Historical Figures

Poet · 43 BC – 17

Ovid was a Roman poet of the Augustan age whose Metamorphoses, a sweeping collection of mythological tales, became one of the most influential works of classical literature on later Western art and poetry.

• Metamorphoses
• Ars Amatoria

Painter · 1881 – 1973

Pablo Picasso was a Spanish painter and sculptor who co-founded Cubism and ranks among the most influential and prolific artists of the twentieth century, creating works such as Guernica and Les Demoiselles d'Avignon.

• Cubism
• Guernica

Poet · 1792 – 1822

Percy Bysshe Shelley was an English Romantic poet, among the greatest lyric poets in the language, whose visionary and politically radical verse — including Ozymandias and Prometheus Unbound — influenced generations of poets and reformers.

• Ozymandias
• Prometheus Unbound

Philosopher · 428 BC – 348 BC

Plato was a Greek philosopher who founded the Academy in Athens, wrote the foundational dialogues of Western philosophy, and developed the influential theory of Forms.

• Theory of Forms
• The Academy

Biographer · 46 – 120

Plutarch was a Greek philosopher and biographer of the Roman era whose Parallel Lives paired famous Greeks and Romans and became one of the most read and influential works of biography in history.

• Parallel Lives
• Moralia

Composer · 1840 – 1893

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was a Russian Romantic composer whose richly emotional music — including the ballets Swan Lake and The Nutcracker and the 1812 Overture — made him one of the most popular and widely performed composers in the world.

• Swan Lake
• The Nutcracker

Mathematician · 570 BC – 495 BC

Pythagoras was an ancient Greek mathematician and philosopher who founded the Pythagorean school and is remembered for the Pythagorean theorem and the idea that number underlies the cosmos.

• Pythagorean theorem
• Pythagoreanism

Emperor · 259 BC – 210 BC

Qin Shi Huang was the founder of the Qin dynasty and the first emperor of a unified China, who standardized the state, began the Great Wall, and built the Terracotta Army.

• First unification of China
• The Great Wall

Writer · 1861 – 1941

Rabindranath Tagore was a Bengali poet, writer, composer and polymath who reshaped Indian literature and music and, in 1913, became the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.

• Gitanjali
• Nobel Prize in Literature 1913

Painter · 1483 – 1520

Raphael was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance whose works, prized for their harmony and grace, include The School of Athens and a famous series of serene Madonnas.

• The School of Athens
• Sistine Madonna

Essayist · 1803 – 1882

Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, lecturer and poet who led the Transcendentalist movement and, through works such as "Self-Reliance" and "Nature", shaped American thought and called a new national literature into being.

• Self-Reliance
• Nature

Pharaoh · 1303 BC – 1213 BC

Ramesses II was the most powerful pharaoh of Egypt's New Kingdom, whose 66-year reign brought military campaigns, colossal building projects and a prosperity that earned him the title Ramesses the Great.

• Battle of Kadesh
• Abu Simbel temples

Painter · 1606 – 1669

Rembrandt was a Dutch painter and etcher of the Golden Age, regarded as one of the greatest artists in history, celebrated for The Night Watch, his searching self-portraits, and his mastery of light and shadow.

• The Night Watch
• Self-portraits

Philosopher · 1596 – 1650

René Descartes was a French philosopher, mathematician and scientist, the "father of modern philosophy", famous for "I think, therefore I am" and for founding analytic geometry.

• I think, therefore I am
• Analytic geometry

Novelist · 1850 – 1894

Robert Louis Stevenson was a Scottish writer whose adventure and Gothic tales — Treasure Island, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and Kidnapped — became enduring classics read around the world.

• Treasure Island
• Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

Activist · 1913 – 2005

Rosa Parks was an American civil rights activist whose refusal to give up her bus seat to a white passenger in 1955 sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott, a pivotal moment in the struggle against racial segregation.

• Montgomery Bus Boycott
• Refusing to give up her seat

Chemist · 1920 – 1958

Rosalind Franklin was an English chemist and X-ray crystallographer whose images of DNA were crucial to discovering its double-helix structure, a contribution long under-recognized.

• X-ray image of DNA (Photo 51)
• DNA structure research

Writer · 1865 – 1936

Rudyard Kipling was a British writer and poet, author of The Jungle Book and the poem "If—", who became the first English-language winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, though his association with British imperialism has made his legacy contested.

• The Jungle Book
• If—

Poet · 1207 – 1273

Rumi was a 13th-century Persian poet and Sufi mystic whose ecstatic verse on divine love became some of the most beloved poetry in the world and made him, centuries later, one of the most widely read poets in the West.

• The Masnavi
• Sufi mystical poetry

Military Leader · 1137 – 1193

Saladin was a Kurdish Muslim sultan who founded the Ayyubid dynasty, united Egypt and Syria, and famously recaptured Jerusalem from the Crusaders, earning renown even among his enemies for his chivalry.

• Recapturing Jerusalem
• The Battle of Hattin

Poet · 630 BC – 570 BC

Sappho was an ancient Greek lyric poet from the island of Lesbos, celebrated in antiquity as one of the greatest of all poets and revered for her intimate, intensely personal verse on love and longing.

• Lyric love poetry
• The 'Tenth Muse'

Spiritual Leader · 563 BC – 483 BC

Siddhartha Gautama, known as the Buddha, was a spiritual teacher of ancient India whose insights into suffering and liberation founded Buddhism, now one of the world's major religions.

• Founding Buddhism
• The Four Noble Truths

Psychologist · 1856 – 1939

Sigmund Freud was an Austrian neurologist who founded psychoanalysis, a revolutionary theory and therapy of the unconscious mind whose ideas about dreams, sexuality and the self transformed psychology, medicine and modern culture.

• Psychoanalysis
• Theory of the unconscious

Philosopher · 470 BC – 399 BC

Socrates was a classical Greek philosopher credited as a founder of Western philosophy, famous for the Socratic method of questioning and for his trial and execution in Athens.

• Socratic method
• The examined life