Historical Figures
An authoritative, deeply-linked database of history's most influential people. Browse 319+ figures by occupation, era, and civilization, or use search to find anyone instantly.
Mary Shelley
80Mary Shelley was an English writer who, at just eighteen, conceived Frankenstein — a novel often called the first work of science fiction — and went on to a notable literary career while editing the works of her husband, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley.
Mary Wollstonecraft
85Mary Wollstonecraft was an English Enlightenment writer and philosopher, a pioneer of feminist thought whose A Vindication of the Rights of Woman argued for the education and equality of women.
Max Planck
89Max Planck was a German physicist who originated quantum theory by introducing the quantum of action, a discovery that launched modern physics and earned him the 1918 Nobel Prize.
Maximilien Robespierre
86Maximilien Robespierre was the French revolutionary leader who dominated the Committee of Public Safety during the Reign of Terror, using revolutionary justice to execute thousands including Louis XVI — before being overthrown and guillotined himself in Thermidor.
Maya Angelou
80Maya Angelou was an American writer, poet and civil rights activist whose autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings became a landmark of American literature, giving powerful voice to Black womanhood, trauma and resilience.
Mehmed II
88Mehmed II was the Ottoman sultan who conquered Constantinople in 1453, ending the Byzantine Empire and the Middle Ages, transforming the city into Istanbul and making the Ottoman Empire the dominant power of the Eastern Mediterranean.
Michael Faraday
93Michael Faraday was an English scientist whose discoveries in electromagnetism and electrochemistry, above all electromagnetic induction, laid the experimental foundation of the electrical age.
Michel de Montaigne
80Michel de Montaigne was a French Renaissance thinker and nobleman who invented the essay as a literary form, using candid self-examination to explore the human condition with unmatched honesty and wit.
Michelangelo
95Michelangelo was an Italian Renaissance sculptor, painter and architect, one of the greatest artists in history, creator of the David, the Pietà and the Sistine Chapel ceiling.
Miguel de Cervantes
91Miguel de Cervantes was a Spanish writer whose novel Don Quixote is widely regarded as the first modern novel and one of the greatest works in world literature.
Molière
80Molière was a French playwright and actor of the 17th century, the supreme master of comedy in the French language, whose satires of hypocrisy and vanity remain among the most performed plays in the world.
Montezuma II
79Montezuma II was the ninth ruler of the Aztec Empire, who presided over its greatest extent and splendor before the arrival of the Spanish under Hernán Cortés led to his death and the empire's fall.
Moses
96Moses is the central prophet of Judaism and a foundational figure in Christianity and Islam, who according to scripture led the Hebrew people out of Egyptian slavery, received the Ten Commandments from God, and transmitted the Torah — the foundational texts of the Abrahamic religious tradition.
Muhammad
98Muhammad was the founder of Islam and regarded by Muslims as the last prophet of God, whose revelations form the Quran and whose life and teachings shaped the religion now followed by 1.8 billion people across the world.
Murasaki Shikibu
80Murasaki Shikibu was a Japanese noblewoman and writer of the Heian court whose Tale of Genji, written around 1010, is often called the world's first novel and a masterpiece of world literature.
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
91Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was the military commander who defeated the Allied partition of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, founded the Republic of Turkey in 1923, and then transformed it through sweeping secular modernization reforms that reshaped Turkish society.
Napoleon Bonaparte
94Napoleon Bonaparte was a French military and political leader who rose during the French Revolution, crowned himself Emperor, and dominated European affairs for over a decade.
Napoleon III
79Napoleon III was the nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte who became the first elected president of France and then its last emperor, modernizing Paris and French industry before his empire collapsed with defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
78Nathaniel Hawthorne was an American novelist and short-story writer whose dark, morally probing fiction — above all The Scarlet Letter — explored sin, guilt and hypocrisy in Puritan New England and helped found the American novel.
Nefertiti
79Nefertiti was an Egyptian queen, principal wife of the pharaoh Akhenaten, who wielded unusual power during his religious revolution and whose painted limestone bust is one of the most admired images of the ancient world.
Nelson Mandela
92Nelson Mandela was a South African anti-apartheid revolutionary and statesman who, after 27 years in prison, became the country's first democratically elected president and a global symbol of reconciliation.
Nero
78Nero was the fifth Roman emperor, remembered as a byword for tyranny and excess, whose reign saw the Great Fire of Rome, the persecution of Christians, and a descent into cruelty that ended in his suicide and the fall of his dynasty.
Niccolò Machiavelli
88Niccolò Machiavelli was a Renaissance Italian diplomat, political philosopher and writer whose treatise The Prince founded modern political science and gave his name to ruthless statecraft.
Nicholas II
80Nicholas II was the last Tsar of Russia whose failures of leadership — autocratic rigidity, military catastrophe in World War I, and refusal to reform — led to his abdication in 1917, the Bolshevik seizure of power, and his execution with his family by the Soviets in 1918.