for the establishment of numerous affiliated companies worldwide. He shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Karl Ferdinand Braun, "in recognition of their contributions to the development of wireless telegraphy". Later in life, Marconi was an active Italian Fascist and an apologist for their ideology (such as the attack by Italian forces in Ethiopia).

Albert Einstein
German-born theoretical physicist. He is best known for his theory of relativity and specifically mass–energy equivalence, E = mc ². Einstein received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect."

Pablo Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Martyr Patricio Clito Ruiz y Picasso. An Andalusian-Spanish painter, draughtsman, and sculptor.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt
 President of the United States. He was a central figure during a time of worldwide economic crisis and world war.

Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin
Charlie Chaplin, an Academy Award-winning English comedic actor. Chaplin became one of the most famous actors as well as a notable filmmaker, composer and musician in the early to mid Hollywood cinema era. He is considered one of the finest mimes and clowns ever captured on film. He greatly influenced other performers.

Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle
French general and statesman who led the Free French Forces during World War II and later founded the French Fifth Republic and served as its first President. In France, he is commonly referred to as Général de Gaulle or simply Le Général, or familiarly as "le Grand Charles".

Dwight David Eisenhower
General of the Army (five star general) in the United States Army and U.S. politician, who served as the thirty-fourth President of the United States.

Mao Tze Tung, Mao Zedong
Chinese military and political leader who led the Communist Party of China (CPC) to victory against the Kuomintang (KMT) in the Chinese Civil War, and was the leader of the People’s Republic of China (PRC.

George Herman “Babe” Ruth Jr.
popularly known as "Babe", "The Bambino", and "The Sultan of Swat", American Major League baseball player. Named the greatest baseball player in history in various surveys and rankings, his home run hitting prowess and charismatic personality made him a larger than life figure.

Dr. Wernher Magnus Maximilian Freiherr ('Baron') von Braun
German rocket physicist and astronautics engineer, became one of the leading figures in the development of rocket technology in Germany and the United States. Wernher von Braun is sometimes said to be the preeminent rocket scientist of the 20th century.

John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy
President of the United States.

Dr. Martin Luther, Jr.
Leader in the American civil rights movement. A Baptist minister, he became a civil rights activist early in his career. He led the Montgomery Bus Boycott and helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, serving as its first president.

Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev
Russian politician. He was the last General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the last head of state of the USSR.

Stephen William Hawking
British theoretical physicist. Hawking is the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. He is known for his contributions to the fields of cosmology and quantum gravity, especially in the context of black holes, and his popular works in which he discusses his own theories and cosmology in general.

Steven Paul Jobs III
co-founder, Chairman, and CEO of Apple Inc. Jobs, with Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, made the easy and affordable personal computer become reality, years before the advent of IBM PC. Jobs was among the first to see the commercial potential of the mouse-driven GUI (Graphical User Interface).

Phidias
son of Charmides, Greek sculptor, painter and architect, universally regarded as the greatest of all Classical sculptors. Phidias designed the statues of the goddess Athena on the Athenian Acropolis (Athena Parthenos inside the Parthenon and the Athena Promachos) and the colossal seated Statue of Zeus at Olympia.

Praxiteles of Athens
the son of Cephisodotus the Elder, renowned of the Attic sculptors. He was the first to sculpt the nude female form in a life-size statue. While no indubitably attributable sculpture by Praxiteles is extant, numerous copies of his works have survived; contemporary authors, including Pliny the Elder, wrote of his oeuvres; and coins engraved with silhouettes of his various famous statuary types from the period still exist.

Cenni di Pepo (Giovanni) Cimabue
Bencivieni di Pepo or in modern Italian, Benvenuto di Giuseppe, Italian painter and creator of mosaics from Florence. He is also well known for his student Giotto, considered the first great artist of the Italian Renaissance.

Donatello (Donato di Niccolò di Betto Bardi
A famous early Renaissance Italian artist and sculptor from Florence. He is, in part, known for his work in basso rilievo, a form of shallow relief sculpture that, in Donatello's case, incorporated significant 15th-century developments in perspectival illusionism.

Jan van Eyck or Johannes de Eyck
Early Netherlandish painter active in Bruges and considered one of the best Northern European painters.

Giovanni Bellini
Italian Renaissance painter, probably the best known of the Bellini family of Venetian painters. He is considered to have revolutionized Venetian painting, moving it towards a more sensuous and colouristic style.

Hugo van der Goes
Flemish painter. He was, along with Jan van Eyck, Rogier van der Weyden, Hans Memling and Gerard David, one of the most important of the Early Netherlandish painters.

Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi
Sandro Botticelli or Il Botticello, Italian painter of the Florentine school during the Early Renaissance (Quattrocento).

Albrecht Dürer
German painter, printmaker and theorist from Nuremberg, Germany. His still-famous engravings include Knight, Death, and the Devil , Saint Jerome in his Study and Melencolia I , which has been the subject of extensive analysis and interpretation. His watercolours mark him as one of the first European landscape artists, while his ambitious woodcuts revolutionized the potential of that medium.

Matthias Grünewald
German Renaissance painter of religious works, who ignored Renaissance classicism to continue the expressive and intense style of late medieval Central European art.

Raphael Sanzio
Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance, celebrated for the perfection and grace of his paintings and drawings. Together with Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci he forms the traditional trinity of great masters of that period.

Antonio Allegri da Correggio
Foremost painter of the Parma school of the Italian Renaissance, who was responsible for some of the most vigorous and sensuous works of the 16th century.

Benvenuto Cellini
Italian goldsmith, painter, sculptor, soldier and musician of the Renaissance, who also wrote a famous autobiography.

Tintoretto
painters of the Venetian school and probably the last great painter of the Italian Renaissance. In his youth he was also called Jacopo Robusti, as his father had defended the gates of Padua in a rather robust way against the imperial troops. His real name 'Comin' has only recently been discovered by Miguel Falomir, the curator of the Museo del Prado.

Giuseppe Arcimboldo
Italian painter best known for creating imaginative portrait heads made entirely of such objects as fruits, vegetables, flowers, fish, and books -- that is, he painted representations of these objects on the canvas arranged in such a way that the whole collection of objects formed a recognisable likeness of the portrait subject.

El Greco
Painter, sculptor, and architect of the Spanish Renaissance. He usually signed his paintings in Greek letters with his full name, Doménicos Theotokópoulos, underscoring his Greek origin.

Lavinia Fontana
Italian painter. Her earliest known work, "Child of the Monkey", was painted in 1575 at the age of 23. Though this work is now lost, another early painting, Christ with the Symbols of the Passionn is now in the El Paso Museum of Art.

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio
Italian artist active in Rome, Naples, Malta and Sicil. He is commonly placed iyn the Baroque school, of which he was the first great representative.

Peter Paul Rubens
Flemish Baroque painter, and a proponent of an exuberant Baroque style that emphasized movement, color, and sensuality. He is well-known for his Counter-Reformation altarpieces, portraits, landscapes, and history paintings of mythological and allegorical subjects.

Artemisia Gentileschi
Italian Early Baroque painter, today considered one of the most accomplished painters in the generation influenced by Caravaggio (Caravaggisti). In an era when women painters were not easily accepted by the artistic community, she was the first female painter to become a member of the Accademia di Arte del Disegno in Florence.

Sir Anthony van Dyck
Flemish Baroque artist who became the leading court painter in England. He is most famous for his portraits of King Charles I of England and Scotland and his family and court, painted with a relaxed elegance that was to be the dominant influence on English portrait-painting for the next 150 years. He also painted biblical and mythological subjects, displayed outstanding facility as a draftsman, and was an important innovator in watercolour and etching.

Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez
Spanish painter who was the leading artist in the court of King Philip IV. He was an individualistic artist of the contemporary baroque period, important as a portrait artist.

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn
Dutch painter and etcher. He is generally considered one of the greatest painters and printmakers in European art history and the most important in Dutch history. His contributions to art came in a period that historians call the Dutch Golden Age.

Elisabetta Sirani
Italian painter whose father was the painter Giovanni Andrea Sirani of the School of Bologna, and the principal assistant of Guido Reni. She painted an Assumption at the Parish Church of Borgo Panigale. Also a Saint Eustache, and Judith with the Head of Holofernes (Burghley House, Stamford, England); Baptism of Christ ; and Madonna with child and Infant Saint John (Museo Civico, Pesaro); Saint Jerome (Pinacoteca Nazionale, Bologna), and Portrait of Anna Maria Ranuzzi.

Jean-Antoine Watteau
French painter whose brief career spurred the revival of interest in colour and movement (in the tradition of Correggio and Rubens), and revitalized the waning Baroque idiom, which eventually became known as Rococo. He is credited with inventing the genre of fêtes galantes: scenes of bucolic and idyllic charm, suffused with an air of theatricality.

Sir Joshua Reynolds
English painters, specialised in portraits and promoting the "Grand Style" in painting which depended on idealisation of the imperfect. He was one of the founders and first President of the Royal Academy. George III appreciated his merits and knighted him.

Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes
Aragonese Spanish painter and printmaker. Goya was a court painter to the Spanish Crown and a chronicler of history. He has been regarded both as the last of the Old Masters and as the first of the moderns. The subversive and subjective element in his art, as well as his bold handling of paint, provided a model for the work of later generations of artists, notably Manet and Picasso.

John James Audubon
American ornithologist, naturalist, hunter, and painter. He painted, catalogued, and described the birds of North America.

Honoré Daumier
French printmaker, caricaturist, painter, sculptor, and one of the most gifted and prolific draftsmen of his time.

Julia Cameron
American teacher, author, artist, poet, playwright, novelist, filmmaker, composer, and journalist. She is perhaps most famous for her book The Artist's Way , though she has written many other non-fiction works, short stories, award-winning essays and hard-hitting political journalism, as well as novels, plays, musicals, and screenplays.

Rosa Bonheur
French animalière and realist artist, one of few female sculptors. As a painter she became famous primarily for two chief works: Ploughing in the Nivernais and The Horse Fair  now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York City. Bonheur is widely considered to have been the most famous woman painter of the nineteenth century.

Gustave Moreau
French Symbolist painter. He was born and died in Paris. Moreau's main focus was the illustration of biblical and mythological figures. As a painter of literary ideas rather than visual images, he appealed to the imaginations of some Symbolist writers and artists, who saw him as a precursor to their movement.

Paul Cézanne
French artist and Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th century conception of artistic endeavour to a new and radically different world of art in the 20th century.

Claude Monet
Founder of French impressionist painting, and the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein-air landscape painting

Berthe Morisot
Painter and a member of the circle of painters in Paris who became known as the Impressionists. Undervalued for over a century, possibly because she was a woman, she is now considered among the first league of Impressionist painters.

Pierre Renoir, Jr.
French stage and film actor and director of the Comédie Française. Older brother of the Academy Award winning film director Jean Renoir, son of the famous impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir.

Henri Julien Félix Rousseau
French Post-Impressionist painter in the Naive or Primitive manner. He is also known as Le Douanier (the customs officer) after his place of employment. Ridiculed during his life, he came to be recognized as a self-taught genius whose works are of high artistic quality.

Mary Stevenson Cassatt
American painter and printmaker. She lived much of her adult life in France, where she first befriended Edgar Degas and later exhibited among the Impressionists.

Vincent Willem van Gogh
Dutch Post-Impressionist artist. His paintings and drawings include some of the world's best known, most popular and most expensive pieces. Van Gogh spent his early adult life working for a firm of art dealers.

Alfred Stieglitz
American photographer who was instrumental over his fifty-year career in making photography an acceptable art form alongside painting and sculpture. Many of his photographs are known for appearing like those other art forms, and he is also known for his marriage to painter Georgia O'Keeffe, most famous for her large-scale paintings of flowers.

Max Beckmann
 German painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor, and writer. Although he is usually classified as an Expressionist artist, he rejected both the term and the movement. In the 1920s he was associated with the New Objectivity (Neue Sachlichkeit), an outgrowth of Expressionism that opposed its introverted emotionalism.

Umberto Boccioni
Painter and a sculptor. Like other Futurists, his work centered on the portrayal of movement (dynamism), speed, and technology. He was born in Reggio Calabria, Italy.

 (John) Gutzon de la Mothe Borglum
American artist and sculptor famous for creating the monumental presidents' heads at Mount Rushmore, South Dakota, as well as other public works of art.

George Wesley Bellows
American painter, known for his bold depictions of urban life in New York City. At a young age he was to become "the most acclaimed artist of his generation"

Edward Hopper
American painter and printmaker. While most popularly known for his oil paintings, he was equally proficient as a watercolorist and printmaker in etching.

Wassily Kandinsky
Russian painter, printmaker and art theorist. One of the most famous 20th-century artists, he is credited with painting the first modern abstract works.

Andrew Warhola
better known as Andy Warhol, was an American artist and a central figure in the movement known as pop art

Robert Capa
Combat photographer who covered five different wars: the Spanish Civil War, the Second Sino-Japanese War, World War II across Europe, the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, and the First Indochina War. He documented the course of World War II in London, North Africa, Italy, the Battle of Normandy on Omaha Beach and the liberation of Pari

Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Alban
English philosopher, statesman, and essayist. He is also known as a catalyst of the scientific revolution. Bacon was knighted, created Baron Verulam  Viscount St Alban; without heirs, both peerages became extinct upon his death 

Adam Sandler

American actor, comedian, prodAucer, musician and composer who was born in Brooklyn, New York, and raised in Manchester, New Hampshire. In the late 1980s, Sandler portrayed "Smitty" on The Cosby Show (1985-1989). He also was a writer for the MTV game show Remote Control, on which he made several featured appearances.

Alexander Fleming

The discoverer of the antibiotic substance lysozyme and for isolating the antibiotic substance penicillin from the fungus Penicillium notatum. He participated in a battlefield hospital with many of his colleagues in the fronts of France. Being exposed to the horrid medical infections by the dying soldiers, he returned to St. Mary's after the war with renewed energy in searching for an improved antiseptic. Fleming was long a member of the Chelsea Arts Club.

Anna Pavlova

Ballet dancer. She trained at the Imperial Ballet School until she graduated at the age of 18 and then danced with the Mariinsky Theatre. In the first years of the Ballets Russes she worked briefly for Serge Diaghilev before founding her own company and performing throughout the world.

Anne Robinson

British game show hostess of The Weakest Link. She began her career as a journalist, and at one time worked for Robert Maxwell (whom she greatly admired) on the staff of the Daily Mirror. She began appearing on BBC television during the 1980s, on programmes such as Points of View and Watchdog.

Ansel Easton Adams

American photographer, best known for his black and white photographs of California's Yosemite Valley. Adams was also the author of numerous books about photography, including his trilogy of technical instruction manuals (The Camera, The Negative and The Print). He co-founded the photographic association Group f/64 along with other masters like Edward Weston, Willard Van Dyke, and Imogen Cunningham.

Anthony Horowitz

British author and television scriptwriter. His most successful work has included creating and writing the series Foyle's War for ITV and writing several episodes of another ITV series, Midsomer Murders. He is also the author of the highly successful Alex Rider series of adventure novels for children.

Alexander Graham Bell

Scientist, inventor and founder of the Bell telephone company. In addition to his work in telecommunications technology, he also was responsible for important advances in aviation and hydrofoil technology.

Betty Grable

American actress, singer and pin-up girl, whose famous bathing suit poster was an icon of the World War II era. Grable finally obtained a role in Whoopee!, starring Eddie Cantor and eventually played in some twenty films by 1939, including the Academy Award-nominated The Gay Divorcee, starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.

Bjorn Borg

Former World No. 1 tennis player. During his relatively brief eight-year career, he won 11 Grand Slam singles titles – five at Wimbledon and a record six at the French Open – leading some to consider him the greatest male tennis player of all time.

Bobby Moore

English footballer. Moore joined West Ham as a schoolboy and was a regular in the first team by 1960. A composed central defender, Moore was admired more for his reading of the game and ability to anticipate opposition movements, thereby distancing himself from the image of the hard-tackling, high-jumping defender.

Bob Marley

Singer, guitarist and songwriter from the ghettos of Jamaica. He is most likely the best known reggae musician of all times, famous for popularising the genre outside of Jamaica. Much of his work deals with the struggles of the impoverished and/or powerless.

Bobby Charlton

English football player. He survived the Munich Air Disaster. He scored 49 international goals for England, winning 106 caps and a World Cup winners medal in 1966. He also won the FA Cup (1963), European Cup (1968) and three league titles (1957, 1965, 1967) with Manchester United F.C., playing 752 games and scoring 247 goals for United.

Brad Pitt

American film actor. He was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Supporting Actor for his performance in the 1995 film Twelve Monkeys.

Brian Rix

British actor and charity worker. Rix was associated with the Whitehall Theatre from 1944 until 1969, although as an actor-manager he became increasingly well known on TV as well as stage. The theatre specialised in farces, which were regularly televised. Rix was regularly seen on screen without his trousers on.

Britney Spears

American pop singer. Her career encompasses chart-topping records, high-profile advertising and a foray into acting. She is now considered an American cultural icon recognized throughout the world, but has also been the subject of controversy surrounding the sexuality of her music and image.

Busted

British popular music group made up of three members: James Bourne, Charlie Simpson and Matt Jay. They are signed to Universal Island and have released seven singles and two albums in the UK Charts. Their sound can be described as "pop-rock" or "pop-punk".

Catherine Zeta-Jones

Academy Award-winning Welsh actress. She was born Catherine Jones and hails from Mumbles, Wales. Her name stems from two different grandmothers; one grandmother is named Catherine, while the other is "Zeta," named after a ship that Catherine's great-grandfather sailed on.

Celine Dion

Québécoise vocalist. She does not like the label "Québécoise" above all others, however; she wishes to be known first and foremost as a Canadian.

Charles Dickens
Pen-name "Boz". An English novelist of the Victorian era. The popularity of his books is demonstrated by the fact that none of his novels has ever gone out of print.

Charlize Theron

Academy Award winning actress. Born in Benoni, South Africa, she resides in Los Angeles, California. She is reputed to speak at least parts of 28 languages, but her first language is Afrikaans, and her second is English.

Chris de Burgh

Most famous for his single "The Lady In Red" from the album Into the Light. His songs have appeared in films as diverse as Arthur II and American Psycho, and he has sold more than 45 million albums internationally.

Christopher Columbus

Explorer and trader who crossed the Atlantic Ocean and reached the Americas in 1492 under the flag of Castilian Spain. He believed that the earth was a relatively small sphere, and argued that a ship could reach the Far East via a westward course.

Claude Monet

French impressionist painter, exceptionally fond of painting controlled nature - his own garden, his water lilies, his pond and his bridge, as well as the banks of the Seine. In 1914 Monet began a major new large series of the water lily scenes at the suggestion of his friend, the politician Georges Clemenceau.

Colin Bell

English football player. Nicknamed "The King of the Kippax. Bell is widely described as City's greatest ever player. He was the inspirational player in the most successful Manchester City side ever. He was part of the famous trio of the late 60s and early 70s alongside Francis Lee and Mike Summerbee.

Colin Montgomerie

Scottish golfer. He is often referred to by his nickname 'Monty'.Montgomerie finished first on the European Tour Order of Merit every year from 1993 to 1999 and has thirty-four total victories on the tour, including the 1998, 1999, and 2000 European PGA Tour Championships.

Daphne Du Maurier

One of the most successful Cornish novelists of all time. Her best-known work, Rebecca (1938), is a literary classic and was the inspiration for an Oscar-winning film. Several of her other novels were made into films, including Jamaica Inn (1936), Frenchman's Creek (1942), and My Cousin Rachel (1951). The Alfred Hitchcock film The Birds is based on a treatment of one of her short stories, as is the film Don't Look Now.

David Wilkie

Olympic and Commonwealth Games champion in swimming in the 1970, said to be the first swimmer to wear a head-cap and goggles together in competition to improve the streamline effect within the water.

David Livingstone

Scottish missionary and explorer of the Victorian era, best known because of his meeting with Henry Morton Stanley which gave rise to the popular quotation, "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?"

Delia Smith

British television chef, known for her interest in food and teaching basic cookery. Her How to Cook series (1998) reportedly led to a 10% rise in egg sales in Britain.

Diego Maradona

Argentine football player. With the possible exception of Pele, he is widely regarded as the finest and greatest player of all times. Maradona led the Argentine national team to victory in the World Cup in 1986, the team winning 3-2 in the final against West Germany.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

German religious leader and participant in the resistance movement against Nazism. Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran pastor and theologian, took part in the plots being planned by members of the Abwehr (Military Intelligence Office) to assassinate Hitler. He was arrested, imprisoned, and eventually hanged following the failure of the July 20, 1944, assassination attempt.

Douglas Bader

Successful fighter pilot in the Royal Air Force during the Second World War. Bader is upheld as an inspirational leader and hero of the era, not least because he fought in spite of having both legs amputated.

Albert Einstein

German-born theoretical physicist. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest physicists of all time. He formulated the special and general theories of relativity. In addition, he made significant contributions to quantum theory and statistical mechanics. While best known for the Theory of Relativity (and specifically mass-energy equivalence, E=mc²), he was awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize for Physics for his explanation of the photoelectric effect in 1905 and "for his services to Theoretical Physics".

Elvis Presley

Known as The King of Rock and Roll, or as just "The King". American singer, who had an immeasurable effect on world culture. He started his career under the name the Hillbilly Cat and was later nicknamed Elvis the Pelvis because of his physically exuberant performance style.

Elizabeth Fry

Prison reformer, social reformer and philanthropist. Fry was born Elizabeth Gurney at Earlham in Norfolk, England to a Quaker family. Motivated by the gospel, she took an interest in her teenage years in the poor, the sick, and the prisoners.

Florence Nightingale

The Lady With The Lamp -  pioneer of modern nursing. Inspired by what she understood to be a divine calling (first experienced in 1837 at the age of 17 at Embley Park and later throughout her life), Nightingale made a commitment to nursing, a career with a poor reputation and filled mostly by poorer women.

Frank Lloyd Wright

One of the most prominent architects of the first half of the 20th century. Wright in his autobiography talks about the influence of these exercises on his approach to design. Many of his buildings are notable for the geometrical clarity they exhibit.

Freddie Mercury

Singer and lead vocalist of the British Rock band Queen. He was born Farrokh Bulsara in Stone Town, Zanzibar to Bomi and Jer Bulsara.

Geoffrey Chaucer

English author, philosopher, diplomat, and poet, best known and remembered as the author of The Canterbury Tales. He is sometimes credited with being the first author to demonstrate the artistic legitimacy of the English language.

George Best

Northern Irish football international who is mainly remembered for his time with Manchester United F.C. and widely regarded as one of the greatest players in the history of the game. He played for United between 1963 and 1974, helping them to win the Football League Championship in 1965 and 1967, and the European Cup in 1968.

George Stephenson

British engineer who designed a famous and historically important steam-powered locomotive named Rocket, and is known as the Father of British Steam Railways.

Gillian Anderson

American actress, best known for her role as FBI Agent Dana Scully in the American TV series The X-Files. She found an outlet for her creativity when she started acting in high school and community theatre productions. She attended Goodman Theater School of Drama at DePaul University in Chicago, where she earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1990.

Goldie Hawn

Washington, D.C. born actress who began her career as one of the regular cast members on the 1960s sketch comedy show Laugh-In. Hawn won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her work in the 1969 film Cactus Flower.

Gordon Ramsay

One of Britain's highest profile chefs. He is one of only three chefs in the country to maintain three Michelin stars for their restaurant (the others being Heston Blumenthal and Michel Roux).

Grace Darling

One of England's best-loved heroines, on the strength of an isolated incident which occurred in 1838. Grace was born in 1815 at Bamburgh in Northumberland, and spent her youth in various lighthouses of which her father was keeper.

Guy Fawkes

Who also used the pseudonym John Johnson. Member of a group of Catholic conspirators who endeavoured to blow up King James I and all the members of both branches of the Parliament of England while they were assembled in the House of Lords building for the formal opening of the 1605 session of Parliament.

Hans Christian Andersen

Danish author and poet famous for his fairy tales. Hans Christian showed imagination early, which was fostered by the indulgence of his parents and by his mother's superstition.

Henrik Larsson

Swedish international football player. Having completed seven very successful years with Celtic in Glasgow, Scotland, after the end of the 2003/04 season he signed a 1 year contract with an option for a second year for Spanish giants FC Barcelona.

Henry Ford

Founder of the Ford Motor Company and one of the first to apply assembly line manufacturing to the mass production of affordable automobiles. This achievement not only revolutionized industrial production, it had such tremendous influence over modern culture that many social theorists identify this phase of economic and social history as "Fordism."

Henry VIII

King of England and Lord of Ireland (later King of Ireland) from 22 April 1509. He was the second monarch of the Tudor dynasty, succeeding his father, Henry VII. He is famous for having been married six times, and also wielded the most untrammeled power of any British monarch. Notable events to occur during his reign included the establishment of the Church of England, the Dissolution of the Monasteries and the union of England and Wales.

Henri Matisse

French artist. He was born Henri-Émile-Benoît Matisse in Le Cateau, Picardie, France, and grew up in Bohain-en-Vermandois. In 1887 he went to Paris to study law. After gaining his qualification he worked as a court administrator in Cateau Cambresis. Following an attack of appendicitis he took up painting during his convalescence.

Ian Fleming

British author, best remembered for the James Bond series of novels. Fleming's background in intelligence work gave him the background and experience to write somewhat convincing spy novels. The first James Bond story, Casino Royale, was published in 1953.

Isaac Newton

English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, philosopher, and alchemist; who wrote the Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (published July 5, 1687)1, where he described universal gravitation and, via his laws of motion, laid the groundwork for classical mechanics. Newton also shares credit with Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz for the development of differential calculus.

Isambard Kingdom Brunel

British engineer, noted for the creation of the Great Western Railway and a series of famous steamships. Brunel was included in the top 10 of the 100 Greatest Britons poll conducted by the BBC and voted for by the public.

Jack Nicholson

A highly successful American method actor. He is best known for portraying antagonistic, cynical, neurotic and aggressive characters. He received Kennedy Center Honors in 2001, and has been nominated for an Academy Award a dozen times, winning three of them. He has also won seven Golden Globe Awards.

James Brown

One of the most important figures in twentieth-century music and a prime influence in the evolution of gospel and rhythm-and-blues into soul and funk. As a singer, dancer and bandleader, he has influenced popular musicians since the 1960s.

James Dean

American film actor. Epitomizing youthful angst and charisma, Dean's screen persona is probably best embodied in the title of his most representative work, Rebel without a Cause.

James Watt

Scottish mathematician and engineer whose improvements to the steam engine were a key stage in the Industrial Revolution.

Jamie Oliver

British celebrity chef also known as the Naked Chef. He has also written columns for The Times.

Jean Claude Van Damme

Belgian-born action movie actor who's most known for martial arts films. His Belgian background gave rise to the nickname "Muscles from Brussels". Van Damme has won a number of European karate championships

Jennifer Aniston

American actress best known for playing Rachel Green on the television sitcom Friends.

Jennifer Ellison

Best known for playing Emily Shadwick in the television soap opera Brookside until 2003 when she became a pop singer.

Jeremy Clarkson

British motoring journalist and television presenter. He is known for his physically imposing presence, and ebulliently robust manner. The television show he is most associated with is called Top Gear. This is a show which puts all cars, present, past and future through their paces.

Jessie Wallace

British actress who plays the part of Kathleen (Kat) Moon in the popular BBC1 soap opera Eastenders. Her on-screen husband Alfie Moon is played by Shane Ritchie. Together they run the soap's pub, The Queen Victoria.

Johnny Depp

American film actor. He appeared in the long-running police drama 21 Jump Street, and in a number of movies where he distinguished himself as a quirky lead actor. He is also noted for his regular appearances in the films of director Tim Burton. Burton and Depp have collaborated on a total of three films to date: Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood and Sleepy Hollow.

Jonny Wilkinson

English rugby union player and current Captain of the England Rugby Union team. He plays his club rugby for the Zurich Premiership side Newcastle Falcons. He plays at fly half, and is particularly known for the accuracy of his kicking and his fierce tackling.

Jose Mourinho

Born in Portugal. Mourinho is a successful football manager.

Josiah Wedgwood

English potter, credited with the industrialisation of the manufacture of pottery. He was an active member of the Lunar Society and is remembered on the Moonstones in Birmingham.

Joseph Lister

Famous British surgeon who promoted the idea of sterile surgery while working at the Glasgow Infirmary. He came from a prosperous Quaker home in Upton, Essex.

Julia Roberts

American actress. She was awarded the Academy Award for Best Actress for playing the title role in the movie Erin Brockovich.

Julie Andrews

British actress, singer, and author, best known for her starring roles in the musical films Mary Poppins (1964) and The Sound of Music (1965). Julie has written several children's books, under the name Julie Andrews Edwards. Perhaps the most well-known is The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles.

Kate Bush

British singer-songwriter who has acquired a large number of extremely devoted fans since her debut in 1978 with the surprise hit "Wuthering Heights," which was number 1 in the British music charts for 4 weeks.

Keanu Reeves

Hollywood film actor. Although currently working in the United States, Reeves is a Canadian citizen and an avid ice hockey player/fan who was his High School team's MVP. Born in Beirut, Lebanon, his first name means "cool breeze over the mountains" in Hawaiian.

Kelly Holmes

British middle distance athlete. Regarded as the best female middle distance runner Great Britain has ever produced, she won gold medals in the 800 metres and the 1,500 metres at the 2004 Summer Olympics.

Kiefer Sutherland

Canadian television and film actor. He is the son of Donald Sutherland and Shirley Douglas, both actors themselves, and the grandson of Canadian statesman Tommy Douglas. His twin sister, Rachel, has had a few credits in film production but does not work as an actress.

Kylie Minogue

Australian singer and actress who has been based primarily in the United Kingdom since the early 1990s.

Lauryn Hill

American hip hop singer, initially establishing her reputation as the most visible and vocal member of The Fugees. Hill is noted as a humanitarian, and in 1996 she received an Essence Award for work which has included the 1996 founding of the Refugee Project, an outreach organization that supports a two-week overnight camp for at-risk youth, and for supporting well-building projects in Kenya and Uganda, as well as for staging a rap concert in Harlem to promote voter registration.

Lewis Carroll

British author, mathematician, Anglican clergyman, logician, and amateur photographer. His most famous writings are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass, as well as the comic poem The Hunting of the Snark. He also wrote many short pieces.

Maria Sharapova

Russian professional tennis player. Her parents are originally from Gomel, Belarus, but moved to Russia in 1986 in the aftermath of the Chernobyl nuclear accident. Sharapova was born in Nyagan, Siberia.

Margaret Thatcher

British politician and the first woman Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, a position she held from 1979 to 1990. She is a member of the Conservative Party and still the figurehead for a brand of politics known as Thatcherism involving reduced government spending and privatization of government owned industries.

Martin Luther King

Nobel Laureate Baptist minister and African American civil rights activist. He is one of the most significant leaders in U.S. history and in the modern history of nonviolence, and is considered a hero, peacemaker and martyr by many people around the world.

Mary Quant

English fashion designer. One of the many designers who took credit for inventing the miniskirt and hot pants. Her skirts had been getting shorter since about 1958 - a development she considered to be practical and liberating, allowing women the ability to run for a bus.

Mary Shelley

English writer who is, perhaps, equally-famously remembered as the wife of Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and as the author of Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus.

Michael Caine

British film actor. He has been Oscar-nominated six times, winning his first Academy Award for the 1986 film, Hannah and Her Sisters, his second in 1999 for The Cider House Rules, in both cases as a supporting actor. He was created Commander of the British Empire (CBE) in 1992 for services to drama, and in 2000 a Knight Bachelor.

Michael Owen

English football player. He plays as a striker, and is noted particularly for his speed and acceleration. He has enjoyed a hugely successful and high-profile career at both club and international level.

Mother Teresa

World famous Catholic nun and founder of the Missionaries of Charity whose work among the poor of Calcutta was widely reported. She was awarded the Templeton Prize in 1973, the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979. She was beatified by Pope John Paul II in October 2003.

Muhammad Ali

American boxer. One of the world's greatest heavyweight boxers, as well as one of the world's most famous individuals, renowned the world over for his boxing and political activism.

Nelly

Rapper. He first came to mainstream audiences with Country Grammar (2000) and released Free City with his St. Louis crew the St. Lunatics in 2001. Country Grammar turned out to become a mainstream success that set the stage for his breakthrough album, Nellyville.

Nelson Mandela

Former President of South Africa, was one of its chief anti-apartheid activists, and was also an anti-apartheid saboteur and guerrilla leader. He is now almost universally considered to be a heroic freedom fighter, but during the time of the apartheid regime many Western politicians such as Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan considered him little more than a terrorist.

Orlando Bloom

British actor, who became famous playing Legolas in the The Lord of the Rings trilogy. He also had major roles in Black Hawk Down, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Troy.

Oscar Romero

Prominent Roman Catholic priest and Archbishop in El Salvador during the 1960s and 1970s. After witnessing numerous violations of human rights, he began to speak out on behalf of the poor and the victims of El Salvador's long and bloody civil war.

Ozzy Osbourne

Lead singer of the rock band Black Sabbath and later a popular solo artist. Osbourne has been married twice and is father to five children: Jessica Hobbs and Louis Osbourne by first wife Thelma; and Aimee, Kelly and Jack, by current wife Sharon.

Pamela Anderson

International television actress, model, and producer known as much for her tumultuous personal life as for her professional accomplishments.

Patrick Swayze

Dancer, actor and singer, memorable for his roles in the films Dirty Dancing (1987), "Roadhouse", Ghost (1990), Black Dog (1998), and Donnie Darko (2001). He is also famous for the North and South miniseries.

Paula Radcliffe

English long-distance runner and is currently the World Record holder for the marathon, which she set during the 2003 London Marathon, with a time of 2:15.25.

Pele

Former football player and thought by many to be the finest player of all time. Over the course of his career, Pelé scored over a thousand goals and won three World Cups. Since his full retirement in 1977 he has served as an ambassador for the sport.

Peter Andre

Male singer born in the UK, but was raised in Australia, and is of Cypriot decent. At first he was on the Australian soap opera Neighbours before turning to music.

Peter Cook

British satirist, writer and comedian who is widely regarded as the father of the British satire boom of the 1960s. He is closely associated with an anti-establishment style of comedy that emerged in the late 1950s in the depths of the Cold War.

Princess Anne

Member of the British Royal Family. She is the seventh holder of the title Princess Royal. She has been a princess with the style of Her Royal Highness since her birth and is currently ninth in the line of succession to the British throne.

Queen Victoria

Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837, and Empress of India from 1 January 1877. Her reign lasted more than sixty-three years, longer than that of any other British monarch. The reign of Victoria was marked by a great expansion of the British Empire.

Ranulph Fiennes

British explorer and holder of several endurance records. He was the first man to visit both the North and South Poles. Ranulph Fiennes married his childhood sweetheart Virginia Pepper ("Ginny") in 1970.

Richard Branson

Best known for his widely successful Virgin brand, a banner that encompasses a variety of business organizations. Branson first achieved notoriety with Virgin Records, a record label that started out with multi-instrumentalist Mike Oldfield and introduced bands like the Sex Pistols and Culture Club to the world music scene.

Roald Dahl

British novelist and short story author of Norwegian descent, famous both as a writer of children's fiction as well as adult and horror fiction. Among his most popular books are Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Kiss Kiss.

Robbie Williams

British pop singer. Originally a member of boy band Take That, he split from the group in 1995 and launched a solo career.

Robert Burns

Best known poet who has written in Scots. His poem Auld Lang Syne is often sung at Hogmanay. His memory is celebrated by Burns clubs across the world; his birthday is an unofficial "National Day" for Scots.

Ronaldo

Brazilian footballer who is widely considered to be one of the best strikers of all time. He moved to team Inter Milan and fans all over the world support the world's most glamorous footballer. Ronaldo's fame grew as he was contantly in the action for the Italian juggernauts.

Ronnie Barker

British comic actor. His best-known appearances were as Ronnie Corbett's partner in the long-running TV variety show The Two Ronnies, and as Fletch in the sitcom Porridge.

Ronnie Biggs

British prisoner who is known for his minor role in the Great Train Robbery of 1963. He and others stole £2.6 million from a mail train. After he was convicted he escaped from HM Prison Wandsworth in 1965 by scaling the wall with a rope ladder, got papers and a new face in Paris, and fled in 1970 to Adelaide, South Australia. He worked in Set Construction at Channel 10 when a reporter recognised him.

Rudolf Nureyev

Regarded by many critics as one of the greatest male dancers of the 20th century, alongside Vaslav Nijinsky and Mikhail Baryshnikov.

Samuel Pepys

English civil servant, famous for his diary, a fascinating combination of personal revelation and eyewitness accounts of great events, such as the Great Plague and the Great Fire of London.

Selena

Mexican-American singer who is regarded as one of the biggest stars of the Tejano genre of music. Selena made her first public appearance at her father's Mexican restaurant in Lake Jackson at eight and recorded her first record at nine.

Socrates

Greek philosopher who is widely credited for laying the foundation for Western philosophy. He was arrested and accused of corrupting the youth, inventing new deities (heresy), and disbelieving in the divine (atheism).

Sting

English musician and formerly bassist and lead singer of The Police. In 2000, he won Grammy Awards for his album Brand New Day and the song of the same name. At the awards ceremony, he performed "Desert Rose" with Cheb Mami. For his performance, the Arab-American Institute Foundation gave him the Kahlil Gibran Spirit of Humanity Award.

Terry Wogan

Popular radio and television broadcaster on the BBC in the United Kingdom.

Thomas Telford

Stonemason, architect and civil engineer - a noted road-, bridge- and canal- builder.

Tim Henman

First British tennis player since Roger Taylor in the 1970s to reach the semi-finals of the Wimbledon Men's Singles Championship.

Tom Cruise

American film actor and producer who has starred in a number of top-grossing movies. His first leading role in a Blockbuster movie was in Top Gun, as Maverick.

Tony Blair

Served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, when he brought the Labour Party into power after 18 consecutive years of Conservative government.

Tony Jacklin

Successful English golfer. In 1969, he became the first British player to win The Open Championship for 18 years. The following season he won the U.S. Open. It was the first victory by a British player in that tournament since 1920, and as of 2006, it remained the only one by any European in the post World War II era.

Twiggy

British actress, model and singer. Twiggy became famous at the age of sixteen, under the influence of her boyfriend and manager, Justin de Villeneuve. Soon she was regarded as "the face" of swinging 1960s London, and gained her nickname from her stick-thin pubescent figure.

Usher

Popular R&B/pop musician since the early 1990s. His 2004 album Confessions best song sold over a million copies in the US in its first week of release, selling the greatest amount of records in one week for any R&B artist, and has topped the album charts on both sides of the Atlantic.

Walt Disney

American animated film producer, animator and creator of American-based theme park Disneyland. He also is the founder of the highly profitable corporation The Walt Disney Company.

Walter Matthau

American comedy actor possibly best known for his role as the gruff and less tidy member of The Odd Couple.

Will Smith

American actor and rapper.

William Morris

One of the principal founders of the British Arts and Crafts Movement and is best known as a designer of wallpaper and patterned fabrics, a writer of poetry and fiction, and an early founder of the socialist movement in Britain.

Winston Churchill

British politician, best known as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom during World War II. At various times an author, soldier, journalist, legislator and painter, Churchill is generally regarded as one of the most important leaders in British and world history.

Michelangelo

Renaissance sculptor, architect, painter, and poet. He is famous for creating the fresco ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, as well as the Last Judgment over the altar, and “The Martyrdom of St. Peter” and “The Conversion of St. Paul” in the Vatican’s Cappella Paolina.

Diana, Princess of Wales

The first wife of HRH The Prince Charles, Prince of Wales. From her marriage in 1981 to her divorce in 1996 she was Her Royal Highness The Princess of Wales and Countess of Chester, Duchess of Cornwall, Duchess of Rothesay, Countess of Carrick, Baroness of Renfrew, Lady of the Isles, Princess of Scotland, but styled Her Royal Highness The Princess of Wales.

Shivaji Bhonsle

Founder of the Maratha empire in western India in 1674. Using guerrilla tactics superbly suited to the rugged mountains and valleys found in this region, he annexed a portion of the then dominant Mughal empire and established the seeds of free India which was to endure until 1818.

\Queen Elizabeth II

Queen regnant and head of state of Antigua and Barbuda, Australia, the Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Canada, Grenada, Jamaica, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Stephen Edwin King

Prolific American author best known for his horror novels. King’s books have been extremely popular, and are among the top-selling books ever, fiction or non-fiction. He also produces more typical literary work, including the novellas The Body and Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption, as well as The Green Mile.

Helen Adams Keller

Deaf and blind American author, activist, and lecturer. Helen Keller was born in Tuscumbia, Alabama. Her disabilities were caused by a fever in February, 1882 when she was 19 months old.

Alfred the Great

King of the southern Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Wessex from 871 to 899. Alfred is famous for his defence of the kingdom against the Danes (Vikings), becoming as a result the only English monarch to be awarded the epithet “the Great” by his people. Alfred encouraged education and improved the kingdom’s law system.

Ashoka

Generally mentioned in his inscriptions as Devanampiya Piyadasi (“Beloved of the gods”), is the third emperor of the Mauryan dynasty. His greatest achievements were spreading Buddhism throughout his empire and beyond. He set up an ideal government for his people and conquered many lands, expanding his kingdom.

HARISCHANDRA

Renowned for his piety and justice . He is the central figure of legends in the Aitareyabrahmana, Mahabharata and the Markandeyapurana.

Vikaramaditya II

He ruled Badami from 734 AD-745 AD. He defeated the Pallava king, Narasimha Varman II, thus putting off the continuing hostilities. He also destroyed the power of the Chola, Kerala, Pandya. A legendary Hindu king of Uzjain, who is supposed to have given his name to the Vikram Samvat and at whose court the ” nine gems ” of Sanskrit literature are also supposed to have flourished.

Sir Edmund Percival Hillary

New Zealander mountaineer and explorer, most famous for the first successful climb of Mount Everest. He reached the 29,035-foot (8850 m) summit on May 29, 1953 with Tenzing Norgay, a Sherpa.

Galileo Galilei

Tuscan astronomer, philosopher, and physicist who is closely associated with the scientific revolution. His achievements include improving the telescope, a variety of astronomical observations, the first law of motion, and supporting Copernicanism effectively. He has been referred to as the “father of modern astronomy,” as the “father of modern physics,” and as “father of science.”

Shakuntala Devi

Indian mathematician often referred to as a “human calculator”. In 1977, she extracted the 23rd root of a 201-digit number mentally. At the age of six, Shakuntala demonstrated her talents at the University of Mysore, before a huge gathering of professors and students of higher studies in mathematics. With lightning rapidity and precision, she declared right answers mentally working out calculations for the most complicated problems.

C.V.Raman

Scientist in Physics, who won noble prize in 1930. His discovery of the ‘Raman Effect’ made a very distinctive contribution to Physics. He was knighted by the British Government in 1929. He was also conferred the highest title of ‘Bharat Ratna’ in 1954.

Sathya Sai Baba

Popular, controversial Indian guru who has millions of followers and hundreds of Sathya Sai Baba groups in many countries. In his teens he claimed to be the reincarnation of the fakir Shirdi Sai Baba and subsequently took the fakir’s name. He says that he is an avatar (incarnation) of Shiva and Shakti and an embodiment of love with divine powers such as omniscience and omnipotence.

Zoltan Kodaly

Hungarian composer, ethnomusicologist, educator, linguist and philosopher.

Zhuang Zi

Famous philosopher in ancient China.

Max Stirner

German philosopher, who ranks as one of the literary grandfathers of nihilism, existentialism and anarchism, especially of individualist anarchism. Stirner himself explicitly denied to hold any absolute position in his philosophy. Stirner’s main work is The Ego and Its Own, first published in Leipzig, 1844.

Ian Hacking

Philosopher operating in the fields of philosophy of science and philosophy of language. In 2001 he was appointed to the Chair of Philosophy and of the History of Scientific Concepts at the prestigious Collège de France. In 2004, he was made a Companion of the Order of Canada.

Xenocrates

Greek philosopher and scholar of the Academy. Moving to Athens in early youth, he became the pupil of the Socratic Aeschines, but presently joined himself to Plato.

Maya Angelou

Best known for her autobiographical books such as ‘All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes’, ‘The Heart of a Woman’ and ‘I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings’ (nominated for the National Book Award). She has worked with Martin Luther King. In 1993, Angelou wrote and delivered a poem, “On The Pulse of the Morning,” at the inauguration for President Bill Clinton at his request.

A.J. Ayer

Philosophy who published ‘Language, Truth and Logic’ in 1936 advancing his belief in logical positivism. He expounded his belief that philosophy is an activity of analysis, and that metaphysical truths can be neither established nor refuted and are meaningless.

Aeschylus

Generally regarded as the founder of Greek tragedy. By introducing a second actor, Aeschylus made dialogue and dramatic action possible. He wrote many works including 60-90 plays, of which seven survive. These are The Persians, Seven Against Thebes, Prometheus Bound, the Suppliants and the Oresteia (a trilogy of Agamemnon, Choephoroe, and Eumenides).

Theodor Wisengrund Adorno

Generally regarded as the most brilliant and yet the most obscure of the first generation of the ‘Frankfurt School’. He was director of the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research from 1958. He wrote ‘Negative Dialectics’ in 1966, in which he argues that all philosophers have made the mistake of seeking an absolute starting point in epistemology and metaphysics, whereas no such ‘primacy’ exists.

Aristotle

Greek scientist and philosopher. Along with Plato, he is often considered to be one of the two most influential philosophers in Western thought. Their writings form the core of Ancient philosophy.

Albert Camus

French author and philosopher and one of the principal luminaries (with Jean-Paul Sartre) of existentialism.

Adam Smith

Scottish economist and moral philosopher. His Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations was the first serious attempt to study the historical development of industry and commerce in Europe. He helped create the modern academic discipline of economics and provided one of the best-known intellectual rationales for capitalism.

Ayn Rand

Controversial American novelist and philosopher, best known for her philosophy of Objectivism, and her novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. Her philosophy and her fiction both emphasize, above all, her notions of individualism, egoism, “rational self-interest,” and capitalism.

Mirza Asadullah Baig

Great classical Urdu and Persian poet of the Indian subcontinent. Most notably, he wrote several ghazals during his life, which have since been interpreted and sung in many different ways by different people. He is considered to be the most dominating poet of the Urdu language.

Pythagoras

Greek mathematician and philosopher, known best for formulating the Pythagorean theorem. Known as the father of numbers, he made influential contributions to philosophy and religious teaching. Pythagoras and his students believe that everything was related to mathematics, and feel that everything could be predicted and measured in rhythmic cycles.

Plato

An immensely influential Greek philosopher, student of Socrates, teacher of Aristotle, writer, and founder of the Academy in Athens. In countries speaking Arabic.

Roy Claxton Acuff

Fiddle player from the mountains of Tennessee who became one of country music’s biggest stars. Acuff, started out as a baseball player before a bad case of sunstroke ended his career in the minor leagues. He began performing on the radio in 1933 with his backing band, the Tennessee Crackerjacks, and by 1936 they were making records and performing throughout the region.

Tina Fey

American writer, comedian, and actress, best known for her work on Saturday Night Live.

Manik Banerjee

Made his first appearance in Vangasri with his Divaratrir Kavya (A Poem of the Day and the Night) published as a book in 1935 and followed by Putul Nacher Itikatha (The Chronicles of a Puppet dance, 1936). He was recognised as an original writer with his own angle of vision and direction of approach.

Sukumar Roy

One of the greatest writers and illustrators in the history of Bengali literature. Swift minded he synthesized words and images. Unfortunately, his literary style is very difficult to translate.

James Michener

American writer. With a reputation as both a theorist and teacher of social studies, he was a visiting professor at Harvard (1939-41), then became a book editor in New York City (1941-9), with time out for service with the US Navy in the Pacific (1944-5).

Betty Friedan

Writer and feminist leader. A summa cum laude graduate from Smith (1942), she was awarded fellowships for working toward a doctorate in psychology, but abandoned this under the influence of what she would later call ‘the feminine mystique’.

Gertrude Stein

Writer and art patron. She studied psychology at Radcliffe College (1898), under William James (and would remain greatly influenced by his ideas) and at Johns Hopkins Medical School (1897-1901). She followed her brother, Leo Stein, first to London and then Paris (1903), where they began collecting Postimpressionist paintings, thereby helping several leading artists such as Matisse and Picasso.

Langston Hughes

Poet, writer, playwright, and librettist. After publishing his first poem, ‘The Negro Speaks of Rivers’ (1921), he attended Columbia University (1921), but left after one year to work on a freighter, travelling to Africa, living in Paris and Rome, and supporting himself with odd jobs.

Galway Kinnell

Poet and writer. He studied at Princeton (1948 BA), and the University of Rochester (1949 MA), travelled widely, and taught at many colleges. Based in Sheffield, VT he was a translator and essay writer, but is best known for his direct and precise poetry, as in Selected Poems (1982).

Edgar Allen Poe

Poet and writer. He was abandoned by his father when a baby and his mother died before he was three, so he was taken as a foster child into the home of John Allan, a Richmond, VA tobacco merchant whose business took him to Britain, where Poe was educated (1815-20). Returning to Virginia, he continued his education (1823-5) and attended the University of Virginia (1826).

Dolly Parton

Singer, songwriter, actress. Raised in a poor family with 12 children, Parton learned to escape her life by making up songs. By age 11, she was singing on a local radio station and after graduating from high school, she moved to Nashville to pursue a career in music.

Benjamin Franklin

Printer, writer, scientist, statesman. The 15th child in his family, Franklin went to work at age 10 in his father’s chandlery, then in a brother’s printing house. Ambitious and intent on self-improvement, he became a skilled printer while reading widely and developing a writing style.

William Kennedy

Novelist and screenwriter. He studied at Siena College, NY, and served in the US army (1950-2), before becoming a journalist and eventually a full-time writer.

Umberto Eco

Italian novelist and critic. He studied at Turin University, has taught semiotics at the University of Bologne for many years, and published several important works on the subject.

Sam Phillips

American music producer. He began his career as a disc jockey playing gospel music and blues at radio stations in Alabama and Tennessee. In 1950 he opened the Memphis Recording Service, recording black singers, including B B King and Howlin’ Wolf. In 1952 he formed the Sun Record Company.

Louis Braille

French educationist. Blind from the age of three following an accident with an awl, at 10 he entered the Institution des Jeunes Aveugles in Paris. He studied organ playing, and became professor of the Institute in 1826.

The Brothers Grimm

German folklorists and philologists. After studying at Marburg, Jacob became a clerk in the War Office at Kassel, and in 1808 librarian to Jerome Bonaparte, King of Westphalia. Wilhelm, in poorer health, remained in Kassel, where he became secretary of the elector’s library. He was joined there by Jacob in 1816. Between 1812 and 1822 they published the three volumes known as Grimm’s Fairy Tales.

Victor Borge

Danish entertainer and pianist. He studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Music, Copenhagen, and in Vienna and Berlin. He made his debut as a pianist in 1926 and as a revue actor in 1933.

J.R.R. Tolkien

Philologist and writer. He studied in Birmingham and at Oxford, where he became professor of Anglo-Saxon (1925-45) and Merton professor of English language and literature (1945-59). His scholarly works include Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics (1936).

E.M. Forster

British writer. He studied at Cambridge, and was a member of the Bloomsbury Group. His works include A Room with a View (1908), and Howard’s End (1910). A Passage to India (1924) paints a picture of society in India under the British Raj and explores the nature of external and internal reality. He also wrote several volumes of essays and short stories.

Edgar Hoover

American director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, lawyer, and criminologist. He attended night classes at George Washington University while working as a clerk at the Library of Congress.

J.D. Salinger

American writer. The Catcher in the Rye (1951), his first and only novel, was an immediate success, generating a cult-like dedication among many readers.

Theodosius Dobzhansky

Ukranian geneticist and evolutionary biologist. He was one of the engineers of the modern evolutionary synthesis, which united Mendelian genetics with evolution. He is notable for defining evolution as “a change in the frequency of an allele in a gene pool”.

Joel Chandler Harris

American journalist, also known as fictional narrator Uncle Remus for a collection of stories published from1881. Uncle Remus is a collection of animal stories, songs, and oral folklore, collected from Southern blacks. Many of the stories have a moral or advisory point, much like those of Aesop and La Fontaine.  

Vandana Shiva

Indian physicist, philosopher, ecofeminist, environmental activist and writer. She participated in the 1970s in the Chipko movement, of women hugging the trees to prevent their felling. In 1982, she founded the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology.

Victor Hugo

The most important of the Romantic authors in the French language. His major works include the novels The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Les Miserables, and a large body of poetry.

Victor Papanek

Strong advocate of the socially and ecologically responsible design of products and tools. He disapproved of manufactured products that were unsafe, showy, maladapted, or essentially useless. His products, writings, and lectures were considered an example.

Arnold Zweig

German writer and an active pacifist. 

Walter Bagehot

British writer and an early editor of The Economist newsmagazine.

Virgil Thomson

American composer from Missouri, whose rural background gave a sense of place in his compositions. He studied with Nadia Boulanger, and later established himself in New York City, as a peer of Aaron Copland and was also a music critic for the New York Herald-Tribune from 1940 through to 1954.

Ann Coulter

Conservative American author and political commentator. Her books include High Crimes and Misdemeanors, Slander, Treason, and How to Talk to a Liberal. All of Coulter’s books have been on the New York Times bestseller list. In addition, Ann Coulter is a legal correspondent for the magazine Human Events and writes a syndicated column for Universal Press Syndicate , which is carried by several influential conservative websites including the Jewish World Review. 

Vikram Seth

Indian novelist and poet. He is best known for his novels: The Golden Gate (1986), about San Francisco, written in verse as a very long sonnet sequence; A Suitable Boy (1993), a very long panoramic view of India in the nineteenth century Russian style; and An Equal Music (1999), set in contemporary Europe.  

Rachel Carson

Writer. At the age of 10 she was first published in the St. Nicholas literary magazine for children. A reader, loner and devotee of birds, and indeed all nature, she chose an English major at Pennsylvania College for Women and continued to submit poetry to periodicals.

Leonard Bernstein

American composer and orchestra conductor. He was probably the first conductor born in the United States of America to receive world-wide acclaim. 

Kevin Patterson

Canadian writer, whose short story collection Country of Cold won the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize in 2004. Patterson is also a doctor, who put himself through medical school by enlisting in the Canadian army. When his service was up, he worked as a doctor in the Arctic and on the coast of British Columbia while pursuing his MFA in Creative Writing.

James Rado

Actor, writer and composer, mostly known for his work writing the musical Hair, for which he won a Grammy Award.

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