Explore great minds
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Albert Einstein
Theoretical physicist. Developer of the theory of relativity. Nobel Prize laureate. One of the most influential scientists of all time.
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Nikola Tesla
Inventor, electrical engineer, and futurist. Pioneer of alternating current (AC) electrical systems. Visionary of wireless energy transmission.
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Maya Angelou
American poet, memoirist, and civil rights activist. Author of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Voice of resilience, dignity, and Black womanhood.
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Martin Luther King Jr.
American Baptist minister and civil rights leader. Architect of nonviolent resistance against racial segregation in the United States. Nobel Peace laureate. Assassinated in 1968.
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Peter Drucker
Austrian-American management consultant, educator, and author. Father of modern management. Coined 'knowledge worker' and shaped how 20th-century corporations think about purpose, decision-making, and effectiveness.
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W. Edwards Deming
American engineer, statistician, and management consultant. Architect of the post-war Japanese quality revolution. Author of the 14 Points for Management and the System of Profound Knowledge.
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Henry Ford
American industrialist and founder of the Ford Motor Company. Architect of the moving assembly line and the $5 workday. Made the automobile a mass-market product with the Model T.
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Andrew Carnegie
Scottish-American industrialist who built the largest steel company of his era and then gave away most of his fortune. Author of 'The Gospel of Wealth'. Founder of thousands of public libraries.
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John D. Rockefeller
American industrialist and founder of Standard Oil. Pioneer of horizontal integration and the modern trust. The first American billionaire and one of the most consequential — and divisive — businessmen in history.
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Alfred P. Sloan
American business executive who led General Motors for over thirty years. Architect of the multidivisional corporation, brand laddering, and modern professional management. Author of My Years with General Motors.
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Steve Jobs
American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple, NeXT, and Pixar. Architect of the Macintosh, iMac, iPod, iPhone, and iPad. Reshaped personal computing, music, phones, animation, and retail.
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Sam Walton
American businessman and founder of Walmart and Sam's Club. Built the largest retailer in the world by relentlessly low prices, distribution scale, and small-town first strategy. Author of Made in America.
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C.K. Prahalad
Indian-American business strategist and professor at the University of Michigan. Co-author of 'The Core Competence of the Corporation' and author of 'The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid'. Reframed strategy as the architecture of capability and reach.
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Mary Parker Follett
American social worker, political philosopher, and pioneer of organizational theory and management. Originator of 'power-with' versus 'power-over' and integrative conflict resolution. Called by Drucker the prophet of management.
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Estée Lauder
American businesswoman and co-founder of Estée Lauder Companies. Built a global cosmetics empire from a Queens kitchen through department-store touch, sampling, and the gift-with-purchase. One of the great brand-builders of the 20th century.
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Stanley Kubrick
American filmmaker. Director of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Dr. Strangelove, A Clockwork Orange, The Shining, Barry Lyndon, and Eyes Wide Shut. Obsessive perfectionist of the form.
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Alfred Hitchcock
English filmmaker. Master of Suspense. Director of Psycho, Vertigo, Rear Window, North by Northwest, and dozens more. Architect of the modern thriller.
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Bruce Lee
Hong Kong American martial artist, actor, philosopher, and founder of Jeet Kune Do. Pioneer of Hong Kong action cinema. Author of the Tao of Jeet Kune Do.
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Marlon Brando
American actor. Star of A Streetcar Named Desire, On the Waterfront, The Godfather, and Apocalypse Now. Defining figure of method acting.
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Hedy Lamarr
Austrian-American actress and inventor. Hollywood star of the 1930s and 1940s. Co-inventor of frequency-hopping spread spectrum, foundational to modern wireless communications.
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John Coltrane
American jazz saxophonist and composer. Member of the Miles Davis quintet. Leader of the classic quartet with McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison, and Elvin Jones. Composer of A Love Supreme.
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Miles Davis
American jazz trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. Architect of cool jazz, modal jazz, and jazz fusion. Leader on Birth of the Cool, Kind of Blue, In a Silent Way, and Bitches Brew.
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Nina Simone
American singer, songwriter, pianist, and civil rights activist. The High Priestess of Soul. Composer of Mississippi Goddam, Four Women, Young, Gifted and Black.
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Billie Holiday
American jazz and swing singer. Lady Day. Singer of God Bless the Child, Strange Fruit, and the great American Songbook. One of the most original vocal stylists of the twentieth century.
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Maria Callas
Greek-American soprano. La Divina. Reviver of bel canto in the twentieth century. Singer of Norma, Tosca, Medea, Lucia di Lammermoor. Defining figure of the lyric and dramatic stage.
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Muhammad Ali
American boxer, three-time world heavyweight champion, and civil rights activist. Refused induction into the Vietnam-era draft and was stripped of his title. Lit the flame at Atlanta 1996 with a hand he could no longer hold still.
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Jesse Owens
American track and field athlete. Won four gold medals at the 1936 Berlin Olympics under the gaze of Adolf Hitler. Dismantled Nazi racial mythology in front of a hundred thousand witnesses.
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Arthur Ashe
American tennis champion. Winner of the US Open, Australian Open, and Wimbledon. First Black man to win a Grand Slam singles title. Civil rights advocate. Died of AIDS contracted through a blood transfusion.
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Kobe Bryant
American basketball player. Five-time NBA champion with the Los Angeles Lakers. Eighteen-time All-Star. Author of the Mamba Mentality. Killed in a helicopter crash in 2020 with his daughter Gianna and seven others.
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Florence Griffith Joyner
American sprinter. Triple Olympic gold medalist at Seoul 1988. World record holder in the 100 and 200 metres, records still standing decades later. Style icon of the track.
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Babe Didrikson Zaharias
American athlete. Two-time Olympic gold medalist in track at Los Angeles 1932. Ten-time major championship winner in golf. Among the greatest all-around athletes of any century.
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Wilma Rudolph
American sprinter. Three-time gold medalist at Rome 1960. Survived polio in childhood. First American woman to win three gold medals at a single Olympics.
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Amelia Earhart
American aviation pioneer. First woman to fly solo across the Atlantic. First person to fly solo from Hawaii to the United States mainland. Disappeared over the Pacific in 1937 during an attempted circumnavigation of the globe.
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Neil Armstrong
American astronaut, naval aviator, and engineer. Commander of Apollo 11. First human to set foot on the Moon, on July 20, 1969. Engineer to the end.
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Sally Ride
American astronaut and physicist. First American woman in space, on STS-7 in June 1983. Co-founder of Sally Ride Science. A serious advocate for science education and for girls in STEM.
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Emmy Noether
German mathematician of foundational importance to abstract algebra and theoretical physics. Author of Noether's theorem, which links symmetries to conservation laws. Driven from Göttingen by the Nazis; finished her career at Bryn Mawr.
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Milton Friedman
American economist. Nobel laureate (1976). Leader of the Chicago school. Author of A Monetary History of the United States (with Anna Schwartz) and Capitalism and Freedom. Public advocate of free markets.
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Joseph Schumpeter
Austrian-American political economist. Theorist of the entrepreneur and creative destruction. Author of The Theory of Economic Development and Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. Briefly Austrian Minister of Finance in 1919.
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John Kenneth Galbraith
Canadian-American economist, public intellectual, and ambassador. Author of The Affluent Society, The New Industrial State, and A History of Economics. Adviser to Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, and Johnson.
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Thorstein Veblen
American-Norwegian economist and sociologist. Author of The Theory of the Leisure Class. Originator of the term conspicuous consumption. A founder of institutional economics.
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Elinor Ostrom
American political economist. First woman to win the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (2009). Author of Governing the Commons. Demonstrated through fieldwork that communities can sustainably manage shared resources without state or market.
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William James
American philosopher and psychologist. Author of The Principles of Psychology, The Varieties of Religious Experience, and Pragmatism. Founder of American psychology and a central pragmatist.
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B.F. Skinner
American behaviorist, psychologist, and inventor. Originator of operant conditioning and the experimental analysis of behavior. Author of Walden Two, Beyond Freedom and Dignity, and Verbal Behavior. Inventor of the Skinner box and the air crib.
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Abraham Maslow
American psychologist. Founder of humanistic psychology. Originator of the hierarchy of needs and the concept of self-actualization. Author of Toward a Psychology of Being and The Farther Reaches of Human Nature.
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Carl Rogers
American psychologist. Founder, with Maslow, of humanistic psychology. Originator of person-centered therapy. Author of On Becoming a Person and A Way of Being.
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Karen Horney
German-American psychoanalyst. Founder of feminine psychology. Author of The Neurotic Personality of Our Time and Neurosis and Human Growth. A leading figure in the neo-Freudian movement.
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Frank Lloyd Wright
American architect, designer, writer, and educator. Author of organic architecture. Designer of Fallingwater, the Guggenheim, Taliesin, and over a thousand structures. Teacher of generations through the Taliesin Fellowship.
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Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
German-American architect. Last director of the Bauhaus. Designer of the Barcelona Pavilion, the Tugendhat House, the Seagram Building, and the IIT campus. Apostle of less is more.
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I.M. Pei
Chinese-American architect. Designer of the Louvre Pyramid, the East Building of the National Gallery, the Bank of China Tower, and the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha. Practitioner of geometric modernism in stone, steel, and glass.
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Louis Kahn
Estonian-American architect. Designer of the Salk Institute, the Kimbell Art Museum, the National Assembly of Bangladesh, the Phillips Exeter Library. Teacher at Penn for decades. Architect of monumental quiet.
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Frederick Douglass
American abolitionist, orator, and statesman. Born into slavery, escaped at twenty, became the most photographed American of the nineteenth century. Author of three autobiographies. Adviser to Lincoln and unrelenting voice for emancipation, women's suffrage, and equal citizenship.
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Harriet Tubman
American abolitionist, social activist, Union scout and spy. Born into slavery as Araminta Ross. Escaped to Philadelphia and returned south at least thirteen times to lead some seventy enslaved people to freedom. Led the Combahee River Raid. Suffrage advocate.
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Sojourner Truth
American abolitionist and women's rights advocate. Born into slavery as Isabella Baumfree in Dutch-speaking New York. Took the name Sojourner Truth in 1843 and walked the country preaching against slavery and for women's equality. Author, with Olive Gilbert, of the Narrative of Sojourner Truth.
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Susan B. Anthony
American social reformer and women's rights activist. Co-founder of the National Woman Suffrage Association with Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Tireless campaigner for the vote, for temperance, for abolition, and for working women's rights.
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Rosa Parks
American civil rights activist. Refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus on December 1, 1955. Catalyst of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Lifelong organizer with the NAACP, decades before and after the bus.
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Cesar Chavez
American labor leader and civil rights activist. Co-founder, with Dolores Huerta, of the United Farm Workers. Organizer of the Delano grape strike and the national grape boycott. Leader of fasts and pilgrimages in service of farmworker dignity.
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Ida B. Wells
African American journalist, anti-lynching crusader, suffragist, and co-founder of the NAACP. Author of Southern Horrors and A Red Record. Documentary investigator of lynching when no other reporter would.
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Bayard Rustin
American leader in social movements for civil rights, nonviolence, gay rights, and democratic socialism. Chief organizer of the 1963 March on Washington. Adviser to Dr. King. Author of Strategies for Freedom and Down the Line.
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Ernest Hemingway
American novelist, short-story writer, and journalist. Nobel laureate (1954). Author of The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and The Old Man and the Sea. Architect of a stripped American sentence.
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Mark Twain
American humorist, novelist, and lecturer. Author of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Life on the Mississippi, and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Greatest American humorist of his age.
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Toni Morrison
American novelist and editor. Nobel laureate (1993). Author of The Bluest Eye, Sula, Song of Solomon, Beloved, Jazz, and Paradise. Editor at Random House who shaped Black American letters from inside the publishing house.
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Ursula K. Le Guin
American novelist, poet, and essayist. Author of A Wizard of Earthsea, The Left Hand of Darkness, The Dispossessed, The Lathe of Heaven, and Always Coming Home. Anchor of speculative fiction as serious literature.
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Ansel Adams
American landscape photographer and environmentalist. Co-founder of Group f/64. Author of the Zone System. Photographer of Yosemite, the Sierra Nevada, and the American West. Member of the Sierra Club for fifty years.
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Dorothea Lange
American documentary photographer and photojournalist. Photographer for the Farm Security Administration. Author of Migrant Mother and the Dust Bowl portraits. Documentarian of the Japanese American internment.
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Robert Capa
Hungarian-American war photographer and photojournalist. Co-founder of Magnum Photos. Photographer of the Spanish Civil War, the Second Sino-Japanese War, the Second World War (including D-Day), and the First Indochina War, where he was killed.
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Gordon Parks
American photographer, filmmaker, writer, and composer. First African American photographer at Vogue and Life. Director of The Learning Tree and Shaft. Author of A Choice of Weapons. Documentarian of poverty, segregation, and Black American life.
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Julia Child
American chef, author, and television personality. Co-author of Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Host of The French Chef. The cook who taught Americans to cook French cuisine through television.
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James Beard
American cook, cookbook author, teacher, and television host. Father of American gastronomy. Author of The James Beard Cookbook and Beard on Food. Champion of regional American cooking decades before farm-to-table became a label.
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Anthony Bourdain
American chef, author, and television personality. Author of Kitchen Confidential. Host of A Cook's Tour, No Reservations, and Parts Unknown. The traveler who made restaurant work, hard places, and the dignity of strangers a global subject.
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Martha Graham
American modern dancer and choreographer. Founder of the Martha Graham Dance Company. Inventor of the contraction-and-release technique that bears her name. Choreographer for seventy years.
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Isadora Duncan
American dancer. Mother of modern dance. Pioneer of free movement, Greek-inspired tunics, and dance to symphonic music. Founder of schools in Germany, France, the United States, and the Soviet Union.
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Fred Astaire
American dancer, singer, and actor. Partner with his sister Adele in vaudeville and Broadway. Lead of the great RKO dance films with Ginger Rogers. Choreographer of his own routines and reformer of dance on screen.
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Alvin Ailey
American dancer, choreographer, and activist. Founder of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Choreographer of Revelations. Pioneer of African American modern dance.
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Charles Eames
American designer. Co-founder, with his wife Ray Eames, of the Eames Office. Designer of the Eames Lounge Chair, the Plywood Chair, the Aluminum Group, and the films Powers of Ten and the IBM Mathematica show.
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Edward R. Murrow
American broadcast journalist. Voice of CBS Radio reporting from London during the Blitz. Host of See It Now and Person to Person. Anchor of the broadcast that confronted Senator Joseph McCarthy in 1954.
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Walter Cronkite
American broadcast journalist. Anchor of the CBS Evening News from 1962 to 1981. Reporter of the Kennedy assassination, the Apollo missions, the Vietnam War. Polled the most trusted man in America during the years the question made sense.
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Hunter S. Thompson
American journalist and author. Founder of gonzo journalism. Author of Hell's Angels, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72, and many essays for Rolling Stone. Took his own life in 2005.
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Christopher Hitchens
British-American journalist, author, polemicist, and literary critic. Columnist for The Nation, Vanity Fair, and Slate. Author of Letters to a Young Contradictarian, God Is Not Great, and Hitch-22. Combative atheist and committed contrarian.
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Nellie Bly
American journalist. Pioneer of stunt reporting and undercover journalism. Author of Ten Days in a Mad-House. Circumnavigator of the globe in seventy-two days for Joseph Pulitzer's New York World. War correspondent in the First World War.
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Ida Tarbell
American journalist, biographer, and lecturer. Investigator of John D. Rockefeller and the Standard Oil Company for McClure's Magazine. Author of The History of the Standard Oil Company, the founding work of muckraking.
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George Carlin
American stand-up comedian, actor, social critic, and author. Author of seven words you can't say on television. Recorder of fourteen HBO specials over thirty-two years. Hall of Fame stand-up.
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Richard Pryor
American stand-up comedian, actor, and writer. Author of the album That Nigger's Crazy and the concert film Live in Concert. Co-writer of Blazing Saddles. The most influential American comedian of his generation.
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Lucille Ball
American actress, comedian, and producer. Star of I Love Lucy. Co-founder, with Desi Arnaz, of Desilu Productions, which produced Star Trek, Mission: Impossible, and many others. The most influential woman in twentieth-century television.
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Robin Williams
American actor and comedian. Star of Mork & Mindy, Good Morning Vietnam, Dead Poets Society, Mrs. Doubtfire, Aladdin, Good Will Hunting. Stand-up comedian of historic improvisational range. Took his own life in 2014 amid undiagnosed Lewy body dementia.
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Joan Rivers
American comedian, actress, writer, producer, and television host. Pioneer of women in late-night and stand-up. Host of The Late Show with Joan Rivers and Fashion Police. Author of Enter Talking and Diary of a Mad Diva.
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Gautama Buddha
The enlightened one. Founder of Buddhism. Teacher of the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path to liberation from suffering.
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Mahatma Gandhi
Leader of India's non-violent independence movement. Champion of truth (Satya) and non-violence (Ahimsa). Father of the Indian nation.
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Osho
Indian mystic, guru, and spiritual teacher. Known for his revolutionary commentary on ancient scriptures and his emphasis on meditation, awareness, and celebration.
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J. Krishnamurti
Indian philosopher and speaker on psychological revolution, the nature of the mind, meditation, human relationships, and bringing about radical change in society.
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Lao Tzu
Ancient Chinese philosopher. Author of the Tao Te Ching. Founder of Taoism. Teacher of living in harmony with the Tao — the way of nature.
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Jesus Christ
Central figure of Christianity. Teacher of love, forgiveness, and the Kingdom of God. Known for his parables and the Sermon on the Mount.
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Mahaveer
24th Tirthankara of Jainism. Teacher of non-violence (Ahimsa), truth, non-stealing, chastity, and non-attachment. Attained Kevala Jnana (omniscience).
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Isaac Newton
Mathematician, physicist, and astronomer. Formulated the laws of motion and universal gravitation. Developer of calculus. Author of Principia Mathematica.
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Rumi
13th-century Persian poet, Islamic scholar, and Sufi mystic. Author of the Masnavi, considered one of the greatest spiritual masterpieces ever written.
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Marcus Aurelius
Roman Emperor and Stoic philosopher. Author of Meditations, a collection of personal writings on Stoic philosophy and self-improvement.
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Marie Curie
Polish-French physicist and chemist. Pioneer of radioactivity. First person to win two Nobel Prizes, in two different sciences (Physics and Chemistry).
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Frida Kahlo
Mexican painter known for her unflinching self-portraits and works inspired by Mexican folk culture, pain, identity, and the body.
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Hypatia of Alexandria
Hellenistic Neoplatonist philosopher, astronomer, and mathematician of late-antique Alexandria. Renowned teacher murdered by a mob in 415 CE.
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Joan of Arc
French peasant girl who led armies in the Hundred Years' War, saw the Dauphin crowned at Reims, and was burned as a heretic at nineteen. Patron saint of France.
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Cleopatra VII
Last active ruler of the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt. Polyglot, scholar, and political strategist who allied with Caesar and Mark Antony to preserve her throne.
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Ada Lovelace
English mathematician and writer. Author of the first algorithm intended for a machine — Babbage's Analytical Engine. Often called the world's first computer programmer.
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Jane Goodall
English primatologist whose decades of fieldwork in Gombe transformed our understanding of chimpanzees and, with them, of ourselves. Conservationist and UN Messenger of Peace.
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Mother Teresa
Albanian-Indian Catholic nun. Founder of the Missionaries of Charity. Served the dying, the destitute, and the unwanted in Kolkata for nearly fifty years.
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Virginia Woolf
English modernist novelist and essayist. Author of Mrs Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, and A Room of One's Own. Pioneer of stream-of-consciousness prose.
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Socrates
Classical Athenian philosopher. Founder of Western philosophy through the Socratic method. Sentenced to death by Athens for corrupting the youth and impiety.
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Aristotle
Ancient Greek philosopher and polymath. Student of Plato, tutor of Alexander the Great. Founder of formal logic and a vast empirical philosophy of nature, ethics, and politics.
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Confucius
Chinese philosopher and teacher of the Spring and Autumn period. Teacher of ren (humaneness), li (ritual propriety), and the cultivation of the junzi (exemplary person).
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Leonardo da Vinci
Italian Renaissance polymath: painter, anatomist, engineer, inventor, and scientist. Creator of the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper. Author of thousands of pages of mirror-written notebooks.
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Carl Jung
Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. Founder of analytical psychology. Originator of the concepts of the collective unconscious, archetypes, individuation, and psychological types.
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Friedrich Nietzsche
German philosopher, philologist, and cultural critic. Author of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Beyond Good and Evil, and On the Genealogy of Morals. Diagnostician of nihilism.
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Nelson Mandela
South African anti-apartheid revolutionary, political leader, and statesman. Imprisoned for 27 years. First Black president of South Africa. Architect of national reconciliation.
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Rabindranath Tagore
Bengali polymath: poet, philosopher, composer, painter, and educator. Author of Gitanjali. First non-European Nobel laureate in Literature. Founder of Visva-Bharati.
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Ramana Maharshi
Indian sage of Arunachala. Awakened spontaneously at sixteen through the inquiry 'Who am I?'. Lived for over fifty years on the holy mountain at Tiruvannamalai.
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Akio Morita
Japanese co-founder of Sony Corporation. Architect of post-war Japan's transformation into a consumer electronics powerhouse. Visionary behind the Walkman and the global Sony brand.
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Charlie Chaplin
English comic actor, filmmaker, and composer. Defining figure of silent cinema. Creator of the Tramp. Co-founder of United Artists.
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Akira Kurosawa
Japanese filmmaker. Director of Seven Samurai, Rashomon, Yojimbo, and Ran. Bridge between Japanese cinema and the world. Master of composition, weather, and motion.
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Audrey Hepburn
British actress and humanitarian. Star of Roman Holiday, Sabrina, Breakfast at Tiffany's, and My Fair Lady. UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador in her later life.
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Satyajit Ray
Bengali filmmaker, illustrator, and author. Director of the Apu Trilogy, Charulata, and the Feluda films. Composer, writer, and the conscience of Indian cinema.
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Ingmar Bergman
Swedish filmmaker and theatre director. Director of The Seventh Seal, Persona, Wild Strawberries, and Fanny and Alexander. Probed faith, marriage, mortality, and the silence of God.
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Johann Sebastian Bach
German composer and musician of the late Baroque. Cantor of St. Thomas in Leipzig. Master of counterpoint and the fugue. Author of the Well-Tempered Clavier, the Mass in B minor, the Passions, and hundreds of cantatas.
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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Austrian composer of the Classical period. Prolific genius from childhood. Composer of forty-one symphonies, the Requiem, and operas including The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, and The Magic Flute.
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Ludwig van Beethoven
German composer and pianist. Bridge from the Classical to the Romantic era. Composer of nine symphonies, thirty-two piano sonatas, sixteen string quartets, and Fidelio. Composed his late masterpieces while completely deaf.
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Bob Marley
Jamaican singer, songwriter, and musician. Frontman of the Wailers. Pioneer of reggae's global rise. Composer of One Love, No Woman No Cry, Redemption Song, and Get Up, Stand Up.
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Freddie Mercury
British singer, songwriter, and frontman of Queen. Composer of Bohemian Rhapsody, Somebody to Love, Don't Stop Me Now, and We Are the Champions. One of the greatest live performers in rock history.
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Ravi Shankar
Indian sitarist and composer of the Maihar gharana. Brought Hindustani classical music to the West. Mentor to George Harrison. Composer for film, ballet, and concerto for sitar and orchestra.
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M.S. Subbulakshmi
Indian Carnatic vocalist. Foremost classical singer of twentieth-century South India. First musician to receive the Bharat Ratna. Voice of the Venkateswara Suprabhatam heard each dawn at Tirupati.
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Pelé
Brazilian footballer. Three-time FIFA World Cup winner. Scorer of more than a thousand goals. Global ambassador of o jogo bonito — the beautiful game.
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Diego Maradona
Argentine footballer. Captain of the 1986 World Cup-winning side. Author of the Hand of God and the Goal of the Century in the same match. Idol of Naples and the Boca Juniors faithful.
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Don Bradman
Australian cricketer. The greatest batsman in the history of the game. Test average of 99.94. Captain of the Invincibles in 1948.
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Ayrton Senna
Brazilian Formula One driver. Three-time World Champion. Master of the wet circuit, the qualifying lap, and Monaco. Killed at Imola in 1994.
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Marco Polo
Venetian merchant and explorer. Author, with Rustichello da Pisa, of Il Milione (The Travels), the account of his twenty-four-year journey through Asia and his service at the court of Kublai Khan.
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Ibn Battuta
Moroccan Berber Maliki scholar and explorer. Traveled some seventy-five thousand miles over thirty years across North Africa, the Middle East, the Horn of Africa, the Indian subcontinent, the Maldives, Southeast Asia, and China. Author of the Rihla.
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Ferdinand Magellan
Portuguese explorer in the service of Spain. Led the first expedition to circumnavigate the globe, though he was killed in the Philippines before the voyage's completion. The strait at the southern tip of South America bears his name.
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Ernest Shackleton
Anglo-Irish polar explorer. Led the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914-1917. After the Endurance was crushed by ice, brought every member of his crew home alive in one of the great feats of survival and leadership.
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Roald Amundsen
Norwegian polar explorer. First to reach the South Pole, in December 1911. First to traverse the Northwest Passage. First confirmed expedition to the North Pole by airship. The most successful polar explorer of his generation.
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Edmund Hillary
New Zealand mountaineer, explorer, and philanthropist. With Tenzing Norgay, the first to summit Mount Everest, on May 29, 1953. Lifelong builder of schools and hospitals for the Sherpa community.
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Tenzing Norgay
Nepali-Indian Sherpa mountaineer. With Edmund Hillary, the first to summit Mount Everest, on May 29, 1953. Founding director of the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute in Darjeeling.
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Yuri Gagarin
Soviet pilot and cosmonaut. First human in space, aboard Vostok 1 on April 12, 1961. National hero, ambassador, and symbol of the Space Age.
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Gertrude Bell
English writer, traveler, archaeologist, and political officer. Architect, with British colleagues and Iraqi notables, of the modern state of Iraq. Founder of the Iraq Museum in Baghdad.
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Euclid
Greek mathematician of Hellenistic Alexandria. Author of the Elements, the most influential mathematical textbook in history. Founder of the axiomatic method.
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Archimedes
Greek mathematician, physicist, engineer, and inventor of Syracuse. Calculator of pi, founder of hydrostatics, designer of compound pulleys, claws, and burning mirrors. Killed by a Roman soldier during the sack of Syracuse.
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Pythagoras
Ionian Greek philosopher, mathematician, and founder of Pythagoreanism. Teacher of harmonia in number, music, and cosmos. Around his name accumulated a school, a brotherhood, and a body of legend.
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Leonhard Euler
Swiss mathematician, physicist, astronomer, and engineer. The most prolific mathematician in history. Founder of graph theory, modern analysis, and much of the notation that students now learn first.
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Carl Friedrich Gauss
German mathematician and astronomer. Princeps mathematicorum. Pioneer of number theory, differential geometry, statistics, and electromagnetism. Director of the Göttingen Observatory.
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Srinivasa Ramanujan
Indian mathematician of self-taught genius. Discoverer of thousands of identities, formulas, and partition theorems. Collaborator at Cambridge with G.H. Hardy. Died at thirty-two.
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Alan Turing
English mathematician, logician, and codebreaker. Father of theoretical computer science and of artificial intelligence. Architect of the Bombe at Bletchley Park. Persecuted by the British state for being homosexual; took his own life in 1954.
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Sofya Kovalevskaya
Russian mathematician. First woman to receive a doctorate in mathematics in modern Europe. First woman appointed to a full professorship in northern Europe, at Stockholm. Pioneer of partial differential equations and the dynamics of rigid bodies.
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Évariste Galois
French mathematician. Founder of group theory and Galois theory, which determines whether a polynomial equation is solvable by radicals. Killed in a duel at the age of twenty.
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Adam Smith
Scottish moral philosopher and political economist. Author of The Theory of Moral Sentiments and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Founder of modern economics.
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Karl Marx
German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, and revolutionary. Author of The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital. Founding figure of socialism, communism, and modern critical theory.
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John Maynard Keynes
British economist. Author of The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. Architect of the IMF and World Bank at Bretton Woods. The most influential economist of the twentieth century.
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Friedrich Hayek
Austrian-British economist and political philosopher. Author of The Road to Serfdom and The Constitution of Liberty. Nobel laureate (1974). Theorist of spontaneous order and the price system as a mechanism of distributed knowledge.
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Joan Robinson
British economist. Member of the Cambridge Circus around Keynes. Author of The Economics of Imperfect Competition and The Accumulation of Capital. Major figure of post-Keynesian economics and the Cambridge capital controversies.
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Sigmund Freud
Austrian neurologist and founder of psychoanalysis. Author of The Interpretation of Dreams, The Ego and the Id, Civilization and Its Discontents. Originator of free association, the dynamic unconscious, and the talking cure.
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Jean Piaget
Swiss developmental psychologist and epistemologist. Founder of genetic epistemology. Author of The Origins of Intelligence in Children. Mapped the stages of cognitive development from infancy through adolescence.
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Viktor Frankl
Austrian neurologist, psychiatrist, and Holocaust survivor. Founder of logotherapy. Author of Man's Search for Meaning, written from his experience in Auschwitz, Dachau, and other camps where his wife and parents were killed.
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Anna Freud
Austrian-British psychoanalyst. Founder of child psychoanalysis. Author of The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense. Daughter of Sigmund Freud, custodian of his legacy, and theorist in her own right.
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Le Corbusier
Swiss-French architect, designer, urbanist, painter, and writer. Pioneer of modern architecture. Author of Towards a New Architecture and the Modulor. Designer of Villa Savoye, Unité d'Habitation, Notre-Dame du Haut at Ronchamp, and the city of Chandigarh.
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Antoni Gaudí
Catalan architect of Barcelona. Foremost figure of Catalan modernisme. Designer of the Sagrada Família, Park Güell, Casa Batlló, Casa Milà. Pioneer of geometry drawn from nature.
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Zaha Hadid
Iraqi-British architect. First woman to win the Pritzker Prize (2004). Designer of the MAXXI in Rome, the London Aquatics Centre, the Heydar Aliyev Center, the Guangzhou Opera House. Pioneer of parametric design.
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Lina Bo Bardi
Italian-Brazilian architect. Designer of the São Paulo Museum of Art (MASP), the SESC Pompéia, the Casa de Vidro. Pioneer of a Brazilian modernism rooted in popular culture, craft, and tropical light.
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Oscar Niemeyer
Brazilian architect. Co-designer of Brasília. Designer of the Cathedral of Brasília, the National Congress, the Niterói Contemporary Art Museum, and many UN-related buildings. Pioneer of curvilinear concrete modernism.
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Eileen Gray
Irish architect and furniture designer. Pioneer of the Modern Movement. Designer of E-1027 at Roquebrune-Cap-Martin and the Bibendum chair, the Adjustable Table E1027, the Transat chair. Master of lacquer.
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Bhagat Singh
Indian revolutionary against British colonial rule. Member of the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association. Hanged at twenty-three in Lahore for the killing of a British police officer and the Assembly bombing of 1929. Author of Why I Am an Atheist.
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Subhas Chandra Bose
Indian nationalist and President of the Indian National Congress in 1938 and 1939. Founder of the Forward Bloc. Commander of the Indian National Army during the Second World War. Disappeared in a plane crash in Taipei in August 1945.
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Emmeline Pankhurst
British political activist. Co-founder of the Women's Social and Political Union. Leader of the militant suffragette movement in the United Kingdom. Author of My Own Story. Mother of Christabel and Sylvia Pankhurst.
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Leo Tolstoy
Russian novelist and moral philosopher. Author of War and Peace, Anna Karenina, The Death of Ivan Ilyich, and Resurrection. Late-life Christian anarchist and pacifist whose writings influenced Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.
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Fyodor Dostoevsky
Russian novelist, short-story writer, essayist, and journalist. Author of Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, Demons, The Brothers Karamazov, and Notes from Underground. Survivor of a mock execution and four years in a Siberian penal colony.
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Jane Austen
English novelist of manners. Author of Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey, and Persuasion. Architect of the realist novel of marriage and money in early-nineteenth-century England.
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Charles Dickens
English novelist and social critic. Author of Oliver Twist, A Christmas Carol, David Copperfield, Bleak House, Hard Times, A Tale of Two Cities, and Great Expectations. Greatest popular novelist of the Victorian age.
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Gabriel García Márquez
Colombian novelist and short-story writer. Nobel laureate (1982). Author of One Hundred Years of Solitude, Love in the Time of Cholera, The Autumn of the Patriarch, and Chronicle of a Death Foretold. Master of magical realism.
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Jorge Luis Borges
Argentine writer, essayist, and poet. Author of Ficciones, El Aleph, Labyrinths. Director of the National Library of Argentina. Master of the philosophical short story and the essay disguised as fiction.
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Franz Kafka
Austro-Hungarian (German-language) novelist and short-story writer. Author of The Metamorphosis, The Trial, The Castle, In the Penal Colony, and A Hunger Artist. Insurance officer by day. Prophet of bureaucratic dread.
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George Orwell
English novelist, essayist, journalist, and critic. Author of Animal Farm, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Homage to Catalonia, The Road to Wigan Pier, and the great essays. Democratic socialist whose name became a synonym for political clarity.
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Albert Camus
French Algerian novelist, philosopher, and journalist. Nobel laureate (1957). Author of The Stranger, The Plague, The Fall, The Myth of Sisyphus, and The Rebel. Voice of the absurd and of revolt without the loss of conscience.
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Premchand
Hindi-Urdu novelist and short-story writer. Author of Godaan, Gaban, Nirmala, Karmabhoomi, and the great short stories Kafan and Idgah. Founder of modern Hindi-Urdu realist fiction. Voice of the village and the small clerk.
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Chinua Achebe
Nigerian novelist, poet, and critic. Author of Things Fall Apart, No Longer at Ease, Arrow of God, A Man of the People, and Anthills of the Savannah. Father of modern African literature in English.
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Henri Cartier-Bresson
French photographer. Father of modern photojournalism and the decisive moment. Co-founder of Magnum Photos with Robert Capa, David Seymour, and George Rodger. Master of the 35mm Leica.
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Auguste Escoffier
French chef, restaurateur, and culinary writer. Modernizer of haute cuisine. Author of Le Guide Culinaire. Architect of the brigade de cuisine system at the Savoy and the Carlton in London.
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Pina Bausch
German dancer and choreographer. Director of Tanztheater Wuppertal. Originator of Tanztheater — dance-theatre that combines movement, speech, set, and the lives of the dancers themselves.
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Vaslav Nijinsky
Russian-Polish ballet dancer and choreographer of the Ballets Russes. Premier danseur of the early twentieth century. Choreographer of L'Après-midi d'un faune, Jeux, Le Sacre du Printemps, and Till Eulenspiegel.
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Rudolf Nureyev
Soviet-born ballet dancer and choreographer. Defector to the West in 1961. Lead with the Royal Ballet alongside Margot Fonteyn. Director of the Paris Opera Ballet. The most charismatic male ballet dancer of the twentieth century.
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Coco Chanel
French couturière. Founder of the House of Chanel. Liberator of women's bodies from the corset. Designer of the little black dress, the Chanel suit, the Chanel No. 5 perfume, and the costume jewelry that pretended to be nothing else.
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Christian Dior
French fashion designer. Founder of the House of Dior. Creator of the New Look in 1947. Restorer of Paris as the capital of fashion after the Second World War.
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Alexander McQueen
British fashion designer. Founder of the Alexander McQueen label. Designer at Givenchy, then under his own name. Author of the bumster, the body-cast couture, and the runway as theatre. Took his own life in 2010.
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Issey Miyake
Japanese fashion designer. Founder of Issey Miyake Inc. Designer of Pleats Please and A-POC. Pioneer of garment technology and the integration of craft and industry.
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Karl Lagerfeld
German fashion designer and creative director. Long-running creative director of Chanel and Fendi. Founder of his own label. Photographer and editor. The most prolific and most quoted couturier of his generation.
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Sun Tzu
Ancient Chinese military strategist and philosopher of the Spring and Autumn period. Author of The Art of War, the foundational text of Eastern military theory. Adviser to King Helü of Wu.
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Hannibal
Carthaginian general of the Second Punic War. Crossed the Alps with elephants in 218 BCE. Victor at Trebia, Trasimene, and Cannae. Defeated finally at Zama in 202 BCE by Scipio Africanus.
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Alexander the Great
King of Macedon from 336 to 323 BCE. Pupil of Aristotle. Conqueror of the Achaemenid Persian Empire and lands as far as the Punjab. Founder of more than twenty cities, including Alexandria in Egypt.
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Julius Caesar
Roman general, statesman, and author. Conqueror of Gaul. Crosser of the Rubicon. Dictator of the Roman Republic. Author of the Commentaries on the Gallic War. Assassinated on the Ides of March, 44 BCE.
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Napoleon Bonaparte
French military and political leader. Emperor of the French from 1804 to 1814 and again in 1815. Architect of the Napoleonic Code. Conqueror, exile, and exile again. Died on Saint Helena in 1821.
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Genghis Khan
Founder and first Great Khan of the Mongol Empire. Unifier of the steppe tribes. Conqueror of much of Eurasia from the Pacific to the Caspian. Architect of an empire that became the largest contiguous land empire in history.
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Saladin
First sultan of Egypt and Syria. Founder of the Ayyubid dynasty. Recapturer of Jerusalem in 1187 and adversary of the Third Crusade. Considered a paragon of Islamic chivalry by both Muslim and Christian sources.
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Shivaji Maharaj
Indian warrior-king. Founder of the Maratha Empire. Crowned at Raigad in 1674 as Chhatrapati. Architect of guerrilla warfare against Mughal and Adilshahi power. Builder of forts and a navy.
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Oriana Fallaci
Italian journalist and writer. Wartime partisan in childhood, postwar reporter for L'Europeo, interviewer of Kissinger, Khomeini, Arafat, Gaddafi, Deng Xiaoping, the Shah, and many more. Author of If the Sun Dies and Letter to a Child Never Born.
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