{"description":"Great Lives: short biographies with grade-banded reading links. Book links use ISBN-13s checked on Open Library.","categories":[{"id":"kings-queens-emperors","label":"Kings, Queens & Emperors"},{"id":"statesmen-founders","label":"Statesmen & Founders"},{"id":"military-leaders","label":"Military Leaders"},{"id":"explorers","label":"Explorers"},{"id":"inventors","label":"Inventors"},{"id":"titans-of-industry","label":"Titans of Industry"},{"id":"scientists-mathematicians","label":"Scientists & Mathematicians"},{"id":"physicians-medicine","label":"Physicians & Medicine"},{"id":"philosophers","label":"Philosophers"},{"id":"legal-scholars-lawgivers","label":"Legal Scholars & Lawgivers"},{"id":"theologians-church-fathers","label":"Theologians & Church Fathers"},{"id":"saints-reformers","label":"Saints & Reformers"},{"id":"artists-composers-architects","label":"Artists, Composers & Architects"},{"id":"writers-poets","label":"Writers & Poets"}],"bands":["K-2","3-5","6-8","9-12"],"count":866,"lives":[{"slug":"edwin-abbott","name":"Edwin A. Abbott","url":"/great-lives/edwin-abbott/","dates":"1838–1926","born":1838,"died":1926,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets","scientists-mathematicians"],"knownFor":"English schoolmaster and Anglican clergyman whose Flatland joins geometric imagination to social satire.","bio":"Edwin Abbott Abbott was born in London in 1838 and educated at the City of London School and St John’s College, Cambridge. His studies brought together classics, mathematics, and theology, interests that continued throughout his career. He was ordained in 1862 and became headmaster of the City of London School in 1865. He wrote educational works, studies of language, and books on religion. Flatland, published in 1884, imagines a society with only two spatial dimensions. Its story tests the limits of perception while satirizing social rank and intellectual complacency. Abbott retired from his headmastership in 1889 and continued writing. His work on Shakespeare’s grammar and his theological writings show the range of his scholarly interests. Readers should distinguish the arguments of his fictional narrators from his own beliefs, and neither his ordination nor his literary reputation makes every theological claim an authoritative statement of Christian doctrine. He died in 1926.","keyDates":[{"date":"1838","event":"Born in London"},{"date":"1865","event":"Becomes headmaster of the City of London School"},{"date":"1884","event":"Flatland published"},{"date":"1926","event":"Dies"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Edwin A. Abbott","relatedWorks":["flatland"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"flatland","url":"/works/flatland/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":null,"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"john-adams","name":"John Adams","url":"/great-lives/john-adams/","dates":"1735–1826","born":1735,"died":1826,"era":"18th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"Leader of American independence and second President of the United States.","bio":"John Adams was a Massachusetts farmer's son who studied at Harvard and became a lawyer. In 1770 he defended the British soldiers accused of murder in the Boston Massacre, believing everyone deserved a fair trial; most were acquitted. In the Continental Congress he argued tirelessly for independence and helped choose Thomas Jefferson to draft the Declaration. During the Revolution he served as a diplomat in France and the Netherlands, won Dutch loans, and helped negotiate the peace treaty with Britain in 1783. He drafted the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780, still in use today. He was the first vice president under Washington and became the second president in 1797. As president he avoided a full war with France but signed the Alien and Sedition Acts, which were widely criticized. He lost the election of 1800 to Jefferson. His letters with his wife Abigail are one of the great records of the era. Adams and Jefferson later renewed their friendship by letter, and both died on 4 July 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration.","keyDates":[{"date":"1770","event":"Defends the soldiers of the Boston Massacre"},{"date":"1776","event":"Champions independence in Congress"},{"date":"1783","event":"Helps negotiate the Treaty of Paris"},{"date":"1797","event":"Becomes second President"},{"date":"1826","event":"Dies on 4 July"}],"quotes":[],"author":"John Adams","relatedWorks":["adams-selected-writings","mccullough-john-adams","a-defence-of-the-constitutions","john-adams-inaugural-address","the-founding-documents","olive-branch-petition","declaration-of-the-causes-and-necessity-of-taking-up-arms"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"adams-selected-writings","url":"/works/adams-selected-writings/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"mccullough-john-adams","url":"/works/mccullough-john-adams/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"a-defence-of-the-constitutions","url":"/works/a-defence-of-the-constitutions/"},{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-founding-documents","url":"/works/the-founding-documents/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"Ralph Izard joked that Adams should be called 'His Rotundity', and the nickname caught on.","source":{"title":"John Adams (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Adams"}}],"records":[{"text":"The house he bought in the Netherlands became the first American embassy on foreign soil.","source":{"title":"John Adams (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Adams"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Sometimes called a Unitarian later in life; his beliefs were not dogmatic.","source":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Appletons%27_Cyclop%C3%A6dia_of_American_Biography/Adams%2C_John","sourceName":"Appletons' Cyclopaedia of American Biography (via Wikisource)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"john-quincy-adams","name":"John Quincy Adams","url":"/great-lives/john-quincy-adams/","dates":"1767–1848","born":1767,"died":1848,"era":"19th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders","legal-scholars-lawgivers"],"knownFor":"Sixth President of the United States who later, as a congressman, fought the gag rule and argued the Amistad captives' case before the Supreme Court.","bio":"John Quincy Adams was born on 11 July 1767 in Braintree, Massachusetts, the son of John and Abigail Adams. As a boy he watched the Battle of Bunker Hill with his mother, and at fourteen served as secretary to an American diplomat in Russia. After Harvard and the law, he served as minister to the Netherlands, Prussia, Russia and Britain. As Secretary of State under James Monroe he negotiated the treaty by which Spain ceded Florida and shaped the Monroe Doctrine. He was elected President in 1824 and served one term. In 1830 his neighbours elected him to the House of Representatives, where he served for seventeen years. There he fought the 'gag rule' that blocked petitions against slavery from being heard, until it was repealed in 1844. In 1841, aged seventy-three, he argued before the Supreme Court for the Africans who had seized the schooner Amistad, and the Court declared them free. A daily reader of the Bible, he believed slavery violated both the Declaration of Independence and the law of God. He collapsed at his desk in the House on 21 February 1848 and died two days later.","keyDates":[{"date":"1767","event":"Born in Braintree, Massachusetts, on 11 July"},{"date":"1825","event":"Inaugurated as sixth President"},{"date":"1831","event":"Takes his seat in the House of Representatives"},{"date":"1841","event":"Argues the Amistad case before the Supreme Court"},{"date":"1844","event":"The House gag rule is repealed"},{"date":"1848","event":"Dies in the Capitol on 23 February"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["united-states-v-the-amistad","john-quincy-adams-inaugural-address"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"united-states-v-the-amistad","url":"/works/united-states-v-the-amistad/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented in detail; he was buried beside the Unitarian United First Parish Church in Quincy.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Quincy_Adams","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["He was elected to the House in 1830 and took his seat in 1831."]},{"slug":"richard-adams","name":"Richard Adams","url":"/great-lives/richard-adams/","dates":"1920–2016","born":1920,"died":2016,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"English novelist, author of Watership Down.","bio":"Richard Adams was born in 1920 in Newbury, Berkshire, the son of a doctor. In 1938 went to Worcester College, Oxford, to study modern history. In 1940 he was called up into the British Army; he served in the Royal Army Service Corps with an airborne unit in Palestine, Europe and East Asia. After the war he finished his degree and joined the Civil Service, rising to assistant secretary in the Ministry of Housing and Local Government. He began telling the story that became Watership Down to his two daughters during a car journey, and they insisted that he write it down. Watership Down (1972), about a band of rabbits who leave their threatened warren to find a new home, was turned down by four publishers and three agents before a small publisher accepted it. It became a bestseller and won both the Carnegie Medal and the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize. In 1974, after publishing Shardik, he became a full-time writer; his other books include The Plague Dogs. He died in 2016.","keyDates":[{"date":"1920","event":"Born in Newbury, Berkshire"},{"date":"1940","event":"Called up into the army"},{"date":"1948","event":"Graduates and joins the Civil Service"},{"date":"1972","event":"Watership Down published"},{"date":"1974","event":"Becomes a full-time writer"},{"date":"2016","event":"Dies"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Richard Adams","relatedWorks":["watership-down"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"watership-down","url":"/works/watership-down/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Adams","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"samuel-adams","name":"Samuel Adams","url":"/great-lives/samuel-adams/","dates":"1722–1803","born":1722,"died":1803,"era":"18th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"Boston patriot and Congregationalist organizer who steered Massachusetts toward independence and signed the Declaration.","bio":"Samuel Adams was born in Boston in 1722, studied at Harvard, and failed as a businessman before finding his work in politics. A devout Congregationalist, he believed that liberty and virtue stood or fell together, and he used newspapers, committees of correspondence, and town meetings to resist British taxes after 1764. He helped plan the protest later called the Boston Tea Party, sat in the Continental Congress, and signed the Declaration of Independence. Less comfortable after independence was won, he was wary of concentrated power and at first doubted the Constitution, though he did not lead a fight against ratification in Massachusetts. He later served as governor of the state. Adams lived plainly, gave his energy to public causes rather than to wealth, and died in Boston in 1803.","keyDates":[{"date":"1722","event":"Born in Boston"},{"date":"1764","event":"Begins organizing resistance to the Sugar Act and Stamp Act"},{"date":"1773","event":"Helps lead the Boston Tea Party protest"},{"date":"1776","event":"Signs the Declaration of Independence"},{"date":"1794","event":"Becomes governor of Massachusetts"},{"date":"1803","event":"Dies in Boston"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["the-founding-documents"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-founding-documents","url":"/works/the-founding-documents/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":null,"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"jane-addams","name":"Jane Addams","url":"/great-lives/jane-addams/","dates":"1860–1935","born":1860,"died":1935,"era":"19th-century","categories":["saints-reformers","writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American social reformer who founded Hull House in Chicago and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931.","bio":"Jane Addams was born in 1860 in Cedarville, Illinois, the daughter of a mill owner and state senator who was a friend of Abraham Lincoln. She graduated from Rockford Female Seminary and began medical school but left because of poor health. On a visit to London in 1888 she toured Toynbee Hall, a 'settlement house' where educated volunteers lived among the poor. In 1889 she and her friend Ellen Gates Starr opened Hull House in a poor immigrant neighborhood of Chicago. It offered a kindergarten, classes, clubs, a public kitchen, an art gallery and many other services, and its residents studied conditions in the neighborhood and campaigned for laws on child labor, safe workplaces and juvenile courts. Addams described this work in Twenty Years at Hull-House (1910). She supported women's suffrage and was a leading pacifist; she opposed American entry into the First World War and became the first president of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. In 1931 she became the first American woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. She died in Chicago in 1935.","keyDates":[{"date":"1860","event":"Born in Cedarville, Illinois"},{"date":"1888","event":"Visits Toynbee Hall in London"},{"date":"1889","event":"Opens Hull House in Chicago"},{"date":"1910","event":"Twenty Years at Hull-House published"},{"date":"1915","event":"Leads the Woman's Peace Party"},{"date":"1931","event":"Nobel Peace Prize"},{"date":"1935","event":"Dies in Chicago"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Jane Addams","relatedWorks":["twenty-years-at-hull-house"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"twenty-years-at-hull-house","url":"/works/twenty-years-at-hull-house/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"Her father kept a letter from Abraham Lincoln in his desk, and as a child she loved to look at it.","source":{"title":"Jane Addams (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Addams"}}],"records":[{"text":"In 1931 she became the first American woman awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.","source":{"title":"Jane Addams (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Addams"}},{"text":"In 1910 she became the first woman to receive an honorary degree from Yale University.","source":{"title":"Jane Addams (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Addams"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Inspired by Toynbee Hall, a Christian settlement house in London.","source":"https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/addams-jane/","sourceName":"Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"aeschylus","name":"Aeschylus","url":"/great-lives/aeschylus/","dates":"c. 525–456 BC","born":-525,"died":-456,"era":"ancient","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Athenian playwright, the earliest Greek tragedian whose plays survive, author of the Oresteia trilogy.","bio":"Aeschylus was born around 525 BC at Eleusis, near Athens. He is the earliest of the three great Athenian tragedians whose plays survive, followed by Sophocles and Euripides. Ancient writers credit him with adding a second actor to tragedy, which had earlier used one actor and a chorus, making real dialogue and conflict on stage possible. He fought for Athens against the Persians at the Battle of Marathon in 490 BC, where his brother was killed, and probably at Salamis as well; his play The Persians, staged in 472 BC, deals with the Persian defeat. He won first prize at the Athenian drama festivals many times. Of the many plays he wrote, seven survive under his name, including the Oresteia (458 BC), the only complete Greek tragic trilogy to come down to us: Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers and The Eumenides. He visited Sicily more than once and died at Gela around 456 BC.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 525 BC","event":"Born at Eleusis"},{"date":"490 BC","event":"Fights at the Battle of Marathon"},{"date":"472 BC","event":"The Persians staged"},{"date":"458 BC","event":"The Oresteia wins first prize"},{"date":"c. 456 BC","event":"Dies at Gela in Sicily"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Aeschylus","relatedWorks":["the-oresteia","aeschylus-prometheus-bound-and-other-plays"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-oresteia","url":"/works/the-oresteia/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"aeschylus-prometheus-bound-and-other-plays","url":"/works/aeschylus-prometheus-bound-and-other-plays/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"A Roman writer, Valerius Maximus, told a strange story that Aeschylus died when an eagle dropped a tortoise on his head, mistaking it for a rock to crack the shell on. Historians treat it as a legend.","source":{"title":"Aeschylus (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeschylus"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented beyond the traditional Greek religion of Athens, at whose religious festivals his plays were performed.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeschylus","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"aesop","name":"Aesop","url":"/great-lives/aesop/","dates":"c. 620–564 BC (traditional)","born":-620,"died":-564,"era":"ancient","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Storyteller of ancient Greece to whom hundreds of fables, such as The Tortoise and the Hare, have been attributed.","bio":"Aesop is the name attached to a large collection of short animal fables, such as The Tortoise and the Hare and The Fox and the Grapes, that were told in ancient Greece. Very little is known about him for certain. The historian Herodotus, writing in the fifth century BC, says Aesop was an enslaved man who lived in the sixth century BC and was killed at Delphi. Later legends, especially a popular Life of Aesop, describe him as clever but ugly and tell how he won his freedom by his wit, but these stories are not reliable history. The fables were passed on by word of mouth and later written down and retold by authors such as Phaedrus in Latin and Babrius in Greek. Many of the fables now credited to Aesop were probably composed by others. Translated and illustrated in countless editions, they remain among the most familiar stories in the world.","keyDates":[{"date":"6th century BC","event":"Lifetime according to ancient tradition"},{"date":"5th century BC","event":"Mentioned by Herodotus"},{"date":"1st century AD","event":"Fables retold in Latin verse by Phaedrus"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Aesop","relatedWorks":["aesops-fables"],"reading":[{"band":"K-2","kind":"library","work":"aesops-fables","url":"/works/aesops-fables/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented; almost nothing certain is known of his life.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aesop","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["Aesop's dates are traditional; his life is known mainly from later legend."]},{"slug":"akbar","name":"Akbar the Great","url":"/great-lives/akbar/","dates":"1542–1605","born":1542,"died":1605,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["kings-queens-emperors"],"knownFor":"Mughal emperor who expanded his empire across northern India and welcomed debate among religions.","bio":"Akbar was the third Mughal emperor of India, grandson of Babur, the founder of the dynasty. He came to the throne in 1556 at thirteen, after his father Humayun died from a fall down library stairs, and his guardian Bairam Khan won the crucial second battle of Panipat that year. Akbar went on to conquer most of northern and central India. He never learned to read, perhaps because of a learning difficulty, but had books read to him and built a great library. He brought Hindu Rajput princes into his government and army, married a Rajput princess, and abolished the special tax on non-Muslims. At his new capital, Fatehpur Sikri, he built a House of Worship where Muslim, Hindu, Jain, Zoroastrian and Christian scholars, including Jesuits from Goa, debated before him. His minister Todar Mal reformed land taxes. Akbar's court supported painters, poets and historians, and his official biography, the Akbarnama, was richly illustrated. He died in 1605 and was succeeded by his son Jahangir.","keyDates":[{"date":"1556","event":"Becomes emperor; second battle of Panipat"},{"date":"1564","event":"Abolishes the tax on non-Muslims"},{"date":"1571","event":"Begins building Fatehpur Sikri"},{"date":"1575","event":"Founds the House of Worship for religious debate"},{"date":"1605","event":"Dies at Agra"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A Muslim emperor who adopted programs to win the loyalty of the non-Muslim peoples of his realm.","source":"https://www.britannica.com/biography/Akbar","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"louisa-may-alcott","name":"Louisa May Alcott","url":"/great-lives/louisa-may-alcott/","dates":"1832–1888","born":1832,"died":1888,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American novelist, author of Little Women.","bio":"Louisa May Alcott was born in 1832 in Germantown, Pennsylvania, the second of four daughters of the teacher and philosopher Amos Bronson Alcott and Abigail May Alcott. She grew up mostly in Boston and Concord, Massachusetts, where family friends included Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Her father's ideas about education and his failed experiments, such as the utopian community of Fruitlands, left the family poor, and Louisa worked from a young age as a seamstress, governess, teacher and servant, and began to write. During the Civil War she served as a nurse in a Union hospital in Washington, D.C., until she caught typhoid fever; her Hospital Sketches (1863) described the experience. She also wrote thrillers under a pen name. At her publisher's request she wrote a book for girls, Little Women (1868–1869), about the four March sisters, Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy, based on her own family. It was a great success, and she followed it with Little Men and Jo's Boys. She supported women's suffrage and abolition. She died in Boston in 1888, two days after her father.","keyDates":[{"date":"1832","event":"Born in Germantown, Pennsylvania"},{"date":"1843","event":"Family joins the Fruitlands community"},{"date":"1862","event":"Serves as a Civil War nurse"},{"date":"1863","event":"Hospital Sketches published"},{"date":"1868","event":"Little Women published"},{"date":"1888","event":"Dies in Boston"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Louisa May Alcott","relatedWorks":["little-women"],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"library","work":"little-women","url":"/works/little-women/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"As a girl she put on fairy-tale plays and acted out Charles Dickens's stories, and she later wrote plays for her older sister and herself to perform.","source":{"title":"Louisa May Alcott (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louisa_May_Alcott"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[{"name":"Louisa May Alcott’s Orchard House","note":"Orchard House in Concord, Massachusetts was Louisa May Alcott’s adult family home, where she wrote Little Women. Its school resources include guided visits, living-history programs, and virtual tours.","url":"https://louisamayalcott.org/schools-%26-scouts","urlLabel":"Louisa May Alcott’s Orchard House — schools and digital resources"}],"faith":{"note":"Daughter of the Transcendentalist Amos Bronson Alcott; her personal beliefs are not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Alcott%2C_Louisa_May","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica (1911) (via Wikisource)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"alexander-the-great","name":"Alexander the Great","url":"/great-lives/alexander-the-great/","dates":"356–323 BC","born":-356,"died":-323,"era":"ancient","categories":["kings-queens-emperors","military-leaders"],"knownFor":"Macedonian king who conquered the Persian Empire and spread Greek culture from Egypt to India.","bio":"Alexander III of Macedon was the son of King Philip II and was taught as a teenager by the philosopher Aristotle. He became king at twenty after his father was murdered in 336 BC. Two years later he crossed into Asia with an army of Macedonians and Greeks to attack the Persian Empire. He won great battles at the Granicus River, at Issus, and at Gaugamela, took Egypt, where he founded the city of Alexandria, and captured the Persian capitals. He then marched east through what are now Afghanistan and Pakistan, reaching India, where his tired soldiers finally refused to go farther. In about eleven years he never lost a major battle. Alexander could be generous and brave, but also violent; in anger he killed his friend Cleitus and destroyed cities that resisted him. He died in Babylon in 323 BC, aged thirty-two, probably of a fever. His generals divided his empire, and the Greek-speaking kingdoms they founded spread Greek language and learning across the Near East.","keyDates":[{"date":"356 BC","event":"Born at Pella, Macedonia"},{"date":"336 BC","event":"Becomes king of Macedon"},{"date":"331 BC","event":"Defeats Darius III at Gaugamela"},{"date":"323 BC","event":"Dies in Babylon"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["the-age-of-alexander","plutarch-lives"],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"book","title":"Who Was Alexander the Great?","author":"Robin H. Waterfield","isbn13":"9780448484235","publisher":"Paperback","year":2016,"format":""},{"band":"3-5","kind":"book","title":"Alexander the Great","author":"Demi","isbn13":"9780761457008","publisher":"Marshall Cavendish","year":2010,"format":""},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-age-of-alexander","url":"/works/the-age-of-alexander/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"plutarch-lives","url":"/works/plutarch-lives/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"book","title":"Alexander the Great","author":"Robin Lane Fox","isbn13":"9780143035138","publisher":"Paperback","year":2004,"format":""}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"He founded a city named Bucephala in honour of his beloved horse, Bucephalas.","source":{"title":"Alexander the Great (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_the_Great"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Practiced the traditional Greek religion of Macedon and honored the gods of lands he conquered, such as Egypt's Amun.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_the_Great","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[{"series":"Very Short Introductions","title":"Alexander the Great: A Very Short Introduction","author":"Hugh Bowden","publisher":"Oxford University Press","year":2014,"isbn13":null,"url":null}],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"alfred-the-great","name":"Alfred the Great","url":"/great-lives/alfred-the-great/","dates":"849–899","born":849,"died":899,"era":"medieval","categories":["kings-queens-emperors"],"knownFor":"King of Wessex who defended England against the Vikings and promoted learning.","bio":"Alfred was the youngest son of King Æthelwulf of Wessex, a kingdom in southern England. He became king in 871, in the middle of a great Viking invasion that had already overrun most of the other English kingdoms. In early 878 a surprise Danish attack drove him to hide in the marshes of Somerset; a later legend says that while sheltering in a peasant's hut he let the cakes he was minding burn. A few months later he gathered an army and defeated the Danes at Edington, and their leader Guthrum agreed to be baptized. Alfred then built a network of fortified towns called burhs, reorganized the army, and built ships. Saddened that so few people could read, he had important Latin books translated into English, some by himself, including works by Gregory the Great and Boethius, and he encouraged the keeping of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. He also issued a law code. His children and grandchildren went on to unite England into one kingdom.","keyDates":[{"date":"871","event":"Becomes king of Wessex"},{"date":"878","event":"Defeats the Danes at Edington"},{"date":"880s","event":"Builds fortified burhs and begins translations"},{"date":"899","event":"Dies at Winchester"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["bede-ecclesiastical-history","the-consolation-of-philosophy"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"bede-ecclesiastical-history","url":"/works/bede-ecclesiastical-history/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"book","title":"Alfred the Great","author":"Justin Pollard","isbn13":"9780719566660","publisher":"John Murray","year":2006,"format":""}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"His biographer Asser tells how Alfred's mother promised a book of Saxon poetry to whichever of her sons could learn it fastest. Alfred took it to his teacher, learned it and recited it back to her.","source":{"title":"Alfred the Great (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_the_Great"}}],"records":[{"text":"In 850 his brother Æthelstan defeated a Danish fleet off Sandwich in the first recorded naval battle in English history.","source":{"title":"Alfred the Great (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_the_Great"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Christian king of Wessex who defended English Christianity against the Viking invasions.","source":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dictionary_of_National_Biography%2C_1885-1900/%C3%86lfred_%28849-901%29","sourceName":"Dictionary of National Biography (1885–1900) (via Wikisource)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"richard-allen","name":"Richard Allen","url":"/great-lives/richard-allen/","dates":"1760–1831","born":1760,"died":1831,"era":"18th-century","categories":["saints-reformers","theologians-church-fathers"],"knownFor":"American minister and founder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, who led relief work in Philadelphia's 1793 yellow fever epidemic.","bio":"Richard Allen was born into slavery in 1760 on the Delaware property of Benjamin Chew, and as a child he was sold with his family to another Delaware farmer. As a teenager he became a Methodist, and his owner, influenced by Methodist preaching against slavery, allowed him to buy his freedom, which he completed in the early 1780s. He worked at many jobs while traveling as a preacher, and in 1786 he returned to Philadelphia and preached at St. George's Methodist Church. In 1787 he and Absalom Jones founded the Free African Society, a mutual aid group. When the church ordered Black worshippers to sit in a segregated gallery, they left. In 1794 Allen founded Bethel Church, and in 1816 he brought together several Black Methodist congregations to form the African Methodist Episcopal Church, becoming its first bishop. During the yellow fever epidemic of 1793, Allen and Jones organized Black volunteers to nurse the sick and bury the dead, and afterward they published an account defending the volunteers against unfair accusations. He died in Philadelphia in 1831.","keyDates":[{"date":"1760","event":"Born into slavery in Delaware"},{"date":"1780s","event":"Buys his freedom"},{"date":"1787","event":"Co-founds the Free African Society"},{"date":"1793","event":"Leads volunteers in the yellow fever epidemic"},{"date":"1794","event":"Founds Bethel Church"},{"date":"1816","event":"First bishop of the AME Church"},{"date":"1831","event":"Dies in Philadelphia"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Richard Allen and Absalom Jones","relatedWorks":["narrative-of-yellow-fever-1793","allen-life-experience-and-gospel-labours"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"allen-life-experience-and-gospel-labours","url":"/works/allen-life-experience-and-gospel-labours/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"narrative-of-yellow-fever-1793","url":"/works/narrative-of-yellow-fever-1793/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"He taught himself to read and write.","source":{"title":"Richard Allen (bishop) (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Allen_(bishop)"}}],"records":[{"text":"The land he bought in Philadelphia in 1787, now home to Mother Bethel AME Church, is the oldest parcel of real estate in the United States continuously owned by African Americans.","source":{"title":"Richard Allen (bishop) (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Allen_(bishop)"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Methodist preacher who founded the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the first independent Black denomination in the United States.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Allen_%28bishop%29","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"roald-amundsen","name":"Roald Amundsen","url":"/great-lives/roald-amundsen/","dates":"1872–1928","born":1872,"died":1928,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["explorers"],"knownFor":"Norwegian explorer who led the first expedition to reach the South Pole.","bio":"Roald Amundsen was born near Oslo, Norway, into a family of shipowners. His mother wanted him to be a doctor, but after her death he left his studies for the sea. He served on a Belgian expedition that spent the winter of 1898 trapped in Antarctic ice. From 1903 to 1906 he sailed the small ship Gjøa through the Northwest Passage, the first to do so, learning from the Netsilik Inuit how to dress in furs and drive sled dogs. He planned to reach the North Pole, but when he heard that Americans claimed to have reached it, he secretly turned south. With four companions and dog teams, he reached the South Pole on December 14, 1911, five weeks before the British party of Robert Falcon Scott, whose men all died on the return. Amundsen's careful planning, skis and dogs were key to his success. In 1926 he flew over the North Pole in the airship Norge with Umberto Nobile and Lincoln Ellsworth. In 1928 he flew north to help search for Nobile, whose airship had crashed, and his plane disappeared in the Barents Sea.","keyDates":[{"date":"1903–1906","event":"First voyage through the Northwest Passage"},{"date":"1911","event":"Reaches the South Pole"},{"date":"1926","event":"Flies over the North Pole in the Norge"},{"date":"1928","event":"Disappears during a rescue flight"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"On one Arctic journey he broke his arm and was attacked by a polar bear.","source":{"title":"Roald Amundsen (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roald_Amundsen"}},{"text":"A crater on the Moon is named after him.","source":{"title":"Roald Amundsen (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roald_Amundsen"}}],"records":[{"text":"His party of five became the first to reach the South Pole, on 14 December 1911.","source":{"title":"Roald Amundsen (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roald_Amundsen"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roald_Amundsen","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"hans-christian-andersen","name":"Hans Christian Andersen","url":"/great-lives/hans-christian-andersen/","dates":"1805–1875","born":1805,"died":1875,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Danish author of fairy tales, including The Little Mermaid, The Ugly Duckling and The Emperor's New Clothes.","bio":"Hans Christian Andersen was born in 1805 in Odense, Denmark, the son of a poor shoemaker and a washerwoman. His father, who loved stories and built him a toy theater, died when Hans was eleven. At fourteen he went alone to Copenhagen, hoping to become an actor or singer, and lived in poverty until Jonas Collin, a director of the Royal Theatre, helped him obtain an education at a grammar school, where he was much older than the other pupils. He became known for poems, plays, travel books and novels, beginning with The Improvisatore (1835). That same year he published his first booklet of fairy tales, and over the next four decades he wrote more than 150, including The Princess and the Pea, The Little Mermaid, The Emperor's New Clothes, The Ugly Duckling, The Snow Queen and The Little Match Girl. Many were his own inventions rather than retold folk tales. He traveled widely in Europe and met writers such as Charles Dickens. He wrote his autobiography, The True Story of My Life, and died in Copenhagen in 1875.","keyDates":[{"date":"1805","event":"Born in Odense"},{"date":"1819","event":"Goes to Copenhagen"},{"date":"1835","event":"First fairy tales published"},{"date":"1843","event":"The Ugly Duckling published"},{"date":"1847","event":"The True Story of My Life; visits Dickens in England"},{"date":"1875","event":"Dies in Copenhagen"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Hans Christian Andersen","relatedWorks":["andersen-fairy-tales","the-true-story-of-my-life"],"reading":[{"band":"K-2","kind":"library","work":"andersen-fairy-tales","url":"/works/andersen-fairy-tales/"},{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-true-story-of-my-life","url":"/works/the-true-story-of-my-life/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"His story 'The Nightingale' was inspired by the singer Jenny Lind, who became known as the 'Swedish Nightingale'.","source":{"title":"Hans Christian Andersen (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Christian_Andersen"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Christian_Andersen","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"marguerite-de-angeli","name":"Marguerite de Angeli","url":"/great-lives/marguerite-de-angeli/","dates":"1889–1987","born":1889,"died":1987,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets","artists-composers-architects"],"knownFor":"American writer and illustrator of children's books, author of the Newbery Medal winner The Door in the Wall.","bio":"Marguerite Lofft was born in 1889 in Lapeer, Michigan, one of six children of a photographer and illustrator. In 1902 the family moved to West Philadelphia. At fifteen she began singing professionally as a contralto in a church choir, leaving high school for musical training. In 1910 she married John Dailey de Angeli, a violinist, and they had six children. While living in Collingswood, New Jersey, she began to study drawing in 1921, and she soon illustrated a Sunday School paper, magazines and books by other authors. Her first book of her own, Ted and Nina Go to the Grocery Store, appeared in 1935. Many of her books, illustrated with her own pictures, portray children of different communities in Pennsylvania, such as the Amish in Henner's Lydia and Yonie Wondernose. The Door in the Wall (1949), about a boy in medieval England who loses the use of his legs and learns patience and courage, won the Newbery Medal in 1950. She wrote and illustrated twenty-eight books. Her autobiography, Butter at the Old Price, appeared in 1971. She died in Philadelphia in 1987, aged 98.","keyDates":[{"date":"1889","event":"Born in Lapeer, Michigan"},{"date":"1910","event":"Marries John Dailey de Angeli"},{"date":"1935","event":"First book published"},{"date":"1949","event":"The Door in the Wall published"},{"date":"1950","event":"Newbery Medal"},{"date":"1987","event":"Dies in Philadelphia"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Marguerite de Angeli","relatedWorks":["the-door-in-the-wall"],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"library","work":"the-door-in-the-wall","url":"/works/the-door-in-the-wall/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented; as a girl she sang in a Presbyterian church choir.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marguerite_de_Angeli","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"fra-angelico","name":"Fra Angelico","url":"/great-lives/fra-angelico/","dates":"c. 1395–1455","born":1395,"died":1455,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["artists-composers-architects","saints-reformers"],"knownFor":"Dominican friar and painter of luminous religious frescoes at San Marco in Florence.","bio":"Guido di Pietro was born in the Mugello valley near Florence and trained as a painter. Around 1420 he joined the Dominican order at Fiesole and took the name Fra Giovanni. He remained both a friar and a working artist all his life, and after his death he came to be called Fra Angelico, the angelic brother. His altarpieces combine the bright gold and colors of earlier painting with the new Renaissance interest in perspective and natural light. In the 1430s and 1440s, when the Medici family paid to rebuild the friary of San Marco in Florence, he and his assistants painted frescoes throughout it, including a simple painting for each friar's cell to aid prayer, and the famous Annunciation at the top of the stairs. Pope Eugene IV and later Pope Nicholas V called him to Rome, where he decorated the pope's private chapel in the Vatican with scenes from the lives of Saints Stephen and Lawrence. He died in Rome in 1455 and was buried in the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva. Pope John Paul II beatified him in 1982.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 1420","event":"Joins the Dominican order"},{"date":"c. 1440–1445","event":"Frescoes at San Marco, Florence"},{"date":"1447–1449","event":"Paints the Niccoline Chapel in the Vatican"},{"date":"1455","event":"Dies in Rome"},{"date":"1982","event":"Beatified"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["vasari-lives-of-the-artists"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"vasari-lives-of-the-artists","url":"/works/vasari-lives-of-the-artists/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"An Italian Dominican friar who painted religious subjects; the Catholic Church calls him Blessed (Beato Angelico).","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fra_Angelico","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"tamim-ansary","name":"Tamim Ansary","url":"/great-lives/tamim-ansary/","dates":"born 1948","born":1948,"died":null,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Afghan-American author of Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes and the memoir West of Kabul, East of New York.","bio":"Tamim Ansary was born in Kabul, Afghanistan, in 1948 and grew up there, before moving to the United States as a high school student. He finished school at the Colorado Rocky Mountain School and then attended Reed College in Portland, Oregon. He became a writer and was for a time a columnist for the Encarta encyclopedia website. He became widely known in 2001, when an e-mail he wrote denouncing the Taliban and answering calls to bomb Afghanistan was circulated widely. His memoir West of Kabul, East of New York describes growing up between two cultures, and in 2008 it was San Francisco's One City One Book selection. Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes (2009) tells world history as it looked from the Muslim world and won a Northern California Book Award. He also wrote Games Without Rules (2012), a history of Afghanistan and The Invention of Yesterday (2019). For over two decades he moderated the San Francisco Writers Workshop. He lives in San Francisco with his wife and has two daughters.","keyDates":[{"date":"1948","event":"Born in Kabul, Afghanistan"},{"date":"2001","event":"His e-mail about Afghanistan circulates widely"},{"date":"2009","event":"Destiny Disrupted published"},{"date":"2012","event":"Games Without Rules published"},{"date":"2019","event":"The Invention of Yesterday published"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Tamim Ansary","relatedWorks":["ansary-destiny-disrupted"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"ansary-destiny-disrupted","url":"/works/ansary-destiny-disrupted/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented; he writes on Afghan and Muslim history.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamim_Ansary","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"anselm-of-canterbury","name":"Anselm of Canterbury","url":"/great-lives/anselm-of-canterbury/","dates":"c. 1033–1109","born":1033,"died":1109,"era":"medieval","categories":["theologians-church-fathers","philosophers"],"knownFor":"Monk, archbishop and philosopher of faith seeking understanding.","bio":"Anselm was born in Aosta, in northern Italy. After quarreling with his father, he crossed the Alps and came to the abbey of Bec in Normandy to study with the famous teacher Lanfranc, and became a monk there in 1060. He was later prior and then abbot of Bec. Anselm described his work as faith seeking understanding: starting from belief, he tried to understand it by reason. In the Proslogion he set out what is now called the ontological argument, that God is that than which nothing greater can be conceived, and that such a being must exist in reality, not only in the mind. In Why God Became Man he explained the atonement as Christ making satisfaction for human sin. In 1093 he was made archbishop of Canterbury, reluctantly, by King William II. He quarreled with William and later Henry I over the rights of the Church, especially over who should invest bishops, and was twice exiled. He also opposed the slave trade in England at a council in 1102. He died in 1109.","keyDates":[{"date":"1060","event":"Becomes a monk at Bec"},{"date":"1078","event":"Abbot of Bec; Proslogion"},{"date":"1093","event":"Archbishop of Canterbury"},{"date":"1098","event":"Why God Became Man"},{"date":"1109","event":"Dies at Canterbury"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Anselm of Canterbury","relatedWorks":["anselm-proslogion"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"anselm-proslogion","url":"/works/anselm-proslogion/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Christian philosopher and theologian, Archbishop of Canterbury; venerated as Saint Anselm.","source":"https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/anselm/","sourceName":"Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy","documented":true},"furtherReading":[{"series":"Very Short Introductions","title":"Anselm: A Very Short Introduction","author":"Thomas Williams","publisher":"Oxford University Press","year":2022,"isbn13":"9780192897817","url":"https://bookshop.org/a/130650/9780192897817"}],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"susan-b-anthony","name":"Susan B. Anthony","url":"/great-lives/susan-b-anthony/","dates":"1820–1906","born":1820,"died":1906,"era":"19th-century","categories":["saints-reformers","statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"Leader of the campaign for women's right to vote in the United States.","bio":"Susan Brownell Anthony was born in Massachusetts into a Quaker family that believed in equality and plain living. She worked as a teacher and became active in the temperance movement against alcohol and in the movement to abolish slavery. In 1851 she met Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and the two became lifelong partners in reform: Stanton was the better writer, Anthony the tireless organizer. Anthony collected petitions, gave thousands of speeches, and traveled across the country by train and wagon. After the Civil War she helped found the National Woman Suffrage Association. In 1872 she voted in the presidential election in Rochester, New York, was arrested, and was fined one hundred dollars; she refused to pay. She also pressed for women's right to own property and keep their own wages. She never married. She died in 1906, fourteen years before the Nineteenth Amendment gave American women the vote; it was often called the Susan B. Anthony Amendment. In 1979 she became the first real woman pictured on a circulating U.S. coin.","keyDates":[{"date":"1851","event":"Meets Elizabeth Cady Stanton"},{"date":"1869","event":"Co-founds the National Woman Suffrage Association"},{"date":"1872","event":"Arrested for voting"},{"date":"1906","event":"Dies in Rochester"},{"date":"1920","event":"Nineteenth Amendment ratified"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"book","title":"Who Was Susan B. Anthony?","author":"Pamela Pollack","isbn13":"9780448479637","publisher":"Paperback","year":2014,"format":"paperback"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Daughter of a liberal Quaker; she was educated at a Friends' boarding school.","source":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Appletons%27_Cyclop%C3%A6dia_of_American_Biography/Anthony%2C_Susan_Brownell","sourceName":"Appletons' Cyclopaedia of American Biography (via Wikisource)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"apollodorus","name":"Apollodorus","url":"/great-lives/apollodorus/","dates":"1st or 2nd century AD (author unknown)","born":null,"died":200,"era":"ancient","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Unknown ancient author whose Library, a handbook of the Greek myths from the creation to Odysseus, has come down under the name Apollodorus.","bio":"Apollodorus is the name attached to the Library, or Bibliotheca, a handbook that retells the Greek myths from the beginning of the world to the death of Odysseus. Nothing is known about its author, and even his name is uncertain. Some manuscripts call the author Apollodorus, and for centuries readers took him to be Apollodorus of Athens, a scholar born about 180 BC who studied under Aristarchus and wrote on mythology. That identification is now known to be mistaken: the Library cites Castor of Rhodes, usually dated to the first century BC, so it must be later. Scholars generally date it to the first or second century AD and sometimes call its author Pseudo-Apollodorus. He gathered stories from Homer, Hesiod, the Athenian playwrights and other poets, arranged by family trees. Photius, patriarch of Constantinople, read the complete work in the ninth century. The main manuscripts break off in the story of Theseus, but two manuscripts discovered in the nineteenth century preserve a shortened version of the rest.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 180 BC","event":"Birth of Apollodorus of Athens, to whom the Library was long wrongly credited"},{"date":"1st–2nd century AD","event":"The Library is probably compiled (date uncertain)"},{"date":"9th century","event":"Photius, patriarch of Constantinople, reads and describes the complete work"},{"date":"12th century","event":"The Byzantine scholar John Tzetzes cites it often"},{"date":"1555","event":"First printed edition published in Rome"},{"date":"19th century","event":"Two manuscripts preserving a shortened form of the lost ending are discovered"}],"quotes":[{"text":"Sky was the first who ruled over the whole world.","work":"apollodorus-library","location":"Book I.1.1","verified":true}],"author":"Apollodorus (attributed)","relatedWorks":["apollodorus-library"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"apollodorus-library","url":"/works/apollodorus-library/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"The first printed edition of the Library was published in Rome in 1555.","source":{"title":"Bibliotheca (Apollodorus) (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bibliotheca_(Apollodorus)"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented; the author is unknown.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollodorus","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["The author's identity is unknown; the name Apollodorus comes from the manuscripts, and the 1st-2nd century AD date is a scholarly estimate. The died value 200 is a placeholder used only for ordering. The wikipedia link points to the article on the Bibliotheca, since there is no article on its author."]},{"slug":"apollonius-of-rhodes","name":"Apollonius of Rhodes","url":"/great-lives/apollonius-of-rhodes/","dates":"3rd century BC","born":-295,"died":-215,"era":"ancient","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Greek poet and scholar of Alexandria, author of the Argonautica, the epic of Jason and the quest for the Golden Fleece.","bio":"Apollonius of Rhodes was a Greek poet and scholar who lived in the third century BC. Despite his name, he was probably born in Alexandria or nearby in Egypt, then ruled by the Ptolemies. Ancient biographies say he served as head of the great Library of Alexandria and later moved to the island of Rhodes, which gave him his surname, but details of his life are uncertain and the accounts sometimes disagree. His one surviving work is the Argonautica, an epic poem in four books that tells the story of Jason and the Argonauts: their voyage on the ship Argo to Colchis at the edge of the Black Sea, the winning of the Golden Fleece with the help of the princess Medea, and the long journey home. Written in the style of Homer but in a more learned and personal manner, it gave special attention to Medea's love and inner conflict, and it influenced later Roman poets, including Virgil in the Aeneid.","keyDates":[{"date":"3rd century BC","event":"Lifetime in Ptolemaic Egypt and Rhodes"},{"date":"3rd century BC","event":"Head of the Library of Alexandria, according to ancient sources"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Apollonius of Rhodes","relatedWorks":["argonautica"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"argonautica","url":"/works/argonautica/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented beyond the Greek religion of his time.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollonius_of_Rhodes","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["His life is known only from brief and partly conflicting ancient biographies."]},{"slug":"apuleius","name":"Apuleius","url":"/great-lives/apuleius/","dates":"c. 124–after 170","born":124,"died":170,"era":"ancient","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Latin writer and philosopher from North Africa, author of the Metamorphoses, also called The Golden Ass.","bio":"Apuleius was born around 124 in Madauros, a Roman town in the province of Africa, in present-day Algeria. His father was a wealthy local official, and Apuleius studied at Carthage and then at Athens, where he learned Platonic philosophy, and he traveled widely. At Oea (present-day Tripoli) he married a wealthy widow, Pudentilla, and her relatives accused him of having won her by magic. He defended himself in court in a speech that survives as the Apology, and he was apparently acquitted. He later lived at Carthage as a famous public speaker and writer on Platonic philosophy. His best-known work is the Metamorphoses, also known as The Golden Ass, the only Latin novel to survive complete. It tells how a young man named Lucius is accidentally turned into a donkey and has many adventures before the goddess Isis restores him. It includes the story of Cupid and Psyche. The date of his death is unknown.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 124","event":"Born in Madauros, North Africa"},{"date":"c. 158","event":"Defends himself against a charge of magic"},{"date":"after 170","event":"Dies, probably at Carthage"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Apuleius","relatedWorks":["the-golden-ass"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-golden-ass","url":"/works/the-golden-ass/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented; his novel The Golden Ass ends with its hero's initiation into the cult of the goddess Isis.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apuleius","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["His dates are approximate."]},{"slug":"thomas-aquinas","name":"Thomas Aquinas","url":"/great-lives/thomas-aquinas/","dates":"1225–1274","born":1225,"died":1274,"era":"medieval","categories":["theologians-church-fathers","philosophers"],"knownFor":"Dominican friar and theologian who joined Aristotle's philosophy with Christian theology.","bio":"Thomas Aquinas was born into a noble family at Roccasecca, near Naples. His family sent him to the great Benedictine abbey of Monte Cassino, hoping he would become its abbot, but as a young man he chose instead to join the Dominicans, a new order of preaching friars. His brothers were so opposed that they held him captive at the family castle for about a year. Released, he studied in Paris and Cologne under Albert the Great. Quiet and heavily built, he was nicknamed the Dumb Ox by fellow students; Albert is said to have replied that this ox would one day bellow so loudly the world would hear. He taught at the University of Paris and in Italy, writing commentaries on Aristotle and on Scripture, the Summa contra Gentiles, and the vast Summa Theologica, which argues that faith and reason do not contradict each other. Late in 1273, after an experience during Mass, he stopped writing, saying all he had written seemed like straw. He died in 1274 and was declared a saint in 1323.","keyDates":[{"date":"1225","event":"Born at Roccasecca"},{"date":"1244","event":"Joins the Dominicans"},{"date":"1256","event":"Becomes master of theology in Paris"},{"date":"1265–1273","event":"Writes the Summa Theologica"},{"date":"1274","event":"Dies at Fossanova"},{"date":"1323","event":"Canonized"}],"quotes":[{"text":"grace does not destroy nature but perfects it","work":"summa-theologica","location":"I, Q. 1, Art. 8, Reply Obj. 2","verified":true}],"author":"Thomas Aquinas","relatedWorks":["summa-theologica","de-regno"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"summa-theologica","url":"/works/summa-theologica/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"de-regno","url":"/works/de-regno/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Dominican priest and theologian who held the Dominican chair of theology in Paris.","source":"https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aquinas/","sourceName":"Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy","documented":true},"furtherReading":[{"series":"Very Short Introductions","title":"Thomas Aquinas: A Very Short Introduction","author":"Fergus Kerr","publisher":"Oxford University Press","year":2009,"isbn13":"9780199556649","url":"https://bookshop.org/a/130650/9780199556649"}],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"archimedes","name":"Archimedes","url":"/great-lives/archimedes/","dates":"c. 287–212 BC","born":-287,"died":-212,"era":"ancient","categories":["scientists-mathematicians","inventors"],"knownFor":"Greek mathematician and engineer of Syracuse, famous for buoyancy, levers and war machines.","bio":"Archimedes lived in Syracuse, a Greek city on the island of Sicily, and may have studied in Alexandria in Egypt. He was the greatest mathematician of the ancient world. He found ways to calculate the areas and volumes of curved shapes, estimated the value of pi, and was so proud of proving that a sphere has two-thirds the volume of the cylinder around it that he asked for this figure to be carved on his tomb. He explained the law of the lever, reportedly saying that with a place to stand he could move the Earth, and the principle of buoyancy; a later story says he discovered it in his bath and ran through the streets shouting eureka, meaning I have found it. He is credited with a water-raising screw still used today. When the Romans besieged Syracuse, his machines, including cranes that lifted ships out of the water, held them off for about two years. When the city fell in 212 BC, he was killed by a Roman soldier, by tradition while working on a geometry problem.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 287 BC","event":"Born in Syracuse"},{"date":"214–212 BC","event":"Defends Syracuse against Rome"},{"date":"212 BC","event":"Killed when Syracuse falls"}],"quotes":[{"text":"it occurred to me that the surface of a sphere is four times as great as its largest circle","work":"archimedes-the-method","location":"Proposition II","verified":true}],"author":"Archimedes","relatedWorks":["archimedes-the-method","plutarch-lives"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"archimedes-the-method","url":"/works/archimedes-the-method/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"plutarch-lives","url":"/works/plutarch-lives/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"According to the Roman writer Vitruvius, Archimedes noticed the water rising as he stepped into a bath, realised how to test a golden crown, and ran into the street shouting 'Eureka!' ('I have found it!').","source":{"title":"Archimedes (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedes"}},{"text":"A crater and a mountain range on the Moon are named after him.","source":{"title":"Archimedes (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedes"}}],"records":[{"text":"He was one of the first to use mathematics to explain physical things, such as how objects float.","source":{"title":"Archimedes (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedes"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedes","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"hannah-arendt","name":"Hannah Arendt","url":"/great-lives/hannah-arendt/","dates":"1906–1975","born":1906,"died":1975,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["philosophers"],"knownFor":"German-born American political philosopher, author of The Origins of Totalitarianism and Eichmann in Jerusalem.","bio":"Hannah Arendt was born in 1906 in Linden, near Hanover, Germany, into a secular Jewish family, and grew up in Königsberg. She studied philosophy at Marburg with Martin Heidegger and at Heidelberg with Karl Jaspers, who supervised her doctoral dissertation on Saint Augustine's idea of love. After the Nazis came to power in 1933 she was briefly arrested and fled to Paris, where she worked with Jewish refugee organizations. In 1940 she was interned in a French camp but escaped, and in 1941 she reached New York with her husband, Heinrich Blücher. She became an American citizen in 1951, the same year she published The Origins of Totalitarianism, which traced the roots of Nazism and Stalinism. The Human Condition (1958) examined labor, work and action. Reporting for The New Yorker on the 1961 trial in Jerusalem of the Nazi official Adolf Eichmann, she wrote Eichmann in Jerusalem, with its controversial phrase 'the banality of evil'. She taught at several universities, including the New School in New York, where she died in 1975.","keyDates":[{"date":"1906","event":"Born near Hanover, Germany"},{"date":"1933","event":"Flees Nazi Germany"},{"date":"1941","event":"Arrives in New York"},{"date":"1951","event":"The Origins of Totalitarianism; becomes a U.S. citizen"},{"date":"1958","event":"The Human Condition"},{"date":"1963","event":"Eichmann in Jerusalem"},{"date":"1975","event":"Dies in New York"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Hannah Arendt","relatedWorks":["arendt-the-origins-of-totalitarianism"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"arendt-the-origins-of-totalitarianism","url":"/works/arendt-the-origins-of-totalitarianism/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"As a child she learned ancient Greek, and as a teenager she started a reading group to study classical literature.","source":{"title":"Hannah Arendt (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannah_Arendt"}}],"records":[{"text":"In 1959 she became the first woman appointed a full professor at Princeton University.","source":{"title":"Hannah Arendt (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannah_Arendt"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Born into a German-Jewish family; she worked for Jewish refugee organizations in Paris.","source":"https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/arendt/","sourceName":"Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy","documented":true},"furtherReading":[{"series":"Very Short Introductions","title":"Hannah Arendt: A Very Short Introduction","author":"Dana Villa","publisher":"Oxford University Press","year":2023,"isbn13":"9780198806981","url":"https://bookshop.org/a/130650/9780198806981"}],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"aristophanes","name":"Aristophanes","url":"/great-lives/aristophanes/","dates":"c. 446–c. 386 BC","born":-446,"died":-386,"era":"ancient","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Comic playwright of classical Athens, author of The Clouds, The Birds and Lysistrata.","bio":"Aristophanes was born around 446 BC in Athens and became the most famous writer of Old Comedy, the boisterous comic drama staged at the city's festivals in honor of Dionysus. His first play was produced in 427 BC, and he wrote about forty, of which eleven survive complete, more than of any other ancient comic writer. His plays mix fantasy, songs, jokes and sharp satire of public figures. The Clouds (423 BC) mocks the philosopher Socrates as a teacher of trickery, and Plato later suggested in his Apology that the play helped turn Athenians against Socrates. Much of his work was written during the long Peloponnesian War with Sparta, and several plays, including The Acharnians, Peace and Lysistrata (411 BC), in which the women of Greece refuse their husbands until they make peace, deal with the war. Other plays include The Wasps, The Birds and The Frogs. He died around 386 BC.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 446 BC","event":"Born in Athens"},{"date":"427 BC","event":"First play produced"},{"date":"423 BC","event":"The Clouds staged"},{"date":"411 BC","event":"Lysistrata staged"},{"date":"405 BC","event":"The Frogs wins first prize"},{"date":"c. 386 BC","event":"Dies"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Aristophanes","relatedWorks":["lysistrata-and-other-plays","aristophanes-eleven-comedies"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"lysistrata-and-other-plays","url":"/works/lysistrata-and-other-plays/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"aristophanes-eleven-comedies","url":"/works/aristophanes-eleven-comedies/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented beyond the Greek religion of Athens, at whose religious festivals his plays were performed.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristophanes","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"aristotle","name":"Aristotle","url":"/great-lives/aristotle/","dates":"384–322 BC","born":-384,"died":-322,"era":"ancient","categories":["philosophers","scientists-mathematicians"],"knownFor":"Greek philosopher and scientist, tutor of Alexander, whose works shaped learning for two thousand years.","bio":"Aristotle was born at Stagira in northern Greece, the son of a physician to the king of Macedon. At seventeen he went to Athens to study at Plato's Academy and stayed for twenty years. After Plato's death he lived on the coast of Asia Minor and on the island of Lesbos, where he studied sea creatures and animals with great care. In 343 BC King Philip II invited him to tutor his son Alexander. Returning to Athens, he founded his own school, the Lyceum, where he taught while walking in its covered walkways. Aristotle wrote or lectured on almost every subject: logic, physics, biology, the soul, ethics, politics, rhetoric and poetry. He taught that every living thing has a purpose, that virtue is a settled habit found between extremes, and that human beings are by nature political animals. After Alexander's death in 323 BC, anti-Macedonian feeling in Athens led him to leave the city. He died the next year. Medieval Muslim, Jewish and Christian thinkers called him simply the Philosopher.","keyDates":[{"date":"384 BC","event":"Born at Stagira"},{"date":"367 BC","event":"Enters Plato's Academy"},{"date":"343 BC","event":"Becomes tutor to Alexander"},{"date":"335 BC","event":"Founds the Lyceum in Athens"},{"date":"322 BC","event":"Dies at Chalcis"}],"quotes":[{"text":"for as it is not one swallow or one fine day that makes a spring, so it is not one day or a short time that makes a man blessed and happy","work":"the-nicomachean-ethics","location":"Book I, Chapter VII","verified":true},{"text":"A whole is that which has a beginning, a middle, and an end.","work":"aristotle-poetics","location":"Chapter VII","verified":true}],"author":"Aristotle","relatedWorks":["the-nicomachean-ethics","politics","aristotle-poetics","de-anima","aristotle-posterior-analytics-and-physics","aristotle-categories","aristotle-organon-logic","aristotle-metaphysics","aristotle-on-the-heavens","aristotle-on-generation-and-corruption","aristotle-meteorology","aristotle-parva-naturalia","aristotle-history-of-animals","aristotle-parts-of-animals","aristotle-movement-and-progression-of-animals","aristotle-generation-of-animals","aristotle-rhetoric"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-nicomachean-ethics","url":"/works/the-nicomachean-ethics/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"politics","url":"/works/politics/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"aristotle-poetics","url":"/works/aristotle-poetics/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"aristotle-posterior-analytics-and-physics","url":"/works/aristotle-posterior-analytics-and-physics/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"de-anima","url":"/works/de-anima/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"book","title":"Aristotle for Everybody","author":"Mortimer J. Adler","isbn13":"9781439104910","publisher":"Simon & Schuster, Limited","year":1997,"format":""},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"aristotle-categories","url":"/works/aristotle-categories/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"aristotle-organon-logic","url":"/works/aristotle-organon-logic/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"aristotle-metaphysics","url":"/works/aristotle-metaphysics/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"aristotle-on-the-heavens","url":"/works/aristotle-on-the-heavens/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"aristotle-on-generation-and-corruption","url":"/works/aristotle-on-generation-and-corruption/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"aristotle-meteorology","url":"/works/aristotle-meteorology/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"aristotle-parva-naturalia","url":"/works/aristotle-parva-naturalia/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"aristotle-history-of-animals","url":"/works/aristotle-history-of-animals/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"aristotle-parts-of-animals","url":"/works/aristotle-parts-of-animals/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"aristotle-movement-and-progression-of-animals","url":"/works/aristotle-movement-and-progression-of-animals/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"aristotle-generation-of-animals","url":"/works/aristotle-generation-of-animals/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"aristotle-rhetoric","url":"/works/aristotle-rhetoric/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"His teacher Plato nicknamed him 'the mind of the school'.","source":{"title":"Aristotle (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristotle"}},{"text":"A crater on the Moon is named Aristoteles after him.","source":{"title":"Aristotle (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristotle"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented beyond the Greek religion of his time.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristotle","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[{"series":"Very Short Introductions","title":"Aristotle: A Very Short Introduction","author":"Jonathan Barnes","publisher":"Oxford University Press","year":2000,"isbn13":"9780192854087","url":"https://bookshop.org/a/130650/9780192854087"}],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"ashoka","name":"Ashoka","url":"/great-lives/ashoka/","dates":"c. 304–232 BC","born":-304,"died":-232,"era":"ancient","categories":["kings-queens-emperors"],"knownFor":"Indian emperor who turned from conquest to Buddhist teaching after the bloody Kalinga war.","bio":"Ashoka was the grandson of Chandragupta Maurya, founder of the Maurya Empire, which covered most of the Indian subcontinent. He became emperor around 268 BC after a struggle among the royal princes. About eight years into his reign he conquered Kalinga, a kingdom on India's east coast. In his own words, carved later on rock, a hundred and fifty thousand people were carried away, a hundred thousand were killed, and many times that number died. Ashoka wrote that he felt deep remorse. He became a devoted follower of Buddhism and announced a policy he called dhamma: respect for parents and teachers, kindness to servants and animals, honesty, and tolerance among religious groups. He had his edicts carved on rocks and tall polished stone pillars throughout the empire, many of which survive, along with wells, rest houses and hospitals for people and animals. He sent missionaries abroad, including, by tradition, his son Mahinda to Sri Lanka. The lion capital from one of his pillars is now the national emblem of India.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 268 BC","event":"Becomes Maurya emperor"},{"date":"c. 261 BC","event":"Conquers Kalinga"},{"date":"after 260 BC","event":"Issues rock and pillar edicts"},{"date":"c. 232 BC","event":"Dies"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["the-arthashastra"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-arthashastra","url":"/works/the-arthashastra/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"The national emblem of India today is based on the Lion Capital, a carved pillar top that Ashoka set up.","source":{"title":"Ashoka (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashoka"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Indian emperor who adopted Buddhism and vigorously patronized it during his reign.","source":"https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ashoka","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["Dates of his reign are approximate."]},{"slug":"athanasius","name":"Athanasius of Alexandria","url":"/great-lives/athanasius/","dates":"c. 296–373","born":296,"died":373,"era":"ancient","categories":["theologians-church-fathers"],"knownFor":"Bishop of Alexandria who defended the full divinity of Christ against Arianism.","bio":"Athanasius was born in Alexandria, Egypt, and as a young deacon accompanied his bishop, Alexander, to the Council of Nicaea in 325. The council had been called to settle the teaching of Arius, a priest who said that the Son of God was a created being, and it declared that the Son is of one substance with the Father. In 328 Athanasius became bishop of Alexandria, and he spent the next forty-five years defending the Nicene faith. Emperors who favored the Arian side sent him into exile five times, for a total of about seventeen years; he lived in Trier, in Rome, and hidden among the monks of the Egyptian desert. His opponents gave rise to the saying Athanasius against the world. He wrote On the Incarnation, explaining why God became man, and the Life of Antony, about the desert hermit, which helped spread monasticism across the Christian world. His Easter letter of 367 is the earliest known list of the twenty-seven books of the New Testament exactly as accepted today. He died in Alexandria in 373.","keyDates":[{"date":"325","event":"Attends the Council of Nicaea"},{"date":"328","event":"Becomes bishop of Alexandria"},{"date":"335","event":"First of five exiles"},{"date":"c. 360","event":"Writes the Life of Antony"},{"date":"367","event":"Easter letter lists the New Testament books"},{"date":"373","event":"Dies in Alexandria"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Athanasius of Alexandria","relatedWorks":["early-christian-lives","the-history-of-the-church","athanasius-on-the-incarnation"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"athanasius-on-the-incarnation","url":"/works/athanasius-on-the-incarnation/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"early-christian-lives","url":"/works/early-christian-lives/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-history-of-the-church","url":"/works/the-history-of-the-church/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Christian bishop of Alexandria, named a Doctor of the Church in the Roman Catholic and Orthodox traditions.","source":"https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Athanasius","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"richard-and-florence-atwater","name":"Richard and Florence Atwater","url":"/great-lives/richard-and-florence-atwater/","dates":"1892–1948 and 1896–1979","born":1892,"died":1948,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Chicago husband and wife, a classics teacher and a French teacher, who together wrote the Newbery Honor book Mr. Popper's Penguins (1938).","bio":"Richard and Florence Atwater were a Chicago husband and wife who together wrote one of America's best-loved funny books for children. Richard Tupper Atwater, born in 1892, taught classical Greek at the University of Chicago and wrote for several Chicago newspapers. He also translated the Secret History of the Byzantine historian Procopius into English. Florence Carroll, born in Chicago in 1896, studied French literature at the University of Chicago, where Richard was one of her teachers. They married in 1921 and had two children. In 1932 the family saw a documentary film about Admiral Richard E. Byrd's Antarctic expedition, and it inspired Richard to write a comic story. In 1934 a stroke left him unable to speak or write. Florence supported the family by teaching high school French, English and Latin and by writing for magazines. She revised her husband's manuscript, and Little, Brown published Mr. Popper's Penguins in 1938. It won a Newbery Honor in 1939 and has stayed in print ever since. Richard died in 1948, and Florence in 1979.","keyDates":[{"date":"1892","event":"Richard Tupper Atwater born"},{"date":"1896","event":"Florence Carroll born in Chicago"},{"date":"1921","event":"Richard and Florence marry"},{"date":"1927","event":"Richard's English translation of Procopius's Secret History published"},{"date":"1932","event":"The family sees a documentary about Byrd's Antarctic expedition"},{"date":"1934","event":"A stroke leaves Richard unable to speak or write"},{"date":"1938","event":"Mr. Popper's Penguins published by Little, Brown"},{"date":"1939","event":"The book wins a Newbery Honor"},{"date":"1948","event":"Richard dies"},{"date":"1979","event":"Florence dies"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Richard and Florence Atwater","relatedWorks":["mr-poppers-penguins"],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"library","work":"mr-poppers-penguins","url":"/works/mr-poppers-penguins/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"Richard's English translation of Procopius's Secret History was first printed in 1927 in a limited edition of only 760 copies.","source":{"title":"Richard and Florence Atwater (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_and_Florence_Atwater"}},{"text":"Before the book was accepted, Florence sent her husband's original version to two publishers without success, then rewrote parts of it herself.","source":{"title":"Richard and Florence Atwater (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_and_Florence_Atwater"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_and_Florence_Atwater","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"augustine-of-hippo","name":"Augustine of Hippo","url":"/great-lives/augustine-of-hippo/","dates":"354–430","born":354,"died":430,"era":"ancient","categories":["theologians-church-fathers"],"knownFor":"North African bishop and theologian, author of the Confessions and City of God.","bio":"Augustine was born at Thagaste in Roman North Africa, now Algeria, to a pagan father and a Christian mother, Monica. A brilliant student, he became a teacher of rhetoric in Carthage, Rome and Milan. For years he followed the Manichaean religion and lived with a woman to whom he was not married, with whom he had a son, Adeodatus. In Milan he heard the sermons of Bishop Ambrose and read Neoplatonist philosophy. In 386, in a garden, he heard a child's voice saying take up and read, opened the letters of Paul, and resolved to become a Christian. Ambrose baptized him at Easter 387. Returning to Africa, he was ordained a priest and in 395 became bishop of Hippo, a port town, where he preached and wrote for over thirty years. His Confessions, a prayer to God telling the story of his life, is often called the first autobiography. After the sack of Rome in 410 he wrote City of God. He died in 430 while the Vandals besieged Hippo.","keyDates":[{"date":"354","event":"Born at Thagaste"},{"date":"386","event":"Conversion in a garden in Milan"},{"date":"387","event":"Baptized by Ambrose"},{"date":"395","event":"Becomes bishop of Hippo"},{"date":"c. 397–400","event":"Writes the Confessions"},{"date":"430","event":"Dies during the siege of Hippo"}],"quotes":[{"text":"Thou madest us for Thyself, and our heart is restless, until it repose in Thee","work":"confessions","location":"Book I.1","verified":true},{"text":"Take up and read; Take up and read","work":"confessions","location":"Book VIII.12","verified":true}],"author":"Augustine of Hippo","relatedWorks":["confessions","city-of-god","homilies-on-the-gospel-of-john","augustine-on-christian-doctrine"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"confessions","url":"/works/confessions/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"city-of-god","url":"/works/city-of-god/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"homilies-on-the-gospel-of-john","url":"/works/homilies-on-the-gospel-of-john/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"augustine-on-christian-doctrine","url":"/works/augustine-on-christian-doctrine/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Christian philosopher and bishop of Hippo; a saint of the Catholic Church.","source":"https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/augustine/","sourceName":"Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy","documented":true},"furtherReading":[{"series":"Very Short Introductions","title":"Augustine: A Very Short Introduction","author":"Henry Chadwick","publisher":"Oxford University Press","year":2001,"isbn13":"9780192854520","url":"https://bookshop.org/a/130650/9780192854520"}],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"augustus","name":"Augustus","url":"/great-lives/augustus/","dates":"63 BC–AD 14","born":-63,"died":14,"era":"ancient","categories":["kings-queens-emperors","statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"First Roman emperor, who ended a century of civil wars and began the long Roman peace.","bio":"Augustus was born Gaius Octavius, the great-nephew of Julius Caesar, who adopted him in his will. When Caesar was murdered in 44 BC, the eighteen-year-old Octavian, as he was then called, raised an army and joined Mark Antony and Lepidus to defeat Caesar's killers. Later he and Antony became rivals. In 31 BC Octavian's fleet, commanded by his friend Agrippa, defeated Antony and Cleopatra at the naval battle of Actium. In 27 BC the Senate gave him the name Augustus, meaning revered. He kept the old offices of the Republic but held the real power, ruling as first citizen for over forty years. He reorganized the army and the provinces, built roads, temples and aqueducts, and claimed to have found Rome a city of brick and left it a city of marble. His reign began the Pax Romana, about two centuries of relative peace. The Gospel of Luke records that Jesus was born during his reign. He died in AD 14 and was succeeded by his stepson Tiberius.","keyDates":[{"date":"63 BC","event":"Born in Rome"},{"date":"31 BC","event":"Wins the battle of Actium"},{"date":"27 BC","event":"Receives the title Augustus"},{"date":"AD 14","event":"Dies at Nola"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["the-twelve-caesars","goldsworthy-pax-romana","the-annals-of-imperial-rome"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-twelve-caesars","url":"/works/the-twelve-caesars/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"goldsworthy-pax-romana","url":"/works/goldsworthy-pax-romana/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"book","title":"Augustus: First Emperor of Rome","author":"Adrian Goldsworthy","isbn13":"9780300216660","publisher":"Yale University Press","year":2015,"format":""}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[{"text":"In 43 BC he became the youngest consul ever elected in Rome.","source":{"title":"Augustus (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustus"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Practiced traditional Roman religion and was a member of the board of priests (pontifices).","source":"https://www.britannica.com/biography/Augustus-Roman-emperor","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"jane-austen","name":"Jane Austen","url":"/great-lives/jane-austen/","dates":"1775–1817","born":1775,"died":1817,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"English novelist, author of Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility and Emma.","bio":"Jane Austen was born in 1775 in the village of Steventon, Hampshire, where her father, George Austen, was the rector; she was the seventh of eight children. She was educated mainly at home, read widely in her father's library, and as a girl wrote comic stories and plays for her family's entertainment, such as Love and Freindship, whose misspelling is her own. In 1801 the family moved to Bath, and after her father's death in 1805 Jane, her mother and her sister Cassandra moved several times before settling in 1809 in a cottage in Chawton, Hampshire, provided by her brother Edward. There she revised and published her novels, which appeared anonymously: Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814) and Emma (1815). They portray the lives, courtships and manners of the English gentry with wit and irony. Austen never married. She fell ill in 1816 and died in Winchester in 1817, aged 41. Northanger Abbey and Persuasion were published after her death, when her brother Henry revealed her name to readers.","keyDates":[{"date":"1775","event":"Born in Steventon, Hampshire"},{"date":"1801","event":"Family moves to Bath"},{"date":"1809","event":"Settles at Chawton"},{"date":"1811","event":"Sense and Sensibility published"},{"date":"1813","event":"Pride and Prejudice published"},{"date":"1815","event":"Emma published"},{"date":"1817","event":"Dies in Winchester"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Jane Austen","relatedWorks":["pride-and-prejudice","sense-and-sensibility","northanger-abbey","mansfield-park","emma","persuasion","love-and-freindship"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"pride-and-prejudice","url":"/works/pride-and-prejudice/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"sense-and-sensibility","url":"/works/sense-and-sensibility/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"northanger-abbey","url":"/works/northanger-abbey/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"mansfield-park","url":"/works/mansfield-park/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"emma","url":"/works/emma/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"persuasion","url":"/works/persuasion/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"love-and-freindship","url":"/works/love-and-freindship/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"She read each of her novels aloud to her family while she was writing it.","source":{"title":"Jane Austen (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Austen"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[{"name":"Jane Austen’s House","note":"Jane Austen spent her last eight years at Chawton Cottage in Hampshire, where she wrote or revised all six of her novels. (Her childhood home, Steventon rectory, no longer stands.) Jane Austen’s House runs school visits and virtual learning sessions.","url":"https://janeaustens.house/learn/","urlLabel":"Jane Austen’s House — learn"}],"faith":{"note":"Daughter of an Anglican rector.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Austen","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[{"series":"Very Short Introductions","title":"Jane Austen: A Very Short Introduction","author":"Tom Keymer","publisher":"Oxford University Press","year":2022,"isbn13":"9780191038822","url":"https://bookshop.org/a/130650/9780191038822"}],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"paul-auster","name":"Paul Auster","url":"/great-lives/paul-auster/","dates":"1947–2024","born":1947,"died":2024,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American novelist and memoirist, author of The New York Trilogy.","bio":"Paul Auster was born in 1947 in Newark, New Jersey, to Jewish parents of Austrian descent, and grew up in South Orange and Newark. At fourteen, at a summer camp, he saw a boy beside him killed by lightning, an event he called the seminal experience of his life, which made him think about chance. He studied at Columbia University and began his career as a poet and translator. His memoir The Invention of Solitude (1982), written after his father's death, was followed by City of Glass, Ghosts and The Locked Room, published together as The New York Trilogy (1987); these playful detective stories, in which writers and investigators lose track of their own identities, made him famous. His other novels include Moon Palace, The Music of Chance, The Book of Illusions, The Brooklyn Follies and 4 3 2 1 (2017), which follows four possible lives of the same boy. He also wrote for film. His books have been translated into more than forty languages. He lived in Brooklyn and died there in 2024.","keyDates":[{"date":"1947","event":"Born in Newark, New Jersey"},{"date":"1982","event":"The Invention of Solitude published"},{"date":"1987","event":"The New York Trilogy published"},{"date":"1990","event":"The Music of Chance published"},{"date":"2017","event":"4 3 2 1 published"},{"date":"2024","event":"Dies in Brooklyn"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Paul Auster","relatedWorks":["the-new-york-trilogy"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-new-york-trilogy","url":"/works/the-new-york-trilogy/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Born to Jewish parents; his personal beliefs are not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Auster","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"avicenna","name":"Avicenna (Ibn Sina)","url":"/great-lives/avicenna/","dates":"c. 980–1037","born":980,"died":1037,"era":"medieval","categories":["physicians-medicine","philosophers"],"knownFor":"Persian physician and philosopher, author of the Canon of Medicine.","bio":"Abu Ali al-Husayn ibn Sina, known in Europe as Avicenna, was born near Bukhara, in present-day Uzbekistan. By his own account he had memorized the Quran by ten, mastered logic and mathematics as a teenager, and was practicing medicine at sixteen. He said he read Aristotle's Metaphysics forty times without understanding it until a commentary by al-Farabi made it clear. After curing the ruler of Bukhara, he was given access to the royal library. Political upheavals forced him to move from court to court across Persia, serving as physician and sometimes as minister, and he was once imprisoned. He wrote some 450 works. His Canon of Medicine, a vast encyclopedia, organized the medicine of Galen and Hippocrates with his own observations, describing contagious diseases, testing of drugs, and the use of quarantine. Translated into Latin in the twelfth century, it was a standard medical textbook in European universities for about six hundred years. His Book of Healing covered philosophy and science, and he argued for the existence of God as the necessary being. He died at Hamadan in 1037.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 980","event":"Born near Bukhara"},{"date":"c. 997","event":"Cures the ruler of Bukhara"},{"date":"c. 1025","event":"Completes the Canon of Medicine"},{"date":"1037","event":"Dies at Hamadan"},{"date":"12th century","event":"Canon translated into Latin"}],"quotes":[{"text":"Therefore in safeguarding the emotions the health of the mind and body are at the same time maintained.","work":"avicenna-canon-of-medicine-book-i","location":"Part 3, Thesis 1, para. 733","verified":true}],"author":"Ibn Sina (Avicenna)","relatedWorks":["avicenna-canon-of-medicine-book-i","galen-selected-works"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"avicenna-canon-of-medicine-book-i","url":"/works/avicenna-canon-of-medicine-book-i/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"A crater on the Moon is named Avicenna.","source":{"title":"Avicenna (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avicenna"}}],"records":[{"text":"He was the first known to make perfumed oils from flowers by steam distillation, producing essences such as rose oil.","source":{"title":"Avicenna (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avicenna"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"The preeminent philosopher and physician of the Islamic world.","source":"https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ibn-sina/","sourceName":"Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy","documented":true},"furtherReading":[{"series":"Very Short Introductions","title":"Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna): A Very Short Introduction","author":"Peter Adamson","publisher":"Oxford University Press","year":2023,"isbn13":null,"url":null}],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"mariano-azuela","name":"Mariano Azuela","url":"/great-lives/mariano-azuela/","dates":"1873–1952","born":1873,"died":1952,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets","physicians-medicine"],"knownFor":"Mexican novelist and physician, author of The Underdogs, the first great novel of the Mexican Revolution.","bio":"Mariano Azuela was born in 1873 in Lagos de Moreno, Jalisco, Mexico, the son of a rancher, and grew up on his father's farm, which later inspired the settings of many of his stories. At fourteen he entered a Catholic seminary but soon left, and he studied medicine in Guadalajara, receiving his degree in 1899. He practiced medicine in his hometown and in 1900 married Carmen Rivera. He wrote early novels about life under the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz. When the Mexican Revolution began in 1910, he supported Francisco Madero, and he later served as a field doctor with the forces of Julián Medina, a follower of Pancho Villa. His most famous novel, The Underdogs (Los de abajo, 1915), first published in installments in El Paso, Texas, follows a peasant, Demetrio Macías, who becomes a rebel leader and is swept along by the violence of the war. Azuela is considered the first of the 'novelists of the Revolution'. He later practiced medicine in Mexico City and wrote novels sharply criticizing politics after the Revolution. He died in Mexico City in 1952.","keyDates":[{"date":"1873","event":"Born in Lagos de Moreno, Jalisco"},{"date":"1899","event":"Receives his medical degree"},{"date":"1910","event":"Mexican Revolution begins"},{"date":"1915","event":"The Underdogs published"},{"date":"1952","event":"Dies in Mexico City"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Mariano Azuela","relatedWorks":["the-underdogs"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-underdogs","url":"/works/the-underdogs/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Briefly attended a Catholic seminary but abandoned religious studies.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariano_Azuela","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"charles-babbage","name":"Charles Babbage","url":"/great-lives/charles-babbage/","dates":"1791–1871","born":1791,"died":1871,"era":"19th-century","categories":["inventors","scientists-mathematicians"],"knownFor":"English mathematician who designed the first programmable mechanical computer.","bio":"Charles Babbage was born in London, the son of a banker, and studied mathematics at Cambridge, where he later held the Lucasian chair once held by Isaac Newton. Frustrated by errors in printed tables of numbers used by navigators and engineers, he designed a machine to calculate and print such tables automatically. With government funding he began building this Difference Engine in the 1820s, but disputes with his engineer and rising costs stopped the work. He then designed a far more ambitious machine, the Analytical Engine, which could be programmed with punched cards like those used in Jacquard looms. It had a store for numbers and a mill for calculating, much like the memory and processor of a modern computer. Ada Lovelace wrote notes explaining how it could be programmed. Neither engine was completed in his lifetime. Babbage also wrote on economics and factories, helped found the Royal Astronomical Society, and campaigned against street noise. He died in 1871. In 1991 the Science Museum in London built a working Difference Engine from his plans.","keyDates":[{"date":"1791","event":"Born in London"},{"date":"1822","event":"Proposes the Difference Engine"},{"date":"1828","event":"Becomes Lucasian Professor at Cambridge"},{"date":"1837","event":"Describes the Analytical Engine"},{"date":"1864","event":"Publishes his memoir"},{"date":"1871","event":"Dies in London"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Charles Babbage","relatedWorks":["passages-from-the-life-of-a-philosopher","notes-on-menabreas-sketch-of-the-analytical-engine"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"passages-from-the-life-of-a-philosopher","url":"/works/passages-from-the-life-of-a-philosopher/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"A crater on the Moon and Babbage Island in Western Australia are named after him.","source":{"title":"Charles Babbage (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Babbage"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Raised a Protestant; later in life he wrote on natural theology and valued Christianity chiefly for its moral teaching rather than speculative doctrine.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Babbage","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"johann-sebastian-bach","name":"Johann Sebastian Bach","url":"/great-lives/johann-sebastian-bach/","dates":"1685–1750","born":1685,"died":1750,"era":"18th-century","categories":["artists-composers-architects"],"knownFor":"German composer and organist of the St. Matthew Passion and the Brandenburg Concertos.","bio":"Johann Sebastian Bach was born in Eisenach, Germany, into a large family of musicians. Orphaned at ten, he was raised by his older brother, an organist, and became a fine organist and violinist himself. He held posts as church organist in Arnstadt and Mühlhausen, then as court musician in Weimar and Köthen, where he wrote the Brandenburg Concertos and much music for keyboard and solo instruments. In 1723 he became cantor of St. Thomas Church in Leipzig, responsible for music in the city's main churches and for teaching at the school, and he stayed there for the rest of his life. For Sunday services he wrote hundreds of cantatas, as well as the St. John and St. Matthew Passions, the Mass in B minor and the Christmas Oratorio. He often wrote the letters SDG, for Soli Deo Gloria, to God alone the glory, on his scores. He married twice and had twenty children, several of whom became composers. After his death in 1750 he was little performed until Mendelssohn revived the St. Matthew Passion in 1829.","keyDates":[{"date":"1685","event":"Born in Eisenach"},{"date":"1717–1723","event":"Court music director at Köthen"},{"date":"1723","event":"Becomes cantor in Leipzig"},{"date":"1727","event":"St. Matthew Passion first performed"},{"date":"1750","event":"Dies in Leipzig"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"book","title":"Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven","author":"John Eliot Gardiner","isbn13":"9781400031436","publisher":"Vintage","year":2015,"format":"paperback"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Lutheran composer who built many of his greatest works on Luther's chorales.","source":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica%2C_Ninth_Edition/Bach%2C_Johann-Sebastian","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica (9th ed.) (via Wikisource)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"francis-bacon","name":"Francis Bacon","url":"/great-lives/francis-bacon/","dates":"1561–1626","born":1561,"died":1626,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["philosophers","statesmen-founders","scientists-mathematicians"],"knownFor":"English statesman and essayist who championed experiment and observation in science.","bio":"Francis Bacon was the son of Sir Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal under Elizabeth I. He entered Trinity College, Cambridge, at twelve and trained as a lawyer. He sat in Parliament for many years and rose under King James I to become Attorney General and then Lord Chancellor in 1618. His Essays, short, wise reflections on topics such as truth, studies, friendship and ambition, became classics of English prose. In The Advancement of Learning and the Novum Organum he argued that knowledge of nature should be built from careful observation and experiment, collecting many particular facts before reaching general laws, rather than relying on ancient authorities or pure reasoning, and he warned against the idols, habits of mind that mislead us. He saw science as a way to relieve human suffering. In 1621 he was charged with accepting gifts from people with cases before him, admitted the charges, was fined and removed from office. According to a well-known story, he caught a chill while stuffing a chicken with snow to see whether cold would preserve meat, and died in 1626.","keyDates":[{"date":"1597","event":"First edition of the Essays"},{"date":"1605","event":"The Advancement of Learning"},{"date":"1618","event":"Becomes Lord Chancellor"},{"date":"1620","event":"Novum Organum"},{"date":"1621","event":"Convicted of taking bribes"},{"date":"1626","event":"Dies in London"}],"quotes":[{"text":"REVENGE is a kind of wild justice; which the more man's nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out","work":"essays-bacon","location":"Essay IV, Of Revenge","verified":true}],"author":"Francis Bacon","relatedWorks":["essays-bacon","novum-organum","bacon-advancement-of-learning","bacon-new-atlantis"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"essays-bacon","url":"/works/essays-bacon/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"novum-organum","url":"/works/novum-organum/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"bacon-advancement-of-learning","url":"/works/bacon-advancement-of-learning/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"bacon-new-atlantis","url":"/works/bacon-new-atlantis/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A devout Anglican.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Bacon","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"honore-de-balzac","name":"Honoré de Balzac","url":"/great-lives/honore-de-balzac/","dates":"1799–1850","born":1799,"died":1850,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"French novelist, author of Father Goriot and the many novels of The Human Comedy.","bio":"Honoré de Balzac was born in 1799 in Tours, France. He was sent away to boarding school and later studied law in Paris, working as a clerk in a law office, but he decided to become a writer. His early novels, written under pen names, were unsuccessful, and his ventures as a publisher and printer left him heavily in debt, which drove him to work enormous hours, often at night, fueled by strong coffee. His first success under his own name was The Chouans (1829). He went on to write about ninety novels and stories, which he grouped as La Comédie humaine, The Human Comedy, a vast portrait of French society after Napoleon, with characters who reappear from book to book. Father Goriot (1835) tells of an old man who sacrifices everything for his ungrateful daughters, and of the ambitious young Eugène de Rastignac. Other novels include Eugénie Grandet and Lost Illusions. His detailed realism influenced many later novelists. In 1850 he married the Polish countess Ewelina Hańska, with whom he had corresponded for years, and he died in Paris months later.","keyDates":[{"date":"1799","event":"Born in Tours"},{"date":"1829","event":"The Chouans published"},{"date":"1833","event":"Eugénie Grandet published"},{"date":"1835","event":"Father Goriot published"},{"date":"1842","event":"The Human Comedy collected under that title"},{"date":"1850","event":"Marries Ewelina Hańska; dies in Paris"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Honoré de Balzac","relatedWorks":["balzac-father-goriot","cousin-betty"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"balzac-father-goriot","url":"/works/balzac-father-goriot/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"cousin-betty","url":"/works/cousin-betty/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A Catholic who admired the Catholic Church throughout his life.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honor%C3%A9_de_Balzac","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"frederick-banting","name":"Frederick Banting","url":"/great-lives/frederick-banting/","dates":"1891–1941","born":1891,"died":1941,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["physicians-medicine"],"knownFor":"Canadian surgeon who with Charles Best isolated insulin in Toronto in 1921–1922, turning diabetes from a death sentence into a treatable disease.","bio":"Frederick Grant Banting was born on 14 November 1891 on a farm near Alliston, Ontario. After studying medicine in Toronto he served as an army doctor in the First World War, winning the Military Cross. In 1920, while a struggling surgeon in London, Ontario, he conceived an idea for isolating the internal secretion of the pancreas. Professor J. J. R. Macleod gave him laboratory space in Toronto in the summer of 1921, with a student assistant, Charles Best. Their extracts lowered blood sugar in diabetic dogs, and with the help of the biochemist James Collip, who purified the extract, it was first given successfully to a fourteen-year-old boy, Leonard Thompson, in January 1922. In 1923 Banting and Macleod received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine; Banting shared his prize money with Best, and Macleod shared his with Collip. The discoverers sold the patent to the University of Toronto for a token sum so that insulin could be widely made. Banting was knighted in 1934. He died in a plane crash in Newfoundland on 21 February 1941.","keyDates":[{"date":"1891","event":"Born near Alliston, Ontario, on 14 November"},{"date":"1921","event":"Begins insulin research with Charles Best in Toronto"},{"date":"1922","event":"First successful insulin treatment of Leonard Thompson"},{"date":"1923","event":"Nobel Prize with J. J. R. Macleod"},{"date":"1934","event":"Knighted"},{"date":"1941","event":"Killed in a plane crash on 21 February"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["banting-best-internal-secretion-of-the-pancreas"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"banting-best-internal-secretion-of-the-pancreas","url":"/works/banting-best-internal-secretion-of-the-pancreas/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Raised in a Methodist family whose parents hoped he would become a minister; his adult beliefs are not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Banting","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["The patent sale is usually reported as one dollar each to Banting, Best and Collip."]},{"slug":"nicolo-barbaro","name":"Nicolò Barbaro","url":"/great-lives/nicolo-barbaro/","dates":"1427/28–c. 1521","born":1427,"died":1521,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Venetian nobleman whose day-by-day diary is one of the most important eyewitness accounts of the fall of Constantinople in 1453.","bio":"Nicolò Barbaro was a young Venetian nobleman who lived through the fall of Constantinople and wrote one of the best eyewitness records of it. Born in 1427 or 1428, the third of five sons of Marco Barbaro and Cristina Trevisan, he sailed in the summer of 1452 with the Venetian merchant galleys bound for Constantinople. The convoy, commanded by his relative Alvise Diedo, stayed through the winter and spring to help defend the Byzantine capital against the Ottoman Turks. Barbaro was not yet twenty-five. He kept a diary of the siege in the Venetian dialect, recording events day by day until the city fell in 1453. In it he calls himself the doctor of the galleys, but recent research suggests he served as a crossbowman, and no one knows why he described himself as a physician. The historian Steven Runciman called him the most useful of the Western sources. Back in Venice, Barbaro held a long series of government offices, married Fantina Venier in 1484, and lived to about 1521.","keyDates":[{"date":"1427/28","event":"Born into a Venetian noble family"},{"date":"1452","event":"Sails with the Venetian galleys to Constantinople"},{"date":"1453","event":"Lives through the Ottoman siege and fall of Constantinople and records it in his diary"},{"date":"1453","event":"Joins the Great Council of Venice"},{"date":"1466","event":"Serves as podestà (governor) of Cittadella, near Padua"},{"date":"1470","event":"Elected to the Council of Forty"},{"date":"1484","event":"Marries Fantina Venier"},{"date":"c. 1521","event":"Dies"},{"date":"1856","event":"First complete edition of his diary published, by Enrico Cornet"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Nicolo Barbaro, George Sphrantzes, Doukas, and others","relatedWorks":["fall-of-constantinople-1453-eyewitness-accounts"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"fall-of-constantinople-1453-eyewitness-accounts","url":"/works/fall-of-constantinople-1453-eyewitness-accounts/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"His grandson, Marco Barbaro, became a well-known Venetian genealogist.","source":{"title":"Nicolò Barbaro (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolò_Barbaro"}},{"text":"Barbaro was not yet 25 years old when he helped defend Constantinople.","source":{"title":"Nicolò Barbaro (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolò_Barbaro"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicol%C3%B2_Barbaro","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["Wikidata gives 1420-1494, but the Wikipedia article, based on recent archival research, gives 1427/28-c. 1521; this page follows Wikipedia. Whether he served as the galleys' physician, a crossbowman, or both is uncertain."]},{"slug":"j-m-barrie","name":"J. M. Barrie","url":"/great-lives/j-m-barrie/","dates":"1860–1937","born":1860,"died":1937,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Scottish novelist and playwright, creator of Peter Pan.","bio":"James Matthew Barrie was born in 1860 in Kirriemuir, Scotland, the ninth of ten children of a weaver. When he was six his older brother David died in a skating accident, and Barrie tried to comfort his grieving mother; the idea of a boy who never grows up may owe something to this loss. He studied at the University of Edinburgh and worked as a journalist in Nottingham before moving to London, where he wrote novels and sketches of Scottish village life and then successful plays, such as The Admirable Crichton. In Kensington Gardens he befriended the Llewelyn Davies boys and made up stories for them about a boy named Peter Pan. The play Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up opened in London in 1904, and he turned it into the novel Peter and Wendy in 1911. After the deaths of the boys' parents, Barrie became their guardian. He was made a baronet in 1913 and gave the rights to Peter Pan to Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children in 1929. He died in London in 1937.","keyDates":[{"date":"1860","event":"Born in Kirriemuir, Scotland"},{"date":"1897","event":"Meets the Llewelyn Davies boys"},{"date":"1904","event":"Peter Pan opens in London"},{"date":"1911","event":"Peter and Wendy published"},{"date":"1913","event":"Made a baronet"},{"date":"1929","event":"Gives Peter Pan rights to Great Ormond Street Hospital"},{"date":"1937","event":"Dies in London"}],"quotes":[],"author":"J. M. Barrie","relatedWorks":["peter-pan"],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"library","work":"peter-pan","url":"/works/peter-pan/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Born into a conservative Calvinist family in Scotland; his adult beliefs are not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._M._Barrie","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"karl-barth","name":"Karl Barth","url":"/great-lives/karl-barth/","dates":"1886–1968","born":1886,"died":1968,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["theologians-church-fathers"],"knownFor":"Swiss Reformed theologian, author of the Church Dogmatics and principal drafter of the Barmen Declaration.","bio":"Karl Barth was born in Basel, Switzerland, in 1886, the son of a Reformed pastor and theologian. He studied in Germany under leading liberal theologians, but as pastor of the village of Safenwil, he was shaken when many of his teachers publicly supported Germany's war policy in 1914. Turning back to Scripture, he published a commentary on Paul's Epistle to the Romans (1919, revised 1922) that stressed God's sovereignty and judgement and the gulf between God and human religion. He then taught at Göttingen, Münster and Bonn. When the Nazis sought to control the German Protestant churches, Barth was the principal author of the Barmen Declaration of 1934, which confessed Jesus Christ as the one Word of God against the claims of the state. Dismissed from Bonn for refusing an unconditional oath to Hitler, he returned to Basel in 1935. There he continued his Church Dogmatics, left unfinished at more than nine thousand pages. He died in Basel in 1968.","keyDates":[{"date":"1886","event":"Born in Basel"},{"date":"1919","event":"The Epistle to the Romans published"},{"date":"1934","event":"Barmen Declaration"},{"date":"1935","event":"Returns to Basel"},{"date":"1968","event":"Dies in Basel"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Karl Barth","relatedWorks":["barth-the-word-of-god-and-the-word-of-man"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"barth-the-word-of-god-and-the-word-of-man","url":"/works/barth-the-word-of-god-and-the-word-of-man/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Swiss Reformed theologian and pastor.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Barth","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"donald-barthelme","name":"Donald Barthelme","url":"/great-lives/donald-barthelme/","dates":"1931–1989","born":1931,"died":1989,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American short-story writer known for playful, experimental fiction, collected in Sixty Stories.","bio":"Donald Barthelme was born in 1931 in Philadelphia and grew up in Houston, Texas, where his father was an architect. He studied journalism at the University of Houston, worked as a newspaper reporter, and was drafted into the army, arriving in Korea just as the war ended. Back in Houston he edited a university magazine and directed the Contemporary Arts Museum before moving to New York in 1962 to edit an art and literature journal. Many of his short stories appeared in The New Yorker. They are brief, witty and unusual, mixing everyday speech with fragments of advertising, history and art, and often breaking the rules of ordinary storytelling. His collections include Come Back, Dr. Caligari, City Life and Sixty Stories (1981), and he wrote the novel Snow White. His children's book The Slightly Irregular Fire Engine won the National Book Award for Young People's Literature in 1972. He later taught creative writing at the University of Houston, where he died in 1989.","keyDates":[{"date":"1931","event":"Born in Philadelphia"},{"date":"1962","event":"Moves to New York"},{"date":"1964","event":"Come Back, Dr. Caligari published"},{"date":"1972","event":"National Book Award for a children's book"},{"date":"1981","event":"Sixty Stories published"},{"date":"1989","event":"Dies in Houston"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Donald Barthelme","relatedWorks":["sixty-stories"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"sixty-stories","url":"/works/sixty-stories/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented; he attended a Catholic high school.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Barthelme","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"josiah-bartlett","name":"Josiah Bartlett","url":"/great-lives/josiah-bartlett/","dates":"1729–1795","born":1729,"died":1795,"era":"18th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders","physicians-medicine"],"knownFor":"New Hampshire physician and signer who later served as the state's chief justice and governor.","bio":"Josiah Bartlett was born in 1729 in Amesbury, Massachusetts, studied medicine as an apprentice, and set up a practice in Kingston, New Hampshire. He was an early advocate of inoculation against smallpox and became a leader in the provincial congress as the quarrel with Britain deepened. In the Continental Congress he signed the Declaration of Independence for New Hampshire and later signed the Articles of Confederation. After the war he served as chief justice of New Hampshire and then as governor, helping to put the new state government on a firm footing. Bartlett kept up his medical work even while in office and was respected as a plain, careful public man. He died in Kingston in 1795.","keyDates":[{"date":"1729","event":"Born in Amesbury, Massachusetts"},{"date":"1774","event":"Serves in the New Hampshire Provincial Congress"},{"date":"1776","event":"Signs the Declaration of Independence"},{"date":"1790","event":"Becomes president, then governor, of New Hampshire"},{"date":"1795","event":"Dies in Kingston, New Hampshire"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["the-founding-documents"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-founding-documents","url":"/works/the-founding-documents/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":null,"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"clara-barton","name":"Clara Barton","url":"/great-lives/clara-barton/","dates":"1821–1912","born":1821,"died":1912,"era":"19th-century","categories":["physicians-medicine","saints-reformers"],"knownFor":"Civil War nurse who founded the American Red Cross.","bio":"Clarissa Harlowe Barton was born in Oxford, Massachusetts, the youngest of five children. As a girl she nursed her brother David through a long illness. She became a schoolteacher at seventeen and founded a free public school in Bordentown, New Jersey, but when the town board hired a man at a higher salary to run it, she resigned. She then worked as a clerk in the U.S. Patent Office in Washington, one of the first women to do so. When the Civil War began, she collected supplies for soldiers and won permission to take them to the battlefields herself, where she nursed the wounded at Antietam, Fredericksburg and other battles, sometimes under fire; soldiers called her the Angel of the Battlefield. After the war she led an effort to identify missing soldiers. In Europe she worked with the International Red Cross during the Franco-Prussian War, and in 1881 she founded the American Red Cross, which she led for twenty-three years, organizing relief for floods, fires and hurricanes, including the Johnstown Flood of 1889. She died in 1912.","keyDates":[{"date":"1821","event":"Born in Oxford, Massachusetts"},{"date":"1862","event":"Nurses the wounded at Antietam"},{"date":"1865","event":"Office of Missing Soldiers"},{"date":"1881","event":"Founds the American Red Cross"},{"date":"1889","event":"Leads relief after the Johnstown Flood"},{"date":"1912","event":"Dies in Glen Echo, Maryland"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"book","title":"Who Was Clara Barton?","author":"Stephanie Spinner","isbn13":"9780448479538","publisher":"Paperback","year":2014,"format":""}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"She was very shy as a child, but at eleven she nursed her brother David for two years after he fell from the roof of a barn.","source":{"title":"Clara Barton (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clara_Barton"}}],"records":[{"text":"In 1852 she opened a school in Bordentown that was the first free school in New Jersey.","source":{"title":"Clara Barton (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clara_Barton"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Her wartime diaries show she was a devout Christian.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clara_Barton","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"basil-the-great","name":"Basil the Great","url":"/great-lives/basil-the-great/","dates":"c. 330–379","born":330,"died":379,"era":"ancient","categories":["theologians-church-fathers","saints-reformers"],"knownFor":"Bishop of Caesarea who shaped Eastern monasticism and built a great hospital for the poor.","bio":"Basil was born in Caesarea in Cappadocia, in what is now central Turkey, into a wealthy Christian family famous for its saints, including his grandmother Macrina the Elder, his sister Macrina and his brother Gregory of Nyssa. He studied in Constantinople and Athens, where he became close friends with Gregory of Nazianzus. Returning home, he was influenced by his sister to give up a promising career, was baptized, and visited monks in Egypt and Syria. He then founded a monastic community, and his rules for monks, which stress community life, prayer, work and service, still guide Eastern Orthodox monasteries. In 370 he became bishop of Caesarea. During a famine he sold family property to feed the hungry, and outside the city he built a large complex, called the Basileias, with a hospital, a poorhouse and lodgings for travelers. With the two Gregories, called the Cappadocian Fathers, he defended the Nicene faith and helped clarify the teaching on the Trinity and the Holy Spirit, preparing the way for the Council of Constantinople in 381. He died in 379.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 330","event":"Born in Caesarea, Cappadocia"},{"date":"c. 357","event":"Turns to the monastic life"},{"date":"370","event":"Becomes bishop of Caesarea"},{"date":"c. 369–372","event":"Builds the Basileias for the sick and poor"},{"date":"379","event":"Dies"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Early Church Father who defended orthodox Christian faith against Arianism; venerated as a saint.","source":"https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Basil-the-Great","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"frederic-bastiat","name":"Frédéric Bastiat","url":"/great-lives/frederic-bastiat/","dates":"1801–1850","born":1801,"died":1850,"era":"19th-century","categories":["philosophers","statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"French economist and member of the National Assembly, author of The Law and the parable of the broken window.","bio":"Claude-Frédéric Bastiat was born in 1801 in Bayonne, in southwestern France, the son of a merchant. Orphaned by the age of nine, he was raised by relatives and later managed the family estate at Mugron, in the Landes region, where he served as a local justice of the peace. He read widely in economics, especially Adam Smith and Jean-Baptiste Say, and was inspired by the campaign in Britain led by Richard Cobden to abolish tariffs on grain. From 1844 he wrote essays and pamphlets for free trade, using humor and vivid examples, such as his satirical petition from candle makers asking the government to block out the sun. In 1848 he was elected to the French National Assembly. In his essay What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen, he told the parable of a broken window, arguing that the money spent to repair it is not a gain to society, because it could have been spent elsewhere. The Law (1850) argued that law should protect life, liberty and property rather than be used for 'plunder'. He died of tuberculosis in Rome in 1850.","keyDates":[{"date":"1801","event":"Born in Bayonne"},{"date":"1844","event":"Begins writing on free trade"},{"date":"1845","event":"The Candlemakers' Petition"},{"date":"1848","event":"Elected to the National Assembly"},{"date":"1850","event":"The Law and What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen; dies in Rome"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Frédéric Bastiat","relatedWorks":["bastiat-the-law"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"bastiat-the-law","url":"/works/bastiat-the-law/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented; he was educated at a Benedictine school.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fr%C3%A9d%C3%A9ric_Bastiat","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"l-frank-baum","name":"L. Frank Baum","url":"/great-lives/l-frank-baum/","dates":"1856–1919","born":1856,"died":1919,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and thirteen more Oz books.","bio":"Lyman Frank Baum was born in 1856 in Chittenango, New York, the son of a businessman who grew rich in the oil industry, and he grew up on the family estate. He was a sickly child who loved to read. As a young man he raised fancy chickens, ran a printing press, and wrote and acted in plays. In 1882 he married Maud Gage, the daughter of the women's rights campaigner Matilda Joslyn Gage. The family moved to Aberdeen, in Dakota Territory, where he ran a store and edited a newspaper, and then to Chicago, where he worked as a reporter and a traveling salesman and founded a magazine for window dressers. His first children's book, Mother Goose in Prose, appeared in 1897. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900), illustrated by W. W. Denslow, tells of Dorothy, a girl from Kansas who is carried by a cyclone to the magical land of Oz. It was a great success, and Baum wrote thirteen sequels and many other books, some under pen names. He moved to Hollywood and died there in 1919.","keyDates":[{"date":"1856","event":"Born in Chittenango, New York"},{"date":"1882","event":"Marries Maud Gage"},{"date":"1897","event":"Mother Goose in Prose published"},{"date":"1900","event":"The Wonderful Wizard of Oz published"},{"date":"1902","event":"Stage musical of The Wizard of Oz"},{"date":"1919","event":"Dies in Hollywood"}],"quotes":[],"author":"L. Frank Baum","relatedWorks":["the-wonderful-wizard-of-oz"],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"library","work":"the-wonderful-wizard-of-oz","url":"/works/the-wonderful-wizard-of-oz/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"Before Oz, he started a monthly trade magazine about chickens, The Poultry Record, in 1880.","source":{"title":"L. Frank Baum (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._Frank_Baum"}}],"records":[{"text":"The 1902 stage musical of his book was the first to use the shorter title 'The Wizard of Oz'.","source":{"title":"L. Frank Baum (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._Frank_Baum"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Born into a devout Methodist family; he later joined the Episcopal Church and became a member of the Theosophical Society.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._Frank_Baum","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"cesare-beccaria","name":"Cesare Beccaria","url":"/great-lives/cesare-beccaria/","dates":"1738–1794","born":1738,"died":1794,"era":"18th-century","categories":["legal-scholars-lawgivers","philosophers"],"knownFor":"Italian jurist whose On Crimes and Punishments (1764) argued against torture and the death penalty and changed criminal law in Europe and America.","bio":"Cesare Beccaria was born in Milan on 15 March 1738, the eldest son of a noble family. Educated by the Jesuits in Parma, he took a law degree at Pavia and in Milan joined a circle of young Enlightenment reformers around the brothers Pietro and Alessandro Verri. Encouraged by them, and helped by Alessandro Verri's experience as an official who visited prisoners, Beccaria wrote On Crimes and Punishments, published anonymously at Livorno in 1764. He argued that laws should be plain and public, that punishment should be proportioned to the harm done to society, that certainty of punishment deters better than cruelty, that secret accusations and torture should be abolished, and that the death penalty is neither necessary nor useful. Translated into French in 1766 with a commentary by Voltaire, the book was read across Europe; Catherine the Great and Leopold of Tuscany drew on it, and John Adams quoted it in a Boston court. Beccaria, shy by temperament, became a professor of political economy in Milan in 1768 and later a public official. He died in Milan on 28 November 1794.","keyDates":[{"date":"1738","event":"Born in Milan on 15 March"},{"date":"1764","event":"On Crimes and Punishments published anonymously at Livorno"},{"date":"1766","event":"French translation with Voltaire's commentary"},{"date":"1768","event":"Professor of political economy in Milan"},{"date":"1786","event":"Tuscany abolishes the death penalty under Leopold"},{"date":"1794","event":"Dies in Milan on 28 November"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["beccaria-on-crimes-and-punishments"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"beccaria-on-crimes-and-punishments","url":"/works/beccaria-on-crimes-and-punishments/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cesare_Beccaria","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["Adams quoted Beccaria in his defence of the British soldiers after the Boston Massacre (1770)."]},{"slug":"thomas-becket","name":"Thomas Becket","url":"/great-lives/thomas-becket/","dates":"c. 1120–1170","born":1120,"died":1170,"era":"medieval","categories":["saints-reformers"],"knownFor":"Archbishop of Canterbury murdered in his cathedral after opposing Henry II.","bio":"Thomas Becket was the son of a Norman merchant in London. He worked as a clerk and joined the household of Theobald, archbishop of Canterbury, who sent him to study law. In 1155 the young King Henry II made him chancellor, and the two became close friends; Becket lived in splendor and served the king loyally. In 1162 Henry had him made archbishop of Canterbury, expecting him to support royal control of the Church. Instead Becket changed his way of life, wore a hair shirt, and defended the rights of the Church, especially the right of clergy accused of crimes to be tried in church courts. After a bitter quarrel over the Constitutions of Clarendon, he fled to France for six years. Soon after his return in 1170, Henry, in a rage, is reported to have asked whether no one would rid him of this troublesome priest. Four knights rode to Canterbury and killed Becket in his cathedral on 29 December 1170. Europe was shocked, and Henry did public penance. Becket was declared a saint in 1173, and Canterbury became a great place of pilgrimage.","keyDates":[{"date":"1155","event":"Becomes chancellor of England"},{"date":"1162","event":"Archbishop of Canterbury"},{"date":"1164","event":"Flees to France"},{"date":"1170","event":"Returns; murdered in Canterbury Cathedral"},{"date":"1173","event":"Canonized"},{"date":"1174","event":"Henry II does penance at Canterbury"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["st-thomas-becket-and-canterbury-miracles","the-canterbury-tales"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"st-thomas-becket-and-canterbury-miracles","url":"/works/st-thomas-becket-and-canterbury-miracles/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Archbishop of Canterbury and martyr; venerated as a saint.","source":"https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14676a.htm","sourceName":"Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"samuel-beckett","name":"Samuel Beckett","url":"/great-lives/samuel-beckett/","dates":"1906–1989","born":1906,"died":1989,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Irish playwright and novelist who wrote in French and English, author of Waiting for Godot, and Nobel laureate.","bio":"Samuel Barclay Beckett was born in 1906 in Foxrock, a suburb of Dublin; his father was a quantity surveyor. He went to Portora Royal School in Enniskillen, which Oscar Wilde had also attended, and then to Trinity College Dublin, where he studied French and Italian. A natural athlete, he played two first-class cricket matches for Dublin University, which makes him the only Nobel laureate in literature listed in Wisden, the cricketers' almanac. In 1928 he went to teach in Paris, where he met James Joyce and became his friend and helper. During the Second World War he served as a courier for a French Resistance network, fled with his companion Suzanne to the village of Roussillon when the group was betrayed, and received the Croix de Guerre. After the war he wrote mainly in French, translating his own works into English himself. Waiting for Godot (1953) made him famous, followed by Endgame and other plays. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1969 and died in Paris in 1989.","keyDates":[{"date":"1906","event":"Born in Foxrock, near Dublin"},{"date":"1923","event":"Enters Trinity College Dublin"},{"date":"1928","event":"Begins teaching in Paris; meets James Joyce"},{"date":"1942","event":"Flees to Roussillon after his Resistance network is betrayed"},{"date":"1945","event":"Awarded the Croix de Guerre"},{"date":"1953","event":"Waiting for Godot first staged in Paris"},{"date":"1969","event":"Nobel Prize in Literature"},{"date":"1989","event":"Dies in Paris"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Samuel Beckett","relatedWorks":["beckett-waiting-for-godot"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"beckett-waiting-for-godot","url":"/works/beckett-waiting-for-godot/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Raised an Anglican in the Church of Ireland; he later became agnostic.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Beckett","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"bede","name":"Bede","url":"/great-lives/bede/","dates":"c. 672–735","born":672,"died":735,"era":"medieval","categories":["theologians-church-fathers","saints-reformers"],"knownFor":"English monk and scholar of Jarrow, author of the Ecclesiastical History of the English People, often called the father of English history.","bio":"Bede was born around 672 near the monastery of Wearmouth in Northumbria, in northern England. At the age of seven he was placed in the care of the abbot Benedict Biscop, and he spent the rest of his life at the twin monastery of Wearmouth and Jarrow, becoming a deacon at nineteen and a priest at thirty. He seldom traveled, but the monastery's library allowed him to write on many subjects: commentaries on the Bible, a work on the reckoning of time, saints' lives, poetry and grammar. His best-known book, the Ecclesiastical History of the English People, completed around 731, tells the story of the conversion of the English to Christianity and is a main source for early English history. Bede's chronology helped spread the practice of dating events from the birth of Christ, the system of AD dates. He died at Jarrow in 735. He is honored as a saint, called the Venerable Bede, and was declared a Doctor of the Church in 1899.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 672","event":"Born in Northumbria"},{"date":"c. 679","event":"Enters the monastery at Wearmouth"},{"date":"c. 731","event":"Completes the Ecclesiastical History"},{"date":"735","event":"Dies at Jarrow"},{"date":"1899","event":"Declared a Doctor of the Church"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Bede","relatedWorks":["bede-ecclesiastical-history"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"bede-ecclesiastical-history","url":"/works/bede-ecclesiastical-history/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"A station on the Tyne and Wear Metro in north-east England is named after him.","source":{"title":"Bede (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bede"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A priest and monk of the monastery of Wearmouth-Jarrow who called himself 'a servant of Christ'.","source":"https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02384a.htm","sourceName":"Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"ludwig-van-beethoven","name":"Ludwig van Beethoven","url":"/great-lives/ludwig-van-beethoven/","dates":"1770–1827","born":1770,"died":1827,"era":"19th-century","categories":["artists-composers-architects"],"knownFor":"German composer who kept writing great symphonies after he became deaf.","bio":"Ludwig van Beethoven was born in Bonn, Germany, into a family of court musicians. His father, a singer who drank heavily, drilled him hard at the keyboard, hoping to make him a child prodigy like Mozart. At twenty-one he moved to Vienna, where he studied with Haydn and became famous as a pianist, especially for his improvisations. In his late twenties he began to lose his hearing. In 1802, in a letter to his brothers now called the Heiligenstadt Testament, he described thinking of ending his life, but resolved to live for his art. He went on to write his Third Symphony, the Eroica, the opera Fidelio, and the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies. By about 1818 he was almost completely deaf and talked with visitors in conversation notebooks. Yet in these years he wrote the Missa Solemnis, his last piano sonatas and string quartets, and the Ninth Symphony, whose last movement sets Schiller's Ode to Joy for chorus. At its premiere in 1824 he had to be turned to see the applause. He died in Vienna in 1827.","keyDates":[{"date":"1770","event":"Born in Bonn"},{"date":"1792","event":"Moves to Vienna"},{"date":"1802","event":"Heiligenstadt Testament"},{"date":"1808","event":"Fifth and Sixth Symphonies premiered"},{"date":"1824","event":"Ninth Symphony premiered"},{"date":"1827","event":"Dies in Vienna"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"book","title":"Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph","author":"Jan Swafford","isbn13":"9780618054749","publisher":"Houghton Mifflin Harcourt","year":2014,"format":"hardcover"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"No record of his exact birthday survives; only the record of his baptism, on 17 December 1770.","source":{"title":"Ludwig van Beethoven (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_van_Beethoven"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Born and baptized a Catholic; his personal beliefs are not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_van_Beethoven","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[{"series":"Very Short Introductions","title":"Ludwig van Beethoven: A Very Short Introduction","author":"Mark Evan Bonds","publisher":"Oxford University Press","year":2022,"isbn13":"9780190051730","url":"https://bookshop.org/a/130650/9780190051730"}],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"aphra-behn","name":"Aphra Behn","url":"/great-lives/aphra-behn/","dates":"c. 1640–1689","born":1640,"died":1689,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"English playwright, poet and novelist; among the first English women to earn a living by writing; author of The Rover and Oroonoko.","bio":"Aphra Behn was born about 1640, probably in Kent. Tradition and her own fiction associate her youth with Surinam in South America; modern scholars debate how much of that stay is fact. In the 1660s she served the restored Stuart court as a spy in the Low Countries under the code name Astrea. From the 1670s she wrote professional plays for the London stage, including the hit comedy The Rover (1677). Her prose narratives of 1688, especially Oroonoko; or, The Royal Slave, helped shape early English fiction. She wrote frankly about desire and politics in the Restoration manner and was buried in Westminster Abbey in 1689. Classical Christian readers meet both brilliant craft and themes—slavery, sexual comedy—that need honest preview.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 1640","event":"Born (date uncertain)"},{"date":"1660s","event":"Intelligence work in the Low Countries"},{"date":"1677","event":"The Rover first performed"},{"date":"1688","event":"Oroonoko and other histories published"},{"date":"1689","event":"Dies; buried in Westminster Abbey"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Aphra Behn","relatedWorks":["behn-the-rover","behn-oroonoko","behn-the-fair-jilt"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"behn-oroonoko","url":"/works/behn-oroonoko/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"behn-the-rover","url":"/works/behn-the-rover/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"behn-the-fair-jilt","url":"/works/behn-the-fair-jilt/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Raised in the Church of England; wrote in Restoration England with political loyalty to the Stuarts. Personal piety is not as fully documented as her public career.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphra_Behn","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"alexander-graham-bell","name":"Alexander Graham Bell","url":"/great-lives/alexander-graham-bell/","dates":"1847–1922","born":1847,"died":1922,"era":"19th-century","categories":["inventors"],"knownFor":"Teacher of the deaf who invented the telephone.","bio":"Alexander Graham Bell was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. His father taught elocution and invented Visible Speech, a system of symbols for the sounds of speech, and his mother was nearly deaf. After his two brothers died of tuberculosis, the family moved to Canada in 1870. Bell became a teacher of deaf students in Boston and a professor of vocal physiology at Boston University. He married Mabel Hubbard, a former pupil who was deaf. At night he experimented with sending sound over wires, assisted by the electrician Thomas Watson. He received a patent for the telephone on 7 March 1876, and three days later spoke the first words over it: Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you. He demonstrated it at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia that summer. The Bell Telephone Company was founded in 1877, and Bell defended his patent in hundreds of lawsuits. He went on to work on the photophone, metal detectors, hydrofoil boats and flying machines, and helped found the National Geographic Society. He was a lifelong friend of Helen Keller. He died in Nova Scotia in 1922.","keyDates":[{"date":"1847","event":"Born in Edinburgh"},{"date":"1871","event":"Begins teaching deaf students in Boston"},{"date":"1876","event":"Patents the telephone"},{"date":"1877","event":"Bell Telephone Company founded"},{"date":"1922","event":"Dies at Baddeck, Nova Scotia"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["the-story-of-my-life"],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"book","title":"Who Was Alexander Graham Bell?","author":"Natalie Brown","isbn13":"9781448890859","publisher":"Rosen Classroom","year":2012,"format":"paperback"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"As a boy he got his dog to growl while he moved its lips and throat, so that visitors believed the dog could say 'How are you, grandmama?'","source":{"title":"Alexander Graham Bell (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Graham_Bell"}},{"text":"With no formal lessons, he taught himself the piano and became his family's pianist.","source":{"title":"Alexander Graham Bell (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Graham_Bell"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Attended a Presbyterian church in his youth; his adult beliefs are not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Graham_Bell","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"saul-bellow","name":"Saul Bellow","url":"/great-lives/saul-bellow/","dates":"1915–2005","born":1915,"died":2005,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Canadian-born American novelist, author of The Adventures of Augie March and Herzog, and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature.","bio":"Saul Bellow was born in 1915 in Lachine, Quebec, Canada, the son of Jewish immigrants from Russia. When he was nine his family moved to Chicago, the city that would appear in much of his fiction. He studied at the University of Chicago and then Northwestern University, graduating with honors in anthropology and sociology. During the Second World War he served in the merchant marine, and he published his first novel, Dangling Man, in 1944. The Adventures of Augie March (1953), the lively story of a young man growing up in Chicago, won the National Book Award and made his reputation. He won the National Book Award again for Herzog (1964) and for Mr. Sammler's Planet (1970), and Humboldt's Gift (1975) won the Pulitzer Prize. In 1976 he received the Nobel Prize in Literature. For many years he taught at the University of Chicago, and later at Boston University. He also wrote short stories, plays and essays. He was married five times. He died in Brookline, Massachusetts, in 2005.","keyDates":[{"date":"1915","event":"Born in Lachine, Quebec"},{"date":"1944","event":"Dangling Man published"},{"date":"1953","event":"The Adventures of Augie March published"},{"date":"1964","event":"Herzog published"},{"date":"1976","event":"Pulitzer Prize and Nobel Prize"},{"date":"2005","event":"Dies in Brookline, Massachusetts"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Saul Bellow","relatedWorks":["humboldts-gift"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"humboldts-gift","url":"/works/humboldts-gift/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"Besides reading a great deal, he played the violin and followed sports.","source":{"title":"Saul Bellow (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saul_Bellow"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Born into a Lithuanian-Jewish family; Jewish life is a major theme of his work.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saul_Bellow","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"nathaniel-benchley","name":"Nathaniel Benchley","url":"/great-lives/nathaniel-benchley/","dates":"1915–1981","born":1915,"died":1981,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American novelist and children's author, writer of Sam the Minuteman and The Off-Islanders.","bio":"Nathaniel Benchley was born in 1915 in Newton, Massachusetts, into a literary family; his father was the humorist and critic Robert Benchley, a founder of the Algonquin Round Table in New York City. He graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy and Harvard College. He joined the Navy before Pearl Harbor and served on convoy duty in the North Atlantic and later in the Pacific. After the war he worked as an assistant drama editor at Newsweek. His first novel, Side Street, appeared in 1950, and in 1955 he published a biography of his father. His novel The Off-Islanders (1961) became the film comedy The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming. He also wrote many books for young readers that bring historical settings to life, such as Sam the Minuteman, about a boy at the Battle of Lexington, and Bright Candles, set in occupied Denmark. He wrote a biography of his friend Humphrey Bogart. He died in Boston in 1981.","keyDates":[{"date":"1915","event":"Born in Newton, Massachusetts"},{"date":"1950","event":"Side Street published"},{"date":"1955","event":"Biography of Robert Benchley"},{"date":"1961","event":"The Off-Islanders published"},{"date":"1981","event":"Dies in Boston"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Nathaniel Benchley","relatedWorks":["sam-the-minuteman"],"reading":[{"band":"K-2","kind":"library","work":"sam-the-minuteman","url":"/works/sam-the-minuteman/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathaniel_Benchley","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"benedict-of-nursia","name":"Benedict of Nursia","url":"/great-lives/benedict-of-nursia/","dates":"c. 480–547","born":480,"died":547,"era":"medieval","categories":["saints-reformers"],"knownFor":"Father of Western monasticism, whose Rule organized monastic life around prayer and work.","bio":"Benedict was born at Nursia, now Norcia, in central Italy, and was sent to Rome to study. Disgusted by the city's vice, he left and lived alone as a hermit for three years in a cave at Subiaco, east of Rome. Others came to follow him, and he organized them into small communities. Around 529 he moved south and founded the monastery of Monte Cassino on a hilltop between Rome and Naples. There he wrote his Rule, a short book of guidance for monks. It sets out a balanced life of prayer at set hours of the day and night, manual work, and reading, summed up later in the motto pray and work. It asks monks to live in stability in one community under an abbot, practice obedience and humility, receive guests as Christ, and avoid both harshness and excess. Almost everything known about his life comes from the Dialogues of Pope Gregory the Great, which also recount miracles. His sister Scholastica led a community of nuns nearby. He died around 547. His Rule became the standard for monasteries across Western Europe.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 500","event":"Lives as a hermit at Subiaco"},{"date":"c. 529","event":"Founds Monte Cassino"},{"date":"c. 540","event":"Writes his Rule"},{"date":"c. 547","event":"Dies at Monte Cassino"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["the-rule-of-st-benedict"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-rule-of-st-benedict","url":"/works/the-rule-of-st-benedict/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Christian monk and father of Western monasticism; his feast is kept by the Roman Catholic Church.","source":"https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Benedict-of-Nursia","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"benedict-xvi","name":"Pope Benedict XVI","url":"/great-lives/benedict-xvi/","dates":"1927–2022","born":1927,"died":2022,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["theologians-church-fathers"],"knownFor":"German theologian Joseph Ratzinger, pope of the Catholic Church from 2005 until his resignation in 2013.","bio":"Joseph Ratzinger was born in 1927 in Marktl, Bavaria, Germany, the son of a police officer. As a teenager he was enrolled in the Hitler Youth, as membership was compulsory, and he was drafted into an anti-aircraft unit late in the Second World War. After the war he studied philosophy and theology and was ordained a priest in 1951, together with his brother Georg. He taught theology at several German universities and served as an adviser at the Second Vatican Council. In 1977 he was made archbishop of Munich and a cardinal, and from 1981 he headed the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under Pope John Paul II. He was elected pope in 2005 and took the name Benedict XVI. His writings include three encyclicals and a three-volume book on Jesus of Nazareth. His 2006 lecture at the University of Regensburg on faith and reason drew wide attention. He resigned in 2013, the first pope to do so in centuries, and died in Vatican City in 2022.","keyDates":[{"date":"1927","event":"Born in Marktl, Bavaria"},{"date":"1951","event":"Ordained a priest"},{"date":"1977","event":"Archbishop of Munich and cardinal"},{"date":"2005","event":"Elected pope"},{"date":"2006","event":"Regensburg lecture"},{"date":"2013","event":"Resigns the papacy"},{"date":"2022","event":"Dies in Vatican City"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Benedict XVI","relatedWorks":["regensburg-lecture"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"regensburg-lecture","url":"/works/regensburg-lecture/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"His favourite composer was Mozart, and his favourite pieces were Mozart's Clarinet Concerto and Clarinet Quintet.","source":{"title":"Pope Benedict XVI (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Benedict_XVI"}}],"records":[{"text":"In 2020, at 93, he became the longest-lived pope whose age can be verified.","source":{"title":"Pope Benedict XVI (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Benedict_XVI"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Theologian who served as bishop of Rome and head of the Roman Catholic Church from 2005 to 2013.","source":"https://www.britannica.com/biography/Benedict-XVI","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"henri-bergson","name":"Henri Bergson","url":"/great-lives/henri-bergson/","dates":"1859–1941","born":1859,"died":1941,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["philosophers"],"knownFor":"French philosopher of time, intuition and creative evolution; Nobel Prize in Literature, 1927.","bio":"Henri Bergson was born in Paris in 1859 to a Polish-Jewish father and an English mother. A brilliant student in both mathematics and philosophy, he studied at the École Normale Supérieure and taught in schools before becoming a professor at the Collège de France in 1900, where his lectures drew enormous crowds. In Time and Free Will (1889) he distinguished measured clock time from duration, the lived flow of inner experience. Matter and Memory (1896), An Introduction to Metaphysics (1903) and Creative Evolution (1907), which proposed a vital impulse driving life, made him famous across Europe. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1927. His last major book, The Two Sources of Morality and Religion (1932), reflected a deepening sympathy for Christian mysticism. Near the end of his life he wrote that he was drawn to Catholicism but had chosen to remain among the Jews, who were then being persecuted. He died in occupied Paris in January 1941.","keyDates":[{"date":"1859","event":"Born in Paris"},{"date":"1889","event":"Time and Free Will published"},{"date":"1907","event":"Creative Evolution published"},{"date":"1927","event":"Nobel Prize in Literature"},{"date":"1941","event":"Dies in occupied Paris"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Henri Bergson","relatedWorks":["bergson-introduction-to-metaphysics"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"bergson-introduction-to-metaphysics","url":"/works/bergson-introduction-to-metaphysics/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Born to Jewish parents; a Jew by birth.","source":"https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/bergson/","sourceName":"Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"george-berkeley","name":"George Berkeley","url":"/great-lives/george-berkeley/","dates":"1685–1753","born":1685,"died":1753,"era":"18th-century","categories":["philosophers","theologians-church-fathers"],"knownFor":"Irish philosopher and Anglican bishop, known for the idea that to be is to be perceived.","bio":"George Berkeley was born in 1685 near Kilkenny, Ireland, and studied at Trinity College Dublin, where he became a fellow and teacher. While still in his twenties he published An Essay towards a New Theory of Vision (1709) and A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (1710), in which he argued that material objects exist only as they are perceived by minds, summed up in the phrase esse est percipi, 'to be is to be perceived'. Things continue to exist when no human sees them, he argued, because they are always perceived by God. His Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous (1713) presented these ideas in conversation. Berkeley traveled in Europe and hoped to found a college in Bermuda to educate colonists and Native Americans; he lived for three years in Rhode Island while waiting for promised funds that never came. In 1734 he became Anglican bishop of Cloyne in Ireland. He also wrote on mathematics and promoted tar-water as a medicine. He died in Oxford in 1753. The city of Berkeley, California, is named after him.","keyDates":[{"date":"1685","event":"Born near Kilkenny, Ireland"},{"date":"1709","event":"New Theory of Vision"},{"date":"1710","event":"Principles of Human Knowledge"},{"date":"1729–1731","event":"Lives in Rhode Island"},{"date":"1734","event":"Becomes bishop of Cloyne"},{"date":"1753","event":"Dies in Oxford"}],"quotes":[],"author":"George Berkeley","relatedWorks":["berkeley-principles-of-human-knowledge"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"berkeley-principles-of-human-knowledge","url":"/works/berkeley-principles-of-human-knowledge/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Anglican Bishop of Cloyne who wrote Alciphron, a work of Christian apologetics against the free-thinkers.","source":"https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/berkeley/","sourceName":"Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"bernard-of-clairvaux","name":"Bernard of Clairvaux","url":"/great-lives/bernard-of-clairvaux/","dates":"1090–1153","born":1090,"died":1153,"era":"medieval","categories":["theologians-church-fathers","saints-reformers"],"knownFor":"Cistercian abbot, preacher and adviser to popes and kings.","bio":"Bernard was born into a noble family near Dijon in Burgundy. In 1113 he entered the strict new monastery of Cîteaux, bringing about thirty relatives and friends with him, including several of his brothers. Two years later he was sent to found a new monastery at Clairvaux, which he led as abbot for the rest of his life. Under his influence the Cistercian order grew rapidly, founding hundreds of houses across Europe. Bernard was a powerful preacher and a writer of great warmth; his sermons on the Song of Songs describe the love between God and the soul, and he wrote widely on humility and the love of God. He also became deeply involved in the affairs of the Church, settling a disputed papal election, drafting a rule for the Knights Templar, and opposing the teachings of Peter Abelard. In 1146, at the pope's request, he preached the Second Crusade, which ended in failure. When a monk preached attacks on Jews in the Rhineland, Bernard went there to stop him. He died in 1153 and was declared a saint in 1174.","keyDates":[{"date":"1113","event":"Enters Cîteaux"},{"date":"1115","event":"Founds Clairvaux"},{"date":"1135","event":"Begins the Sermons on the Song of Songs"},{"date":"1146","event":"Preaches the Second Crusade"},{"date":"1153","event":"Dies at Clairvaux"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Bernard of Clairvaux","relatedWorks":["sermons-on-the-song-of-songs"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"sermons-on-the-song-of-songs","url":"/works/sermons-on-the-song-of-songs/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Cistercian monk, mystic and abbot of Clairvaux; venerated as a saint in the Roman Catholic Church.","source":"https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Bernard-de-Clairvaux","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"claude-bernard","name":"Claude Bernard","url":"/great-lives/claude-bernard/","dates":"1813–1878","born":1813,"died":1878,"era":"19th-century","categories":["physicians-medicine","scientists-mathematicians"],"knownFor":"French physiologist who established the experimental method in medicine and the idea of the internal environment of the body.","bio":"Claude Bernard was born in 1813 in Saint-Julien, a village in the Beaujolais region of France, where his family grew grapes. He worked as an assistant to a pharmacist in Lyon and wrote plays before a critic advised him to study medicine. In Paris he became assistant to the physiologist François Magendie at the Collège de France, whom he later succeeded as professor. Through careful experiments on animals, Bernard discovered that the liver stores sugar as glycogen and releases it into the blood, showed the role of the pancreas in digestion, and studied how nerves control the widening and narrowing of blood vessels and how poisons such as curare and carbon monoxide act on the body. He developed the idea of the milieu intérieur, the internal environment that the body keeps stable, which later inspired the concept of homeostasis. His Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine (1865) explained his method of hypothesis and controlled experiment. He was given a state funeral when he died in Paris in 1878.","keyDates":[{"date":"1813","event":"Born in Saint-Julien, France"},{"date":"1855","event":"Succeeds Magendie at the Collège de France"},{"date":"1865","event":"Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine"},{"date":"1868","event":"Elected to the Académie française"},{"date":"1878","event":"Dies in Paris; state funeral"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Claude Bernard","relatedWorks":["bernard-introduction-to-experimental-medicine"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"bernard-introduction-to-experimental-medicine","url":"/works/bernard-introduction-to-experimental-medicine/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Sometimes described as an agnostic; after his death a cardinal claimed he had been a fervent Catholic. His beliefs remain uncertain.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Bernard","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"wendell-berry","name":"Wendell Berry","url":"/great-lives/wendell-berry/","dates":"1934–2026","born":1934,"died":2026,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American farmer, poet, novelist and essayist of rural Kentucky, author of The Unsettling of America and the Port William novels.","bio":"Wendell Berry was born in 1934 in Louisville, Kentucky. His father was a lawyer and tobacco farmer, and both sides of his family had farmed in Henry County for at least five generations. He earned bachelor's and master's degrees in English at the University of Kentucky and in 1957 married Tanya Amyx. In 1958 he studied creative writing at Stanford University as a Wallace Stegner Fellow. He taught English at New York University and, from 1964, creative writing at the University of Kentucky. On July 4, 1965, he and his family moved to Lane's Landing, a small farm near Port Royal in Henry County, where he farmed and wrote for the rest of his life. His essays, including The Unsettling of America (1977) and The Gift of Good Land (1981), defend small family farms, local communities and care for the land. His novels and stories, such as Jayber Crow (2000) and Hannah Coulter (2004), are set in the imagined Kentucky town of Port William. He received the National Humanities Medal. He died at home in Port Royal on August 31, 2026, aged 92.","keyDates":[{"date":"1934","event":"Born in Louisville, Kentucky"},{"date":"1965","event":"Moves to Lane's Landing farm"},{"date":"1977","event":"The Unsettling of America published"},{"date":"2000","event":"Jayber Crow published"},{"date":"2026","event":"Dies in Port Royal, Kentucky"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Wendell Berry","relatedWorks":["the-art-of-the-commonplace"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-art-of-the-commonplace","url":"/works/the-art-of-the-commonplace/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Calls himself a Christian and 'a person who takes the Gospel seriously', while criticizing Christian organizations.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendell_Berry","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["Death date (August 31, 2026) confirmed from AP News and the Berry family statement; recent event."]},{"slug":"otto-von-bismarck","name":"Otto von Bismarck","url":"/great-lives/otto-von-bismarck/","dates":"1815–1898","born":1815,"died":1898,"era":"19th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"Prussian statesman who unified Germany and became its first chancellor.","bio":"Otto von Bismarck came from a family of Prussian landowners, called Junkers. After a wild youth he entered politics and diplomacy, and in 1862 King William I made him minister-president of Prussia. He declared that the great questions of the day would be decided not by speeches and majority votes but by iron and blood. Through three short wars, against Denmark in 1864, Austria in 1866 and France in 1870 and 1871, he united the German states under Prussian leadership. In January 1871 William was proclaimed German Emperor in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, and Bismarck became chancellor. For nearly twenty years he kept peace in Europe through a web of alliances. At home he fought the Catholic Church in the Kulturkampf and tried to suppress the socialists, but he also created the world's first national programs of health, accident and old-age insurance for workers. The young emperor William II dismissed him in 1890. He died in 1898.","keyDates":[{"date":"1862","event":"Becomes minister-president of Prussia"},{"date":"1866","event":"Defeats Austria"},{"date":"1871","event":"German Empire proclaimed; becomes chancellor"},{"date":"1883–1889","event":"Worker insurance laws"},{"date":"1890","event":"Dismissed by William II"},{"date":"1898","event":"Dies"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"His firm style of government earned him the nickname 'the Iron Chancellor'.","source":{"title":"Otto von Bismarck (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_von_Bismarck"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A Protestant who led a struggle against the Roman Catholic Church in the 1870s.","source":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Bismarck%2C_Otto_Eduard_Leopold_von","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica (1911) (via Wikisource)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"william-blackstone","name":"William Blackstone","url":"/great-lives/william-blackstone/","dates":"1723–1780","born":1723,"died":1780,"era":"18th-century","categories":["legal-scholars-lawgivers"],"knownFor":"English jurist whose Commentaries on the Laws of England taught law in Britain and America.","bio":"William Blackstone was born in London, the son of a silk merchant who died before his birth; his mother died when he was twelve. He studied at Oxford, became a fellow of All Souls College, and trained as a barrister, though he had little success in practice at first. In 1753 he began giving the first lectures on English common law ever offered at an English university, and in 1758 he became the first Vinerian Professor of English Law at Oxford. His lectures became the four volumes of the Commentaries on the Laws of England, published from 1765 to 1769. Written in clear, elegant prose, the Commentaries explained the rights of persons, the rights of things, private wrongs and public wrongs, and described English law as grounded in natural law and protecting the absolute rights of personal security, personal liberty and private property. He wrote that it is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer. The Commentaries became the main way lawyers learned law in America for a century. Blackstone later served in Parliament and as a judge. He died in 1780.","keyDates":[{"date":"1753","event":"Begins lectures on English law at Oxford"},{"date":"1758","event":"First Vinerian Professor"},{"date":"1765–1769","event":"Commentaries on the Laws of England"},{"date":"1770","event":"Becomes a judge"},{"date":"1780","event":"Dies at Wallingford"}],"quotes":[],"author":"William Blackstone","relatedWorks":["commentaries-on-the-laws-of-england"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"commentaries-on-the-laws-of-england","url":"/works/commentaries-on-the-laws-of-england/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"The town of Blackstone, Virginia, is named after him.","source":{"title":"William Blackstone (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Blackstone"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Blackstone","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"elizabeth-blackwell","name":"Elizabeth Blackwell","url":"/great-lives/elizabeth-blackwell/","dates":"1821–1910","born":1821,"died":1910,"era":"19th-century","categories":["physicians-medicine"],"knownFor":"First woman to earn a medical degree in the United States.","bio":"Elizabeth Blackwell was born in Bristol, England, and moved with her family to New York at eleven and later to Cincinnati. Her father, a sugar refiner who opposed slavery, died soon after, and she worked as a teacher to support her family. A dying friend told her she would have suffered less if she had been treated by a woman doctor, and Blackwell decided to become one. In 1847 Geneva Medical College in New York accepted her after the students, thinking it was a joke, voted to admit her. She faced hostility but graduated first in her class in 1849. She continued her training in Paris, where an eye infection caught from a patient cost her sight in one eye and ended her hope of becoming a surgeon, and in London. Back in New York, unable to get hospital posts, she opened a dispensary for poor women and children, and in 1857, with her sister Emily and Marie Zakrzewska, the New York Infirmary for Women and Children, later adding a medical college for women. She moved to England in 1869 and died in 1910.","keyDates":[{"date":"1847","event":"Admitted to Geneva Medical College"},{"date":"1849","event":"Earns her medical degree"},{"date":"1857","event":"Opens the New York Infirmary for Women and Children"},{"date":"1868","event":"Women's Medical College opens"},{"date":"1910","event":"Dies in Hastings, England"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[{"text":"In 1849 she became the first woman to earn a medical degree in the United States.","source":{"title":"Elizabeth Blackwell (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Blackwell"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Raised by a Congregationalist father; she attended services of many denominations. Her adult beliefs are not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Blackwell","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"william-blake","name":"William Blake","url":"/great-lives/william-blake/","dates":"1757–1827","born":1757,"died":1827,"era":"18th-century","categories":["writers-poets","artists-composers-architects"],"knownFor":"English poet, painter and printmaker, author of Songs of Innocence and of Experience.","bio":"William Blake was born in London in 1757, the son of a hosier. He left school at ten, having learned to read and write, and as a child he described visions such as angels among the haystacks. At fourteen he was apprenticed to an engraver, and he later studied at the Royal Academy. He earned his living mainly as an engraver of book illustrations. In 1782 he married Catherine Boucher, who helped him with his work. Blake invented a method he called relief etching, which let him print his poems and pictures together on the same copper plate; he and Catherine then coloured the pages by hand. In this way he produced Songs of Innocence and of Experience, which include 'The Lamb' and 'The Tyger'. He also wrote long prophetic books, such as Jerusalem, and made paintings and engravings, including illustrations for the Book of Job and Dante's Divine Comedy. He was largely unrecognised in his lifetime, and many contemporaries thought him mad. He died in London in 1827. Today he is seen as one of the great figures of English poetry and art.","keyDates":[{"date":"1757","event":"Born in London"},{"date":"1772","event":"Apprenticed to an engraver"},{"date":"1782","event":"Marries Catherine Boucher"},{"date":"1788","event":"Invents relief etching"},{"date":"1827","event":"Dies in London"}],"quotes":[],"author":"William Blake","relatedWorks":["the-tyger","songs-of-innocence-and-of-experience","the-lamb"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-tyger","url":"/works/the-tyger/"},{"band":"3-5","kind":"library","work":"the-lamb","url":"/works/the-lamb/"},{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"songs-of-innocence-and-of-experience","url":"/works/songs-of-innocence-and-of-experience/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A Christian visionary hostile to the Church of England and to almost all organised religion.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Blake","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"eugen-bleuler","name":"Eugen Bleuler","url":"/great-lives/eugen-bleuler/","dates":"1857–1939","born":1857,"died":1939,"era":"19th-century","categories":["physicians-medicine"],"knownFor":"Swiss psychiatrist who coined the terms schizophrenia and autism and directed the Burghölzli hospital in Zurich.","bio":"Eugen Bleuler was born in 1857 in Zollikon, near Zurich, Switzerland, the son of a farmer. He studied medicine in Zurich and trained in psychiatry at the Waldau hospital near Bern, and then worked in Paris, London and Munich. He then directed the psychiatric hospital at Rheinau, in an old monastery on an island in the Rhine, where he lived closely with his patients. In 1898 he became professor of psychiatry at the University of Zurich and director of the Burghölzli psychiatric hospital, where his assistants included Carl Jung. Bleuler was interested in Sigmund Freud's ideas and helped introduce psychoanalysis to university psychiatry. In his book Dementia Praecox, or the Group of Schizophrenias (1911), he proposed the term schizophrenia, meaning 'split mind', for the illness Emil Kraepelin had called dementia praecox, describing it as a group of disorders rather than a single disease. He also coined the terms autism and ambivalence. He supported eugenic measures, as did many psychiatrists of his time. He retired in 1927 and died in Zollikon in 1939.","keyDates":[{"date":"1857","event":"Born in Zollikon, Switzerland"},{"date":"1880s–1890s","event":"Director of the Rheinau hospital"},{"date":"1898","event":"Director of the Burghölzli in Zurich"},{"date":"1911","event":"Dementia Praecox, or the Group of Schizophrenias"},{"date":"1939","event":"Dies in Zollikon"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Eugen Bleuler","relatedWorks":["dementia-praecox-or-the-group-of-schizophrenias"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"dementia-praecox-or-the-group-of-schizophrenias","url":"/works/dementia-praecox-or-the-group-of-schizophrenias/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugen_Bleuler","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"giovanni-boccaccio","name":"Giovanni Boccaccio","url":"/great-lives/giovanni-boccaccio/","dates":"1313–1375","born":1313,"died":1375,"era":"medieval","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Florentine author of the Decameron, friend of Petrarch, and early champion of Dante, one of the founders of Renaissance humanism.","bio":"Giovanni Boccaccio was born in 1313, in Florence or nearby Certaldo, the son of the Florentine merchant Boccaccino di Chellino; his mother is unknown. As a boy he went to Naples, where his father worked for the Bardi bank. He disliked banking, studied canon law, and found his vocation in poetry at the court of King Robert, writing Il Filostrato and the Teseida, which Chaucer later reworked. Back in Florence from about 1341, he wrote the Decameron in the years after the Black Death of 1348, a hundred tales told by ten young people fleeing the plague. From 1350 he was a close friend of Petrarch, whom he called his teacher. He served Florence as an envoy, encouraged the study of Greek, took minor orders, and wrote Latin works of learning, among them On Famous Women and a genealogy of the pagan gods. He wrote a life of Dante and in 1373 began public lectures on the Divine Comedy. He died at Certaldo in 1375.","keyDates":[{"date":"1313","event":"Born in Florence or Certaldo"},{"date":"1320s","event":"Goes to Naples, where he trains in banking and studies canon law"},{"date":"c. 1341","event":"Returns to Florence"},{"date":"1348","event":"The Black Death strikes Florence"},{"date":"c. 1349–1353","event":"Writes the Decameron"},{"date":"1350","event":"Meets Petrarch in Florence; they remain lifelong friends"},{"date":"1373","event":"Begins public lectures on Dante's Divine Comedy in Florence"},{"date":"1375","event":"Dies at Certaldo"}],"quotes":[{"text":"'Tis humane to have compassion on the afflicted","work":"the-decameron","location":"Proem","verified":true},{"text":"whoso goes a reading among these stories, let him pass over those that vex him, and read those that please him","work":"the-decameron","location":"The Author's Conclusion","verified":true}],"author":"Giovanni Boccaccio","relatedWorks":["the-decameron","the-canterbury-tales","troilus-and-criseyde","the-divine-comedy"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-decameron","url":"/works/the-decameron/"}],"majorWorks":[{"title":"Il Filostrato","year":"c. 1338","note":"Verse romance of Troilus and Criseida, the source of Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde","work":null,"url":null},{"title":"Teseida","year":"c. 1340–1341","note":"Epic of Theseus, Arcita, and Palemone, reworked by Chaucer as The Knight's Tale","work":null,"url":null},{"title":"The Decameron","year":"c. 1349–1353","note":"A hundred tales told during the plague of 1348","work":"the-decameron","url":"/works/the-decameron/"},{"title":"Life of Dante (Trattatello in laude di Dante)","year":"1350s","note":"His admiring biography of Dante","work":null,"url":null},{"title":"On Famous Women (De mulieribus claris)","year":"1361–1375","note":"Latin lives of famous women, ancient and medieval","work":null,"url":null},{"title":"Genealogy of the Pagan Gods (Genealogia deorum gentilium)","year":"1360, revised later","note":"Latin reference work on classical mythology and a defense of poetry","work":null,"url":null},{"title":"Commentary on the Divine Comedy (Esposizioni)","year":"1373–1374","note":"His unfinished public lectures on Dante's Inferno","work":null,"url":null}],"funFacts":[{"text":"A revised copy of the Decameron in Boccaccio's own hand, made late in his life, survives in Berlin; the scholar Vittore Branca identified it in 1962 as Codex Hamilton 90.","source":{"title":"The Decameron (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Decameron"}},{"text":"At his death his library went to the monastery of Santo Spirito in Florence.","source":{"title":"Giovanni Boccaccio (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Boccaccio"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Catholic; he took minor orders in the 1350s, and his later Latin and Dante writings are more devout than the Decameron. A story that he renounced the Decameron as profane in 1362 is not well supported.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Boccaccio","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["His birthplace is uncertain: modern sources give Florence or Certaldo, and older accounts, including the 1903 translator's introduction in the library's Decameron, say Paris."]},{"slug":"boethius","name":"Boethius","url":"/great-lives/boethius/","dates":"c. 477–524","born":477,"died":524,"era":"medieval","categories":["philosophers","statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"Roman statesman who wrote The Consolation of Philosophy while awaiting execution.","bio":"Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius was born into a noble Roman family a year or so after the last western Roman emperor was deposed. Orphaned young, he was raised by the senator Symmachus, whose daughter he married. Italy was then ruled by Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths, and Boethius served him as consul in 510 and later as master of offices, one of the highest posts in the government. A brilliant scholar, he planned to translate all of Plato and Aristotle into Latin; he completed Aristotle's works on logic, and wrote textbooks on arithmetic and music used in schools for centuries, as well as short works of Christian theology. Around 523 he defended a fellow senator accused of plotting with the emperor in Constantinople, and was himself accused of treason. He was imprisoned at Pavia and executed in about 524. In prison he wrote The Consolation of Philosophy, in which Lady Philosophy visits him and teaches him that true happiness cannot be taken away by fortune. It became one of the most widely read books of the Middle Ages.","keyDates":[{"date":"510","event":"Consul of Rome"},{"date":"522","event":"Becomes master of offices"},{"date":"c. 523","event":"Arrested for treason"},{"date":"c. 524","event":"Writes the Consolation; executed at Pavia"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Boethius","relatedWorks":["the-consolation-of-philosophy"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-consolation-of-philosophy","url":"/works/the-consolation-of-philosophy/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"A crater on the Moon was named after him in 1976.","source":{"title":"Boethius (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boethius"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A Christian Roman aristocrat involved in the church disputes of his time.","source":"https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/boethius/","sourceName":"Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"eugen-von-bohm-bawerk","name":"Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk","url":"/great-lives/eugen-von-bohm-bawerk/","dates":"1851–1914","born":1851,"died":1914,"era":"19th-century","categories":["philosophers"],"knownFor":"Austrian economist and finance minister of the Austrian School, known for his theory of capital and interest and his critique of Marx.","bio":"Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk was born in 1851 in Brünn, Moravia, now Brno in the Czech Republic, the son of a senior Austrian official. He studied law at the University of Vienna and, after reading Carl Menger's Principles of Economics, became with Friedrich von Wieser one of Menger's leading followers. As a professor at Innsbruck he wrote Capital and Interest (1884–89), a history and critique of theories of interest followed by his own positive theory, which explained interest by the different values people place on present and future goods. He served three times as Austrian minister of finance, in 1895, 1897–98 and 1900–1904, defending a balanced budget and a stable currency. In 1896 he published Karl Marx and the Close of His System, a critique of the labour theory of value in Capital. From 1904 he taught at the University of Vienna, where his seminar included Ludwig von Mises and Joseph Schumpeter. He died in Kramsach, in the Tyrol, in 1914.","keyDates":[{"date":"1851","event":"Born in Brünn, Moravia"},{"date":"1884","event":"First volume of Capital and Interest published"},{"date":"1889","event":"The Positive Theory of Capital published"},{"date":"1895","event":"First term as Austrian minister of finance"},{"date":"1896","event":"Karl Marx and the Close of His System published in German"},{"date":"1900–1904","event":"Third and longest term as minister of finance"},{"date":"1904","event":"Returns to teaching at the University of Vienna"},{"date":"1914","event":"Dies in Kramsach, Tyrol"}],"quotes":[{"text":"The Marxian system has a past and a present, but no abiding future.","work":"bohm-bawerk-karl-marx-and-the-close-of-his-system","location":"Chapter V: Werner Sombart's Apology","verified":true},{"text":"He acts as one who urgently desiring to bring a white ball out of an urn takes care to secure this result by putting in white balls only.","work":"bohm-bawerk-karl-marx-and-the-close-of-his-system","location":"Chapter IV: The Error in the Marxian System, Its Origin and Ramifications","verified":true}],"author":"Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk","relatedWorks":["bohm-bawerk-karl-marx-and-the-close-of-his-system","marx-capital-volume-i","menger-principles-of-economics","mises-socialism"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"bohm-bawerk-karl-marx-and-the-close-of-his-system","url":"/works/bohm-bawerk-karl-marx-and-the-close-of-his-system/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"menger-principles-of-economics","url":"/works/menger-principles-of-economics/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"mises-economic-calculation-in-the-socialist-commonwealth","url":"/works/mises-economic-calculation-in-the-socialist-commonwealth/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"mises-socialism","url":"/works/mises-socialism/"}],"majorWorks":[{"title":"Capital and Interest (Kapital und Kapitalzins), vol. 1: History and Critique of Interest Theories","year":"1884","note":"English translation by William Smart, 1890","work":null,"url":null},{"title":"The Positive Theory of Capital (vol. 2 of Capital and Interest)","year":"1889","note":"His own theory of interest from the time preference for present goods; English translation by Smart, 1891","work":null,"url":null},{"title":"Karl Marx and the Close of His System","year":"1896","note":null,"work":"bohm-bawerk-karl-marx-and-the-close-of-his-system","url":"/works/bohm-bawerk-karl-marx-and-the-close-of-his-system/"},{"title":"Control or Economic Law? (Macht oder ökonomisches Gesetz?)","year":"1914","note":"His last essay, on whether power can override the laws of the market","work":null,"url":null}],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugen_von_B%C3%B6hm-Bawerk","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"niels-bohr","name":"Niels Bohr","url":"/great-lives/niels-bohr/","dates":"1885–1962","born":1885,"died":1962,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["scientists-mathematicians"],"knownFor":"Danish physicist who explained the structure of the atom using quantum ideas.","bio":"Niels Bohr was born in Copenhagen, Denmark; his father was a professor of physiology and his mother came from a Jewish banking family. He and his brother Harald were both excellent footballers. After earning his doctorate he worked in England with Ernest Rutherford, who had discovered that atoms have a small, heavy nucleus. In 1913 Bohr proposed that electrons orbit the nucleus only at certain fixed energy levels and give off or absorb light when they jump between them, which explained the colors of light given off by hydrogen. He received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922. His institute in Copenhagen became the world center for the new quantum physics, and he debated its meaning for years with Einstein. In 1943, under German occupation, Bohr, whose mother was Jewish, escaped by fishing boat to Sweden; he helped persuade Sweden to offer refuge to Danish Jews. He then went to Britain and the United States and advised on the atomic bomb project. After the war he urged international control of atomic weapons and helped found CERN. He died in 1962.","keyDates":[{"date":"1885","event":"Born in Copenhagen"},{"date":"1913","event":"Model of the atom"},{"date":"1921","event":"Institute for Theoretical Physics opens"},{"date":"1922","event":"Nobel Prize in Physics"},{"date":"1943","event":"Escapes to Sweden"},{"date":"1962","event":"Dies in Copenhagen"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"The chemical element bohrium (number 107), the asteroid 3948 Bohr and a crater on the Moon are all named after him.","source":{"title":"Niels Bohr (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niels_Bohr"}}],"records":[{"text":"In 1957 he received the first-ever Atoms for Peace Award.","source":{"title":"Niels Bohr (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niels_Bohr"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented; his mother came from a Jewish family.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niels_Bohr","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[{"series":"Very Short Introductions","title":"Niels Bohr: A Very Short Introduction","author":"J. L. Heilbron","publisher":"Oxford University Press","year":2020,"isbn13":"9780198819264","url":"https://bookshop.org/a/130650/9780198819264"}],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"w-e-b-du-bois","name":"W. E. B. Du Bois","url":"/great-lives/w-e-b-du-bois/","dates":"1868–1963","born":1868,"died":1963,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets","statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"American sociologist, historian and civil rights leader, author of The Souls of Black Folk and co-founder of the NAACP.","bio":"William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was born in 1868 in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. He studied at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, and then at Harvard University and the University of Berlin. In 1895 he became the first African American to earn a doctorate from Harvard. He taught at Wilberforce University and the University of Pennsylvania, where he carried out a pioneering study, The Philadelphia Negro (1899), and then for many years at Atlanta University. In The Souls of Black Folk (1903) he described the 'double consciousness' of Black Americans and challenged Booker T. Washington's view that Black people should accept segregation for the time being and concentrate on vocational training. In 1905 he helped start the Niagara Movement, which demanded full civil rights, and in 1909 he was one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). He edited its magazine, The Crisis. He also wrote histories, including Black Reconstruction in America (1935), and novels, and he supported the Pan-African movement. Late in life he moved to Ghana, where he died in 1963, the day before the March on Washington.","keyDates":[{"date":"1868","event":"Born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts"},{"date":"1895","event":"First African American to earn a Harvard doctorate"},{"date":"1903","event":"The Souls of Black Folk published"},{"date":"1909","event":"Helps found the NAACP"},{"date":"1910","event":"Begins editing The Crisis"},{"date":"1963","event":"Dies in Ghana"}],"quotes":[],"author":"W. E. B. Du Bois","relatedWorks":["the-souls-of-black-folk"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-souls-of-black-folk","url":"/works/the-souls-of-black-folk/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[{"text":"He was the first African American to earn a doctorate at Harvard University.","source":{"title":"W. E. B. Du Bois (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._E._B._Du_Bois"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Attended a Congregational church as a child; as an adult he called himself agnostic and a freethinker.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._E._B._Du_Bois","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"simon-bolivar","name":"Simón Bolívar","url":"/great-lives/simon-bolivar/","dates":"1783–1830","born":1783,"died":1830,"era":"19th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders","military-leaders"],"knownFor":"The Liberator, who led much of South America to independence from Spain.","bio":"Simón Bolívar was born in Caracas, Venezuela, into a rich family of Spanish descent, and was orphaned as a child. He studied in Europe, where his young wife died soon after their marriage, and in Rome in 1805 he swore to free his homeland from Spain. When Napoleon's invasion of Spain weakened Spanish rule, revolts broke out across South America. Bolívar fought for years, with many defeats and exiles. In 1819 he led his army across the flooded plains and freezing Andes passes to win the battle of Boyacá, freeing New Granada, now Colombia. Further victories freed Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru and Upper Peru, which named itself Bolivia in his honor. He became president of Gran Colombia, a large republic he hoped would hold the region together, and he freed people he had held in slavery. But rival leaders and regions pulled apart, he grew more authoritarian, and he survived an assassination attempt. Ill with tuberculosis, he resigned in 1830 and died that December at Santa Marta.","keyDates":[{"date":"1783","event":"Born in Caracas"},{"date":"1805","event":"Vows in Rome to free South America"},{"date":"1819","event":"Victory at Boyacá"},{"date":"1824","event":"Victories in Peru end Spanish power"},{"date":"1830","event":"Resigns and dies at Santa Marta"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"The country of Bolivia is named after him.","source":{"title":"Simón Bolívar (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sim%C3%B3n_Bol%C3%ADvar"}},{"text":"As a child he was famously unruly and neglected his studies.","source":{"title":"Simón Bolívar (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sim%C3%B3n_Bol%C3%ADvar"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Baptized Catholic; the extent of his religiosity is debated.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sim%C3%B3n_Bol%C3%ADvar","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"bonaventure","name":"Bonaventure","url":"/great-lives/bonaventure/","dates":"1221–1274","born":1221,"died":1274,"era":"medieval","categories":["theologians-church-fathers","saints-reformers"],"knownFor":"Italian Franciscan theologian, minister general of the Franciscan order and author of The Journey of the Mind into God.","bio":"Bonaventure was born Giovanni di Fidanza around 1221 in Bagnoregio, in central Italy. According to a later story, he was cured of a childhood illness through the prayers of Francis of Assisi. He went to study at the University of Paris, joined the Franciscan order, and became a master of theology there, teaching at the same time as Thomas Aquinas. In 1257 he was elected minister general of the Franciscans, which he led for about seventeen years during a period of internal disputes, and he wrote the official life of Saint Francis for the order. In 1259 he visited Mount La Verna, where Francis had received the stigmata, and there wrote The Journey of the Mind into God, a short work describing the soul's ascent to God through the created world, the mind and contemplation. Pope Gregory X made him a cardinal and bishop of Albano in 1273. He died in 1274 during the Second Council of Lyon. He was canonized in 1482 and named a Doctor of the Church.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 1221","event":"Born in Bagnoregio"},{"date":"1257","event":"Elected minister general of the Franciscans"},{"date":"1259","event":"Writes The Journey of the Mind into God at La Verna"},{"date":"1273","event":"Made a cardinal"},{"date":"1274","event":"Dies at the Council of Lyon"},{"date":"1482","event":"Canonized"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Bonaventure","relatedWorks":["the-journey-of-the-mind-into-god"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-journey-of-the-mind-into-god","url":"/works/the-journey-of-the-mind-into-god/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Franciscan friar and theologian who became a bishop and cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church.","source":"https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/bonaventure/","sourceName":"Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"michael-bond","name":"Michael Bond","url":"/great-lives/michael-bond/","dates":"1926–2017","born":1926,"died":2017,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"English author of the Paddington Bear books.","bio":"Thomas Michael Bond was born in 1926 in Newbury, Berkshire, and grew up in Reading, where his father was a post office manager. He left school at fourteen, during the Second World War, and worked in a solicitor's office and then as an engineer's assistant at the BBC. In 1943 he survived an air raid on Reading. He volunteered for the Royal Air Force but was discharged because of severe air sickness, and then served in the Middlesex Regiment until 1947. After the war he worked as a television cameraman for the BBC, including on the children's program Blue Peter. In 1956 he bought a small toy bear in a London shop as a Christmas present for his wife and named it Paddington after the nearby railway station. The bear inspired A Bear Called Paddington (1958), about a polite bear from 'darkest Peru' who arrives at Paddington Station with a suitcase and a label asking someone to look after him. More than twenty Paddington books followed, as well as stories about a guinea pig, Olga da Polga. He died in London in 2017.","keyDates":[{"date":"1926","event":"Born in Newbury, Berkshire"},{"date":"1943","event":"Survives an air raid on Reading"},{"date":"1956","event":"Buys the toy bear that inspired Paddington"},{"date":"1958","event":"A Bear Called Paddington published"},{"date":"2017","event":"Dies in London"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Michael Bond","relatedWorks":["a-bear-called-paddington"],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"library","work":"a-bear-called-paddington","url":"/works/a-bear-called-paddington/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"Before Paddington, he worked as a BBC television cameraman, including on the children's programme Blue Peter.","source":{"title":"Michael Bond (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Bond"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Bond","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"dietrich-bonhoeffer","name":"Dietrich Bonhoeffer","url":"/great-lives/dietrich-bonhoeffer/","dates":"1906–1945","born":1906,"died":1945,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["theologians-church-fathers","saints-reformers"],"knownFor":"German pastor and theologian executed for resisting Hitler.","bio":"Dietrich Bonhoeffer was born in Breslau, Germany, one of eight children in a distinguished family; his father was a leading psychiatrist. He earned a doctorate in theology at twenty-one. While studying in New York in 1930 and 1931 he worshipped at the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem. When Hitler came to power in 1933, Bonhoeffer spoke out against the Nazi control of the church and its treatment of Jews, and he helped form the Confessing Church, which refused to accept Nazi rule over the church. He led a secret seminary for its pastors at Finkenwalde until the government closed it, and wrote The Cost of Discipleship, which contrasts cheap grace with costly grace. In 1939 he returned to Germany from America, believing he must share his people's trials. He joined the resistance through his brother-in-law, worked as a double agent in military intelligence, and helped Jews escape to Switzerland. Arrested in 1943, he wrote letters from prison that were later published. He was hanged at Flossenbürg concentration camp on 9 April 1945, two weeks before American troops liberated it.","keyDates":[{"date":"1906","event":"Born in Breslau"},{"date":"1933","event":"Opposes Nazi control of the church"},{"date":"1935","event":"Leads the Finkenwalde seminary"},{"date":"1937","event":"The Cost of Discipleship"},{"date":"1943","event":"Arrested"},{"date":"1945","event":"Executed at Flossenbürg"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Dietrich Bonhoeffer","relatedWorks":["the-cost-of-discipleship","letters-and-papers-from-prison","metaxas-bonhoeffer"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-cost-of-discipleship","url":"/works/the-cost-of-discipleship/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"letters-and-papers-from-prison","url":"/works/letters-and-papers-from-prison/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"metaxas-bonhoeffer","url":"/works/metaxas-bonhoeffer/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"He learned to play the piano at eight.","source":{"title":"Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietrich_Bonhoeffer"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"German Lutheran pastor, ordained in 1931, who opposed the Nazi-controlled state church.","source":"https://iep.utm.edu/bonhoeff/","sourceName":"Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"george-boole","name":"George Boole","url":"/great-lives/george-boole/","dates":"1815–1864","born":1815,"died":1864,"era":"19th-century","categories":["scientists-mathematicians"],"knownFor":"English mathematician who created Boolean algebra, the logic of true and false later used in computers.","bio":"George Boole was born in 1815 in Lincoln, England, the son of a shoemaker who loved science and instruments. The family was poor, and George largely taught himself mathematics and languages, including Latin and Greek. At sixteen he began working as an assistant teacher to help support his family, and he later ran his own schools. In his spare time he studied advanced mathematics and published research papers, and in 1844 he received a gold medal from the Royal Society. His book The Mathematical Analysis of Logic (1847) showed that logical reasoning could be written in algebraic symbols. Although he had no university degree, he was appointed in 1849 as the first professor of mathematics at Queen's College, Cork, in Ireland. His major work, An Investigation of the Laws of Thought (1854), developed what is now called Boolean algebra, in which statements are treated as true or false and combined with operations such as AND, OR and NOT. Nearly a century later, this became the basis of digital circuits and computers. He died in Ireland in 1864.","keyDates":[{"date":"1815","event":"Born in Lincoln, England"},{"date":"1844","event":"Royal Society gold medal"},{"date":"1847","event":"The Mathematical Analysis of Logic"},{"date":"1849","event":"First professor of mathematics at Queen's College, Cork"},{"date":"1854","event":"The Laws of Thought published"},{"date":"1864","event":"Dies near Cork"}],"quotes":[],"author":"George Boole","relatedWorks":["laws-of-thought"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"laws-of-thought","url":"/works/laws-of-thought/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"Boolean algebra, the logic used inside every computer, is named after him, and so is a crater on the Moon.","source":{"title":"George Boole (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Boole"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Biographers describe him as an 'agnostic deist' who read Christian theology widely and was drawn to Unitarianism.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Boole","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"daniel-boone","name":"Daniel Boone","url":"/great-lives/daniel-boone/","dates":"1734–1820","born":1734,"died":1820,"era":"18th-century","categories":["explorers"],"knownFor":"Frontiersman who blazed the Wilderness Road through the Cumberland Gap into Kentucky.","bio":"Daniel Boone was born in Pennsylvania to a Quaker family and grew up a skilled hunter and woodsman. His family moved to the Yadkin Valley of North Carolina, and he served as a wagon driver in the French and Indian War. Fascinated by stories of Kentucky, he made long hunting trips there in the late 1760s. In 1775, working for the Transylvania Company, he led a party of axmen who cut the Wilderness Road through the Cumberland Gap and founded the settlement of Boonesborough on the Kentucky River. The road became the main route by which tens of thousands of settlers crossed the Appalachian Mountains. During the American Revolution, Shawnee warriors captured Boone in 1778 and adopted him into their tribe, but he escaped to warn Boonesborough of an attack, and the fort held. He later served as a militia officer and state legislator, but lost most of his land in disputed claims. In 1799 he moved west to Spanish Missouri, where he hunted into old age. A popular 1784 book made him a frontier legend in his own lifetime. He died in Missouri in 1820.","keyDates":[{"date":"1734","event":"Born in Pennsylvania"},{"date":"1775","event":"Blazes the Wilderness Road; founds Boonesborough"},{"date":"1778","event":"Captured and adopted by the Shawnee"},{"date":"1799","event":"Moves to Missouri"},{"date":"1820","event":"Dies in Missouri"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"book","title":"Who Was Daniel Boone?","author":"Sydelle Kramer","isbn13":"9780448439020","publisher":"Grosset & Dunlap","year":2006,"format":""}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"In 1778, after escaping from captivity, he raced home to warn Boonesborough, covering 160 miles in five days.","source":{"title":"Daniel Boone (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Boone"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Raised in an English Quaker family.","source":"https://www.britannica.com/biography/Daniel-Boone","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"william-and-catherine-booth","name":"William and Catherine Booth","url":"/great-lives/william-and-catherine-booth/","dates":"1829–1912 and 1829–1890","born":1829,"died":1912,"era":"19th-century","categories":["saints-reformers"],"knownFor":"Methodist evangelists who founded the Salvation Army in London's East End and campaigned for the poor.","bio":"William Booth was born in Nottingham in 1829 and worked as a pawnbroker's apprentice before becoming a Methodist preacher. Catherine Mumford, born in Derbyshire the same year, was a devout reader of theology who married him in 1855. In 1860 she began to preach, and her pamphlet Female Ministry (1859) defended women's right to preach. In 1865 the Booths began an independent mission among the poor of London's East End, which in 1878 took the name the Salvation Army, with uniforms, ranks, brass bands and open-air meetings, and with women serving as officers alongside men. The Army spread rapidly across Britain and abroad, despite violent opposition from mobs. It opened shelters, food depots and rescue homes. Catherine died of cancer in 1890. That year William published In Darkest England and the Way Out, a plan of farm and overseas colonies to employ the destitute. He travelled widely as the Army's general until his death in London in 1912, by which time it worked in dozens of countries. They held that preaching the gospel and practical mercy belong together.","keyDates":[{"date":"1829","event":"Both born"},{"date":"1855","event":"Married"},{"date":"1865","event":"East London mission begins"},{"date":"1878","event":"Named the Salvation Army"},{"date":"1890","event":"Catherine dies; In Darkest England published"},{"date":"1912","event":"William dies in London"}],"quotes":[],"author":"William Booth","relatedWorks":["booth-in-darkest-england"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"booth-in-darkest-england","url":"/works/booth-in-darkest-england/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Christian preachers whose mission to the poor in London became The Salvation Army.","source":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Salvation_Army","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica (1911) (via Wikisource)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"james-boswell","name":"James Boswell","url":"/great-lives/james-boswell/","dates":"1740–1795","born":1740,"died":1795,"era":"18th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Scottish lawyer and diarist, author of The Life of Samuel Johnson.","bio":"James Boswell was born in Edinburgh in 1740, the eldest son of a Scottish judge, Lord Auchinleck. He studied law at Edinburgh, Glasgow and Utrecht, though he longed for the excitement of London. In 1763, in the back room of a London bookshop, he met the writer Samuel Johnson, author of the great Dictionary of the English Language, and the two became close friends despite their differences in age and temperament. Boswell traveled through Europe, meeting Voltaire and Rousseau, and visited Corsica, where he befriended the independence leader Pasquale Paoli; his Account of Corsica (1768) made him famous. He practiced law in Edinburgh and later London, but his career was not very successful. In 1773 he and Johnson toured the Scottish Highlands and Hebrides together. Boswell kept detailed journals all his life, recording conversations almost word for word. After Johnson's death he used these notes to write The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), often called the greatest biography in English. Boswell's own journals were rediscovered in the twentieth century. He died in London in 1795.","keyDates":[{"date":"1740","event":"Born in Edinburgh"},{"date":"1763","event":"Meets Samuel Johnson"},{"date":"1768","event":"An Account of Corsica published"},{"date":"1773","event":"Tours the Hebrides with Johnson"},{"date":"1791","event":"The Life of Samuel Johnson published"},{"date":"1795","event":"Dies in London"}],"quotes":[],"author":"James Boswell","relatedWorks":["boswell-life-of-johnson"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"boswell-life-of-johnson","url":"/works/boswell-life-of-johnson/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"As a young man, after meeting Catholics in Glasgow, he resolved to become a Catholic priest.","source":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dictionary_of_National_Biography%2C_1885-1900/Boswell%2C_James_%281740-1795%29","sourceName":"Dictionary of National Biography (1885–1900) (via Wikisource)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"john-boyd","name":"John Boyd","url":"/great-lives/john-boyd/","dates":"1927–1997","born":1927,"died":1997,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["military-leaders"],"knownFor":"American fighter pilot and military strategist who developed energy–maneuverability theory and the OODA loop.","bio":"John Boyd was born in 1927 in Erie, Pennsylvania, one of five children; his father died when he was three. He served in the Army Air Forces at the end of the Second World War and later earned a degree in economics at the University of Iowa. As a fighter pilot in the United States Air Force he flew in the Korean War and then became an instructor at the Fighter Weapons School in Nevada, where he was known as 'Forty-Second Boyd' for his standing bet that he could defeat any opponent in a mock dogfight within forty seconds. His Aerial Attack Study (1960) became a basic manual of air combat tactics. After studying engineering at Georgia Tech, he and the mathematician Thomas Christie developed energy–maneuverability theory, which measures how well an aircraft can gain or lose energy in combat and changed how fighter planes were designed; he helped shape the F-15 and F-16. In his briefings, including Destruction and Creation and Patterns of Conflict, he described the OODA loop: observe, orient, decide, act. He retired as a colonel and died in Florida in 1997.","keyDates":[{"date":"1927","event":"Born in Erie, Pennsylvania"},{"date":"1953","event":"Flies in the Korean War"},{"date":"1960","event":"Aerial Attack Study"},{"date":"1960s","event":"Energy–maneuverability theory with Thomas Christie"},{"date":"1976","event":"Destruction and Creation"},{"date":"1975","event":"Retires from the Air Force"},{"date":"1997","event":"Dies in Florida"}],"quotes":[],"author":"John Boyd","relatedWorks":["destruction-and-creation-and-the-ooda-loop"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"destruction-and-creation-and-the-ooda-loop","url":"/works/destruction-and-creation-and-the-ooda-loop/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented; his father was raised Catholic and his mother was a Presbyterian.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Boyd_%28military_strategist%29","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"robert-boyle","name":"Robert Boyle","url":"/great-lives/robert-boyle/","dates":"1627–1691","born":1627,"died":1691,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["scientists-mathematicians"],"knownFor":"Irish-born chemist and experimenter, known for Boyle's law of gases.","bio":"Robert Boyle was born at Lismore Castle in Ireland, the fourteenth child of the Earl of Cork, one of the richest men in the British Isles. He was educated at Eton and on a long tour of Europe, where he was in Florence when Galileo died. He settled at Oxford, where with his assistant Robert Hooke he built an improved air pump and used it to study air and vacuum. He showed that sound does not travel in a vacuum and that a flame and living creatures need air. In 1662 he published his finding that the pressure and volume of a gas are inversely related, now known as Boyle's law. In The Sceptical Chymist of 1661 he attacked the old idea of four elements and argued for careful experiment in chemistry and for matter made of tiny particles. He insisted on describing experiments in detail so others could repeat them. He was a founding member of the Royal Society. A devout Christian, he paid for translations of the Bible and founded the Boyle Lectures to defend Christianity. He died in London in 1691.","keyDates":[{"date":"1627","event":"Born at Lismore, Ireland"},{"date":"1659","event":"Builds an air pump with Robert Hooke"},{"date":"1660","event":"Helps found the Royal Society"},{"date":"1661","event":"The Sceptical Chymist"},{"date":"1662","event":"Publishes Boyle's law"},{"date":"1691","event":"Dies in London"}],"quotes":[{"text":"if men would more carefully distinguish those things that they know, from those that they ignore or do but think","work":"boyle-the-sceptical-chymist","location":"Physiological Considerations, Part of the First Dialogue","verified":true}],"author":"Robert Boyle","relatedWorks":["boyle-the-sceptical-chymist"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"boyle-the-sceptical-chymist","url":"/works/boyle-the-sceptical-chymist/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"Of all the sciences he worked in, chemistry was his favourite.","source":{"title":"Robert Boyle (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Boyle"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A committed Christian who wrote works of Christian apologetics and endowed the Boyle Lectures.","source":"https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/boyle/","sourceName":"Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"ray-bradbury","name":"Ray Bradbury","url":"/great-lives/ray-bradbury/","dates":"1920–2012","born":1920,"died":2012,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American author of Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles and Dandelion Wine.","bio":"Ray Bradbury was born in Waukegan, Illinois, in 1920. As a boy he loved magic, Buck Rogers comic books and the stories of Edgar Rice Burroughs, and he began writing his own stories at twelve. His family moved several times before settling in Los Angeles in 1934. He did not go to college; after graduating from high school he sold newspapers on street corners and educated himself in public libraries. His first paid stories appeared in pulp magazines in the early 1940s. The Martian Chronicles (1950), linked stories about people settling Mars, made his name. Fahrenheit 451 (1953) describes a future in which firemen burn books and is often read as a warning about censorship and the loss of reading. He also wrote the autobiographical novel Dandelion Wine (1957), set in a small Illinois town in summer, and Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962). He wrote many more short stories, as well as poetry and screenplays, including the film Moby Dick. He married Marguerite McClure in 1947, and they had four daughters. He died in Los Angeles in 2012.","keyDates":[{"date":"1920","event":"Born in Waukegan, Illinois"},{"date":"1934","event":"Family settles in Los Angeles"},{"date":"1950","event":"The Martian Chronicles published"},{"date":"1953","event":"Fahrenheit 451 published"},{"date":"1957","event":"Dandelion Wine published"},{"date":"2012","event":"Dies in Los Angeles"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Ray Bradbury","relatedWorks":["fahrenheit-451"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"fahrenheit-451","url":"/works/fahrenheit-451/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"As a child he collected Tarzan and Buck Rogers comic books, even though other children teased him for it, and he also loved drawing cartoons.","source":{"title":"Ray Bradbury (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Bradbury"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Raised Baptist; as an adult he called himself a 'delicatessen religionist' drawing on Eastern and Western faiths.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Bradbury","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"william-bradford","name":"William Bradford","url":"/great-lives/william-bradford/","dates":"1590–1657","born":1590,"died":1657,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["statesmen-founders","writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Governor of Plymouth Colony for most of its first generation, and author of Of Plymouth Plantation.","bio":"William Bradford was born in March 1590 in Austerfield, Yorkshire, and was baptized there the same month. As a young man he joined the Separatist congregation at Scrooby. When an early plan to leave England was discovered, he was briefly imprisoned; the next year he reached Holland, first Amsterdam and then Leiden, where he learned silk weaving and later went into business. In 1620 he sailed on the Mayflower and was among those who bound themselves, at Cape Cod, in the civil compact later called the Mayflower Compact. After Governor John Carver died in April 1621, Bradford was chosen governor of Plymouth Colony. He was reelected some thirty times and, except for five years, served until 1656. He recorded a formal peace with the Wampanoag sachem Massasoit and wrote the history Of Plimoth Plantation, begun in 1630, in a plain style and in his own spelling. The manuscript disappeared from Boston during the American Revolution, was found in the bishop of London’s library at Fulham, and was returned to Massachusetts in 1897. Bradford died at Plymouth on 9 May 1657.","keyDates":[{"date":"1590","event":"Born in Austerfield, Yorkshire, and baptized there in March"},{"date":"1609","event":"Reaches Holland with the Separatist exiles"},{"date":"1620","event":"Sails on the Mayflower and signs the compact at Cape Cod"},{"date":"1621","event":"Chosen governor after the death of John Carver"},{"date":"1630","event":"Begins the manuscript history Of Plimoth Plantation"},{"date":"1657","event":"Dies at Plymouth on 9 May"}],"quotes":[{"text":"they knew they were pilgrimes, & looked not much on those things, but lift up their eyes to y^e heavens, their dearest cuntrie, and quieted their spirits.","work":"of-plymouth-plantation","location":"The departure from Leyden","verified":true},{"text":"as one small candle may light a thousand, so y^e light here kindled hath shone to many, yea in some sorte to our whole nation; let y^e glorious name of Jehova have all y^e praise.","work":"of-plymouth-plantation","location":"A thanksgiving for the light kindled at Plymouth","verified":true}],"author":"William Bradford","relatedWorks":["of-plymouth-plantation","mourts-relation","mayflower-compact"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"of-plymouth-plantation","url":"/works/of-plymouth-plantation/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"mourts-relation","url":"/works/mourts-relation/"},{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"mayflower-compact","url":"/works/mayflower-compact/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"The manuscript of his history disappeared from Boston during the American Revolution, was found in the Fulham library in London in 1855, and was returned to Massachusetts by the bishop of London in 1897.","source":{"title":"1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, “Bradford, William (governor)” (Wikisource)","url":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Bradford,_William_(governor)"}}],"records":[{"text":"After Governor John Carver died in April 1621, Bradford was elected governor of Plymouth Colony and, except for five years (1633, 1634, 1636, 1638 and 1644), served until shortly before his death.","source":{"title":"1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, “Bradford, William (governor)” (Wikisource)","url":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Bradford,_William_(governor)"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":null,"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"thieleman-j-van-braght","name":"Thieleman J. van Braght","url":"/great-lives/thieleman-j-van-braght/","dates":"1625–1664","born":1625,"died":1664,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["saints-reformers","writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Dutch Mennonite preacher who compiled the Martyrs Mirror (1660), a history of Christians who suffered for their faith.","bio":"Thieleman Janszoon van Braght was born in 1625 in Dordrecht, in the Dutch Republic. Like his father he was a cloth merchant. As a young man he studied languages and learned Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French and German. In 1648 he became a preacher of the Mennonite congregation in his home town, and he served there for sixteen years. Mennonites are Anabaptists, who baptize believers on their confession of faith and refuse to take up arms. Van Braght was a skilled debater who defended Mennonite teaching on infant baptism and other questions, and in 1657 he wrote a book for children, School of Moral Virtue, which went through eighteen editions. He feared that comfort and prosperity were making Dutch Mennonites forget the costly faith of their forebears. He gathered earlier martyr books, letters, court records and testimonies, and searched city archives, to compile The Bloody Theater, or Martyrs Mirror, published in 1660. A second edition of 1685 added more than a hundred engravings by Jan Luyken. He died in 1664, aged thirty-nine.","keyDates":[{"date":"1625","event":"Born in Dordrecht"},{"date":"1648","event":"Becomes a Mennonite preacher in Dordrecht"},{"date":"1657","event":"School of Moral Virtue published"},{"date":"1660","event":"Martyrs Mirror published"},{"date":"1664","event":"Dies"},{"date":"1685","event":"Second edition with engravings by Jan Luyken"}],"quotes":[{"text":"Dirk Willems, perceiving that the former was in danger of his life, quickly returned and aided him in getting out, and thus saved his life.","work":"martyrs-mirror-selections","location":"Dirk Willems (1569)","verified":true}],"author":"Thieleman J. van Braght","relatedWorks":["martyrs-mirror-selections"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"martyrs-mirror-selections","url":"/works/martyrs-mirror-selections/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A Mennonite minister who compiled the Martyrs Mirror of Anabaptist martyrs.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thieleman_J._van_Braght","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["Sources: Wikipedia and GAMEO (Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia, Westra and van der Zijpp 1953)."]},{"slug":"louis-braille","name":"Louis Braille","url":"/great-lives/louis-braille/","dates":"1809–1852","born":1809,"died":1852,"era":"19th-century","categories":["inventors"],"knownFor":"French teacher, blind from childhood, who invented the braille system of raised-dot reading.","bio":"Louis Braille was born in Coupvray, a village near Paris, where his father made harnesses and saddles. At three he injured his eye with a sharp tool in his father's workshop; infection spread, and by five he was completely blind. At ten he won a place at the Royal Institute for Blind Youth in Paris. Its few books used large raised letters, which were heavy and slow to read. When Braille was twelve, an army captain, Charles Barbier, visited the school to show a system of raised dots he had designed so soldiers could read messages at night. Braille saw that it could be made simpler. By fifteen he had developed a code using cells of up to six dots, each small enough to be felt with one fingertip, for letters, numbers and punctuation, and he later added music notation. He became a teacher at the school and was much loved by his pupils. The school was slow to adopt his system officially. He suffered from tuberculosis and died in 1852, at forty-three. Braille is now used throughout the world.","keyDates":[{"date":"1809","event":"Born in Coupvray"},{"date":"1812","event":"Blinded by an accident"},{"date":"1819","event":"Enters the Royal Institute for Blind Youth"},{"date":"1824","event":"Completes his raised-dot code"},{"date":"1829","event":"Publishes his method"},{"date":"1852","event":"Dies in Paris"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["the-story-of-my-life"],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"book","title":"Who Was Louis Braille?","author":"Margaret Frith","isbn13":"9780448479033","publisher":"Grosset & Dunlap","year":2014,"format":""}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"The asteroid 9969 Braille was named after him in 1992, and a 2006 Google Doodle for his birthday spelled 'Google' in braille.","source":{"title":"Louis Braille (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Braille"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A devout Catholic who served as church organist in Paris.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Braille","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"carter-braxton","name":"Carter Braxton","url":"/great-lives/carter-braxton/","dates":"1736–1797","born":1736,"died":1797,"era":"18th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"Virginia planter who signed the Declaration; the war damaged his commercial ventures, and later stories often exaggerate his losses.","bio":"Carter Braxton was born in 1736 at Newington, in King and Queen County, Virginia, educated at the College of William and Mary, and became a wealthy planter and merchant with shipping interests. He sat in the House of Burgesses and, after the death of Peyton Randolph, was sent to the Continental Congress, where he signed the Declaration of Independence. He had been more cautious than some of his Virginia colleagues about a final break, but he accepted the decision of Congress. The war disrupted his shipping and commercial affairs, and he spent his later years in reduced circumstances compared with his former wealth. Popular lists of the signers' sufferings have sometimes turned those losses into ruin; the documentary record supports serious damage, not a fairy-tale of complete destitution. Braxton was a large slaveholder. He continued to serve in the Virginia legislature and died in 1797.","keyDates":[{"date":"1736","event":"Born at Newington, Virginia"},{"date":"1776","event":"Takes a seat in Congress and signs the Declaration"},{"date":"1797","event":"Dies in Virginia"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["the-founding-documents"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-founding-documents","url":"/works/the-founding-documents/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":null,"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"bertolt-brecht","name":"Bertolt Brecht","url":"/great-lives/bertolt-brecht/","dates":"1898–1956","born":1898,"died":1956,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"German playwright and poet, author of The Threepenny Opera and Mother Courage and Her Children.","bio":"Bertolt Brecht was born in Augsburg, Bavaria, in 1898. He studied medicine in Munich and served briefly as a medical orderly at the end of the First World War before turning to the theater. In Berlin he wrote The Threepenny Opera (1928) with the composer Kurt Weill, which became a great hit. He developed what he called 'epic theater', using songs, placards and other devices to keep audiences thinking critically rather than simply losing themselves in the story. A Marxist, he left Germany when the Nazis came to power in 1933 and lived in exile in Denmark, Sweden, Finland and from 1941 in the United States. In exile he wrote many of his best-known plays, including Mother Courage and Her Children, set in the Thirty Years' War, The Life of Galileo and The Caucasian Chalk Circle. In 1947 he was questioned by the House Un-American Activities Committee and left the country. He settled in East Berlin, founded the Berliner Ensemble with his wife, Helene Weigel, and died there in 1956.","keyDates":[{"date":"1898","event":"Born in Augsburg"},{"date":"1928","event":"The Threepenny Opera premieres in Berlin"},{"date":"1933","event":"Leaves Nazi Germany"},{"date":"1941","event":"Mother Courage premieres in Zurich; moves to the United States"},{"date":"1949","event":"Founds the Berliner Ensemble"},{"date":"1956","event":"Dies in East Berlin"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Bertolt Brecht","relatedWorks":["brecht-mother-courage-and-her-children"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"brecht-mother-courage-and-her-children","url":"/works/brecht-mother-courage-and-her-children/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"His mother was a devout Protestant and his father a Catholic; as an adult he was a Marxist and not religious.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertolt_Brecht","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"josef-breuer","name":"Josef Breuer","url":"/great-lives/josef-breuer/","dates":"1842–1925","born":1842,"died":1925,"era":"19th-century","categories":["physicians-medicine","scientists-mathematicians"],"knownFor":"Austrian physician whose treatment of Anna O. led to the cathartic method, an early basis of psychoanalysis.","bio":"Josef Breuer was born in Vienna in 1842, the son of Leopold Breuer, who taught religion in the city's Jewish community. His mother died when he was young, and he was raised by his grandmother and educated by his father until he was eight. He studied medicine at the University of Vienna and passed his examinations in 1867. Working with Ewald Hering, he showed the role of the vagus nerve in controlling breathing, a mechanism now called the Hering–Breuer reflex. In 1873, independently of the physicist Ernst Mach, he discovered how the semicircular canals of the inner ear sense movement and balance. Breuer had a large private medical practice. In the early 1880s he treated a young woman, Bertha Pappenheim, known in the case history as Anna O., whose symptoms eased when she talked about them; she called the treatment the 'talking cure'. Breuer was a mentor to the young Sigmund Freud, and in 1895 the two published Studies on Hysteria, a founding work of psychoanalysis, though they later parted ways. Breuer died in Vienna in 1925.","keyDates":[{"date":"1842","event":"Born in Vienna"},{"date":"1867","event":"Completes medical examinations"},{"date":"1873","event":"Discovers how the inner ear senses balance"},{"date":"1880–1882","event":"Treats Anna O."},{"date":"1895","event":"Studies on Hysteria with Freud"},{"date":"1925","event":"Dies in Vienna"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Josef Breuer and Sigmund Freud","relatedWorks":["studies-on-hysteria"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"studies-on-hysteria","url":"/works/studies-on-hysteria/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[{"text":"He was the first to show the role of the vagus nerve in the automatic reflexes of breathing.","source":{"title":"Josef Breuer (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josef_Breuer"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Born into a Jewish family; his father taught religion in Vienna's Jewish community.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josef_Breuer","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"vera-brittain","name":"Vera Brittain","url":"/great-lives/vera-brittain/","dates":"1893–1970","born":1893,"died":1970,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"English writer, nurse and pacifist, author of Testament of Youth, a memoir of the First World War.","bio":"Vera Brittain was born in 1893 in Newcastle-under-Lyme, England, the daughter of a well-to-do paper manufacturer, and grew up in Macclesfield and Buxton. Her closest companion as a child was her younger brother, Edward. Overcoming her father's objections, she went to Somerville College, Oxford, in 1914 to study English literature. When the First World War began, she left her studies in 1915 to serve as a Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse, in Buxton, London, Malta and France. During the war her fiancé, Roland Leighton, two close friends and finally her brother Edward were all killed. Back at Somerville after the war she met Winifred Holtby, who became her close friend and fellow writer. Her memoir Testament of Youth (1933), which describes her wartime experiences and losses, became a bestseller and is still widely read. She later wrote Testament of Friendship (1940), about Holtby, and Testament of Experience (1957). In 1925 she married the political scientist George Catlin, and their daughter, Shirley Williams, became a well-known politician. Brittain became a committed pacifist and campaigned for peace during the Second World War. She died in Wimbledon, London, in 1970.","keyDates":[{"date":"1893","event":"Born in Newcastle-under-Lyme"},{"date":"1914","event":"Enters Somerville College, Oxford"},{"date":"1915","event":"Becomes a VAD nurse"},{"date":"1933","event":"Testament of Youth published"},{"date":"1940","event":"Testament of Friendship published"},{"date":"1970","event":"Dies in London"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Vera Brittain","relatedWorks":["testament-of-youth"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"testament-of-youth","url":"/works/testament-of-youth/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"An Anglican who joined the Anglican Pacifist Fellowship.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vera_Brittain","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"anne-bronte","name":"Anne Brontë","url":"/great-lives/anne-bronte/","dates":"1820–1849","born":1820,"died":1849,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"English novelist and poet, the youngest of the Brontë sisters, author of Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.","bio":"Anne Brontë was born in 1820 in Thornton, Yorkshire, the youngest child of the clergyman Patrick Brontë, and grew up at the parsonage in Haworth with her sisters Charlotte and Emily and her brother Branwell. Their mother died when Anne was a baby, and the children invented imaginary kingdoms and wrote stories about them; Anne and Emily created a world called Gondal. Anne worked as a governess for several years, including five years with the Robinson family at Thorp Green Hall, experiences that shaped her first novel, Agnes Grey. In 1846 the three sisters published a book of poems under the names Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell, Anne being Acton. Agnes Grey appeared in 1847, and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), about a woman who leaves her drunken husband, sold well and caused controversy. Anne fell ill with tuberculosis after the deaths of Branwell and Emily, and she died in Scarborough in 1849, at the age of 29.","keyDates":[{"date":"1820","event":"Born in Thornton, Yorkshire"},{"date":"1846","event":"Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell"},{"date":"1847","event":"Agnes Grey published"},{"date":"1848","event":"The Tenant of Wildfell Hall published"},{"date":"1849","event":"Dies in Scarborough"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Anne Brontë","relatedWorks":["the-tenant-of-wildfell-hall","agnes-grey"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-tenant-of-wildfell-hall","url":"/works/the-tenant-of-wildfell-hall/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"agnes-grey","url":"/works/agnes-grey/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"In 1826 her father gave her brother Branwell a set of toy soldiers. Anne and her sisters shared them and made up stories about them, which grew into their imaginary worlds.","source":{"title":"Anne Brontë (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Bront%C3%AB"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[{"name":"Brontë Parsonage Museum","note":"Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë grew up and wrote in the parsonage at Haworth on the Yorkshire moors. The Brontë Parsonage Museum still stands there and welcomes learning visits for schools and families.","url":"https://www.bronte.org.uk/learning-visits","urlLabel":"Brontë Parsonage Museum — learning visits"}],"faith":{"note":"Her novel sets against Calvinist predestination the Arminian belief that no soul shall be ultimately lost.","source":"https://www.britannica.com/biography/Anne-Bronte","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"charlotte-bronte","name":"Charlotte Brontë","url":"/great-lives/charlotte-bronte/","dates":"1816–1855","born":1816,"died":1855,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"English novelist and poet, eldest of the Brontë sisters to survive childhood, author of Jane Eyre and Villette.","bio":"Charlotte Brontë was born in 1816 in Thornton, Yorkshire, the third of six children of the clergyman Patrick Brontë, and grew up at the parsonage in Haworth. Her two elder sisters died after attending the Clergy Daughters' School at Cowan Bridge, an experience she later drew on for Lowood school in Jane Eyre. With her brother Branwell she invented the imaginary kingdom of Angria and wrote many stories about it. She worked as a teacher and governess, and in 1842 she and Emily went to study in Brussels, where Charlotte later returned to teach; this inspired her novel Villette. In 1846 the sisters published poems as Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. Jane Eyre (1847), the story of an orphaned governess and her employer, Mr. Rochester, was an immediate success. After the deaths of Branwell, Emily and Anne in 1848–1849 she wrote Shirley and Villette. In 1854 she married Arthur Bell Nicholls, her father's curate, and she died in 1855, probably during pregnancy.","keyDates":[{"date":"1816","event":"Born in Thornton, Yorkshire"},{"date":"1842","event":"Studies in Brussels"},{"date":"1846","event":"Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell"},{"date":"1847","event":"Jane Eyre published"},{"date":"1853","event":"Villette published"},{"date":"1854","event":"Marries Arthur Bell Nicholls"},{"date":"1855","event":"Dies at Haworth"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Charlotte Brontë","relatedWorks":["villette","jane-eyre","shirley","the-professor"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"villette","url":"/works/villette/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"jane-eyre","url":"/works/jane-eyre/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"shirley","url":"/works/shirley/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-professor","url":"/works/the-professor/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[{"name":"Brontë Parsonage Museum","note":"Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë grew up and wrote in the parsonage at Haworth on the Yorkshire moors. The Brontë Parsonage Museum still stands there and welcomes learning visits for schools and families.","url":"https://www.bronte.org.uk/learning-visits","urlLabel":"Brontë Parsonage Museum — learning visits"}],"faith":{"note":"Daughter of an Anglican clergyman.","source":"https://www.britannica.com/biography/Charlotte-Bronte","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"emily-bronte","name":"Emily Brontë","url":"/great-lives/emily-bronte/","dates":"1818–1848","born":1818,"died":1848,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"English novelist and poet, author of Wuthering Heights.","bio":"Emily Brontë was born in 1818 in Thornton, Yorkshire, the fifth child of the clergyman Patrick Brontë, and grew up at the parsonage in Haworth, on the edge of the moors. After her mother and two elder sisters died, she was raised with her sisters Charlotte and Anne and her brother Branwell, and she and Anne invented an imaginary world called Gondal, about which they wrote poems and stories. Emily was shy and spent nearly all her life at Haworth, where she loved walking on the moors with her dog, Keeper. She briefly attended school, taught for a few months, and in 1842 studied with Charlotte in Brussels. In 1846 the sisters published a book of poems as Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell, Emily being Ellis; her poems are now especially admired. Her only novel, Wuthering Heights (1847), tells the story of Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw and their families across two generations on the Yorkshire moors. Emily caught a cold at Branwell's funeral, developed tuberculosis and died at Haworth in December 1848, aged 30.","keyDates":[{"date":"1818","event":"Born in Thornton, Yorkshire"},{"date":"1842","event":"Studies in Brussels"},{"date":"1846","event":"Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell"},{"date":"1847","event":"Wuthering Heights published"},{"date":"1848","event":"Dies at Haworth"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Emily Brontë","relatedWorks":["wuthering-heights"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"wuthering-heights","url":"/works/wuthering-heights/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"She painted a watercolour of her dog, Keeper; it is one of 29 of her drawings and paintings that survive.","source":{"title":"Emily Brontë (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Bront%C3%AB"}},{"text":"When her father bought a piano, she became a skilled player.","source":{"title":"Emily Brontë (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Bront%C3%AB"}}],"records":[{"text":"At six she was the youngest pupil at her school, where the superintendent called her 'quite the pet nursling of the school'.","source":{"title":"Emily Brontë (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Bront%C3%AB"}}],"livedPlaces":[{"name":"Brontë Parsonage Museum","note":"Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë grew up and wrote in the parsonage at Haworth on the Yorkshire moors. The Brontë Parsonage Museum still stands there and welcomes learning visits for schools and families.","url":"https://www.bronte.org.uk/learning-visits","urlLabel":"Brontë Parsonage Museum — learning visits"}],"faith":{"note":"One of the children of Patrick Brontë, a clergyman; her personal beliefs are not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Bront%C3%AB%2C_Charlotte%2C_Emily%2C_and_Anne","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica (1911) (via Wikisource)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"cleanth-brooks","name":"Cleanth Brooks","url":"/great-lives/cleanth-brooks/","dates":"1906–1994","born":1906,"died":1994,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American critic and Yale professor, a leading New Critic, author of The Well Wrought Urn and co-author of Understanding Poetry.","bio":"Cleanth Brooks was born on 16 October 1906 in Murray, Kentucky, the son of a Methodist minister. After a classical education at the McTyeire School he studied at Vanderbilt University, where he met Robert Penn Warren and John Crowe Ransom, then took a master's degree at Tulane University and studied at Exeter College, Oxford, as a Rhodes Scholar. From 1932 to 1947 he taught English at Louisiana State University, where he and Warren founded The Southern Review in 1935. Troubled by students' difficulty in reading poems, the two wrote textbooks that taught close reading, above all Understanding Poetry (1938). Brooks's own books, Modern Poetry and the Tradition (1939) and The Well Wrought Urn (1947), made him a leading voice of the New Criticism. He taught at Yale University from 1947 to 1975, becoming Gray Professor of Rhetoric, and wrote major studies of William Faulkner. He died in 1994.","keyDates":[{"date":"1906","event":"Born in Murray, Kentucky"},{"date":"1935","event":"Founds The Southern Review with Robert Penn Warren"},{"date":"1938","event":"Understanding Poetry published"},{"date":"1947","event":"The Well Wrought Urn published; joins Yale faculty"},{"date":"1994","event":"Dies"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Cleanth Brooks","relatedWorks":["brooks-warren-understanding-poetry"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"brooks-warren-understanding-poetry","url":"/works/brooks-warren-understanding-poetry/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented; his criticism held that literature is not a surrogate for religion, and he wrote on religious themes in modern writers in The Hidden God.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleanth_Brooks","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"robert-browning","name":"Robert Browning","url":"/great-lives/robert-browning/","dates":"1812–1889","born":1812,"died":1889,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"English poet, master of the dramatic monologue, author of My Last Duchess and The Ring and the Book.","bio":"Robert Browning was born in 1812 in Camberwell, south London, the son of a well-paid clerk at the Bank of England who owned a large library. He was educated mostly at home, where he read widely, and at sixteen he studied Greek at University College London for a year. His early long poems, such as Sordello (1840), received little attention. He developed the dramatic monologue, a poem spoken by a character who reveals himself to a silent listener, as in 'My Last Duchess' (1842), in which a duke shows a visitor a portrait of his late wife, and he also wrote the children's poem 'The Pied Piper of Hamelin'. In 1845 he began writing to the poet Elizabeth Barrett, whose work he admired; they married secretly in 1846 and moved to Italy, settling in Florence, where their son was born. After Elizabeth's death in 1861 he returned to London. The Ring and the Book (1868–1869), a long poem telling a seventeenth-century Roman murder case from several points of view, made him famous. He died in Venice in 1889 and was buried in Westminster Abbey.","keyDates":[{"date":"1812","event":"Born in Camberwell, London"},{"date":"1842","event":"Dramatic Lyrics, with My Last Duchess"},{"date":"1846","event":"Marries Elizabeth Barrett"},{"date":"1861","event":"Returns to London after Elizabeth's death"},{"date":"1868–1869","event":"The Ring and the Book"},{"date":"1889","event":"Dies in Venice"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Robert Browning","relatedWorks":["my-last-duchess"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"my-last-duchess","url":"/works/my-last-duchess/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[{"text":"In 1889 he recited his poem How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix onto an Edison wax cylinder. It is believed to be one of the oldest surviving recordings made in Britain, and you can hear him apologise when he forgets the words.","source":{"title":"Robert Browning (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Browning"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"His parents became Dissenters; he abandoned Christian dogmas but kept religious interests.","source":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Browning%2C_Robert","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica (1911) (via Wikisource)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"isambard-kingdom-brunel","name":"Isambard Kingdom Brunel","url":"/great-lives/isambard-kingdom-brunel/","dates":"1806–1859","born":1806,"died":1859,"era":"19th-century","categories":["inventors","artists-composers-architects"],"knownFor":"British engineer of the Great Western Railway, bridges and giant iron steamships.","bio":"Isambard Kingdom Brunel was the son of the French-born engineer Marc Brunel. Educated in England and France, he joined his father as a young man on the first tunnel under the River Thames, and in 1828 nearly drowned when it flooded. He won the competition to design the Clifton Suspension Bridge over the Avon Gorge in Bristol, which was finished after his death. At twenty-seven he became chief engineer of the Great Western Railway from London to Bristol, designing its bridges, tunnels and stations, including the Box Tunnel and Paddington Station, and he chose a wider track gauge for smoother, faster trains. He then designed three record-breaking steamships: the Great Western, built to cross the Atlantic; the Great Britain, the first large iron ship driven by a screw propeller; and the enormous Great Eastern, which later laid the first lasting transatlantic telegraph cable. He also designed a prefabricated hospital for the Crimean War. He worked and smoked constantly and suffered a stroke just before the Great Eastern's first voyage. He died in 1859.","keyDates":[{"date":"1828","event":"Nearly drowned in the Thames Tunnel flood"},{"date":"1833","event":"Chief engineer of the Great Western Railway"},{"date":"1843","event":"Launches the SS Great Britain"},{"date":"1858","event":"Launches the Great Eastern"},{"date":"1859","event":"Dies in London"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"Brunel University in London is named after him.","source":{"title":"Isambard Kingdom Brunel (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isambard_Kingdom_Brunel"}}],"records":[{"text":"His Box Tunnel was the longest tunnel in the world when it was built, even though people had said it could not be built safely.","source":{"title":"Isambard Kingdom Brunel (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isambard_Kingdom_Brunel"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isambard_Kingdom_Brunel","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"filippo-brunelleschi","name":"Filippo Brunelleschi","url":"/great-lives/filippo-brunelleschi/","dates":"1377–1446","born":1377,"died":1446,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["artists-composers-architects","inventors"],"knownFor":"Architect who built the great dome of Florence Cathedral and rediscovered linear perspective.","bio":"Filippo Brunelleschi was born in Florence, the son of a notary, and trained as a goldsmith. In 1401 he competed to design bronze doors for the Florence Baptistery and lost to Lorenzo Ghiberti. He then went to Rome, probably with the sculptor Donatello, and studied the ruins of ancient buildings. Around 1415 he demonstrated the rules of linear perspective with painted panels of the Baptistery, showing artists how to make flat pictures appear deep. Florence Cathedral had a huge octagonal opening that no one knew how to cover. In 1418 Brunelleschi won the competition with a plan to build a dome without the usual wooden scaffolding underneath. He designed an inner and outer shell, bricks laid in a herringbone pattern, and new hoisting machines driven by oxen. Work began in 1420, and the dome, still the largest masonry dome in the world, was finished in 1436. He also designed the Foundling Hospital, the church of San Lorenzo and the Pazzi Chapel, using clear proportions and classical columns that defined Renaissance architecture. He died in 1446 and was buried in the cathedral.","keyDates":[{"date":"1401","event":"Competes for the Baptistery doors"},{"date":"c. 1415","event":"Demonstrates linear perspective"},{"date":"1420","event":"Begins the dome of Florence Cathedral"},{"date":"1436","event":"Dome completed"},{"date":"1446","event":"Dies in Florence"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["vasari-lives-of-the-artists"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"vasari-lives-of-the-artists","url":"/works/vasari-lives-of-the-artists/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"book","title":"Brunelleschi's Dome","author":"Ross King","isbn13":"9781620401934","publisher":"Bloomsbury USA","year":2013,"format":"paperback"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"His friend Leon Battista Alberti nicknamed him 'Pippo'.","source":{"title":"Filippo Brunelleschi (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filippo_Brunelleschi"}}],"records":[{"text":"In 1421 he became the first person in the Western world to receive a patent.","source":{"title":"Filippo Brunelleschi (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filippo_Brunelleschi"}},{"text":"He is credited as the first person to describe an exact system of linear perspective for drawing.","source":{"title":"Filippo Brunelleschi (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filippo_Brunelleschi"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filippo_Brunelleschi","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"john-buchan","name":"John Buchan","url":"/great-lives/john-buchan/","dates":"1875–1940","born":1875,"died":1940,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets","statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"Scottish novelist and statesman, author of The Thirty-Nine Steps and governor general of Canada.","bio":"John Buchan was born in 1875 in Perth, Scotland, the son of a Free Church of Scotland minister, and grew up in Fife and Glasgow, spending summers in the Scottish Borders. He studied at the University of Glasgow and at Brasenose College, Oxford, where he began publishing novels and essays. He trained as a lawyer, then worked from 1901 to 1903 on the staff of Lord Milner in South Africa after the Boer War. Back in London he became a partner in a publishing firm. During the First World War he worked in war propaganda and intelligence and wrote a history of the war. His thriller The Thirty-Nine Steps (1915), in which Richard Hannay, an ordinary man, is chased across Scotland after uncovering a German spy plot, was a great success and was later filmed by Alfred Hitchcock. He wrote many more adventure novels and biographies, including lives of Montrose and Walter Scott. He was a member of Parliament for the Scottish universities, and in 1935 he became Lord Tweedsmuir and governor general of Canada. He died in office in Montreal in 1940.","keyDates":[{"date":"1875","event":"Born in Perth, Scotland"},{"date":"1901–1903","event":"Works in South Africa"},{"date":"1915","event":"The Thirty-Nine Steps published"},{"date":"1927","event":"Elected to Parliament"},{"date":"1935","event":"Governor general of Canada"},{"date":"1940","event":"Dies in Montreal"}],"quotes":[],"author":"John Buchan","relatedWorks":["the-thirty-nine-steps"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-thirty-nine-steps","url":"/works/the-thirty-nine-steps/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"The Governor General's Literary Awards, which he approved in 1936 and Canadians nickname the 'GGs', are still Canada's top literary prizes.","source":{"title":"John Buchan (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Buchan"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Son of a Free Church of Scotland minister.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Buchan","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"thomas-bulfinch","name":"Thomas Bulfinch","url":"/great-lives/thomas-bulfinch/","dates":"1796–1867","born":1796,"died":1867,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American author whose retellings of Greek and Roman myths, Arthurian legends and Charlemagne tales were collected as Bulfinch's Mythology.","bio":"Thomas Bulfinch was born in 1796 in Newton, Massachusetts, into a well-educated merchant family of modest means. His father was Charles Bulfinch, the architect of the Massachusetts State House in Boston and of parts of the U.S. Capitol. Thomas attended Boston Latin School, Phillips Exeter Academy and Harvard College, from which he graduated in 1814. His main career was with the Merchants' Bank of Boston. In 1855 he published The Age of Fable, or Stories of Gods and Heroes, retelling Greek and Roman myths. He followed it with The Age of Chivalry (1858), about King Arthur and his knights, and Legends of Charlemagne (1863). In his preface he explained that he wrote not for scholars but for ordinary readers who wanted to understand the references to mythology that they met in poems, speeches and conversation, and that he hoped to teach mythology 'not as a study, but as a relaxation from study'. Bulfinch died in 1867. In 1881 the three books were combined as Bulfinch's Mythology, which has remained in print ever since.","keyDates":[{"date":"1796","event":"Born in Newton, Massachusetts"},{"date":"1814","event":"Graduates from Harvard College"},{"date":"1855","event":"The Age of Fable published"},{"date":"1858","event":"The Age of Chivalry published"},{"date":"1863","event":"Legends of Charlemagne published"},{"date":"1867","event":"Dies"},{"date":"1881","event":"Bulfinch's Mythology compiled"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Thomas Bulfinch","relatedWorks":["bulfinch-age-of-fable","bulfinch-legends-of-charlemagne"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"bulfinch-age-of-fable","url":"/works/bulfinch-age-of-fable/"},{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"bulfinch-legends-of-charlemagne","url":"/works/bulfinch-legends-of-charlemagne/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Bulfinch","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"mikhail-bulgakov","name":"Mikhail Bulgakov","url":"/great-lives/mikhail-bulgakov/","dates":"1891–1940","born":1891,"died":1940,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets","physicians-medicine"],"knownFor":"Russian writer and physician, author of The Master and Margarita.","bio":"Mikhail Bulgakov was born in Kyiv in 1891, then in the Russian Empire, the son of a professor at the Kyiv Theological Academy. He studied medicine at Kyiv University and, during the First World War, worked as a doctor at the front and then in a rural hospital, experiences described in A Young Doctor's Notebook. During the Russian Civil War he was a doctor with the White Army. He then moved to Moscow to write. His novel The White Guard, about a family in Kyiv during the Civil War, was adapted as the play The Days of the Turbins, which was a great success. But Soviet critics attacked his satires, and by the end of the 1920s his plays were banned. In 1930 he wrote to the Soviet government asking to be allowed to emigrate or to work; Joseph Stalin telephoned him, and he was given a job at the Moscow Art Theatre. For more than ten years he worked secretly on The Master and Margarita, in which the Devil visits Moscow. He died in Moscow in 1940; the novel was first published in the 1960s.","keyDates":[{"date":"1891","event":"Born in Kyiv"},{"date":"1916","event":"Qualifies as a doctor"},{"date":"1926","event":"The Days of the Turbins staged"},{"date":"1930","event":"Telephone call from Stalin"},{"date":"1940","event":"Dies in Moscow"},{"date":"1966–1967","event":"The Master and Margarita first published"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Mikhail Bulgakov","relatedWorks":["the-master-and-margarita"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-master-and-margarita","url":"/works/the-master-and-margarita/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"He played the piano, sang baritone and loved opera.","source":{"title":"Mikhail Bulgakov (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Bulgakov"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Son of a professor at the Kiev Theological Academy; after his father's death he turned away from the Orthodox faith.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Bulgakov","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"john-bunyan","name":"John Bunyan","url":"/great-lives/john-bunyan/","dates":"1628–1688","born":1628,"died":1688,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["writers-poets","theologians-church-fathers"],"knownFor":"English Puritan preacher, author of The Pilgrim's Progress, written partly in prison.","bio":"John Bunyan was born in 1628 in Elstow, near Bedford, England, the son of a tinker, a mender of pots and pans, and he followed his father's trade. At sixteen he joined the Parliamentary army during the English Civil War. After his marriage he went through years of spiritual turmoil, which he later described in his autobiography, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners (1666), and in 1653 he joined a nonconformist church in Bedford, where he began to preach. After King Charles II was restored in 1660, preaching without a license from the Church of England was forbidden, and Bunyan was arrested. He refused to promise to stop preaching and spent most of the next twelve years in Bedford county jail, where he wrote and made shoelaces. After his release he became pastor of the Bedford church, and he probably wrote much of The Pilgrim's Progress (1678) in prison, an allegory in which Christian journeys from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City. It became one of the most widely read books in English. Bunyan died in London in 1688.","keyDates":[{"date":"1628","event":"Born in Elstow, near Bedford"},{"date":"1644","event":"Joins the Parliamentary army"},{"date":"1660","event":"Arrested for preaching without a license"},{"date":"1666","event":"Grace Abounding published"},{"date":"1672","event":"Released; becomes pastor in Bedford"},{"date":"1678","event":"The Pilgrim's Progress published"},{"date":"1688","event":"Dies in London"}],"quotes":[],"author":"John Bunyan","relatedWorks":["grace-abounding","the-pilgrims-progress"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-pilgrims-progress","url":"/works/the-pilgrims-progress/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"grace-abounding","url":"/works/grace-abounding/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"As a boy he learned his father's trade of tinker.","source":{"title":"John Bunyan (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bunyan"}},{"text":"His surname was spelled in many ways: the Bedfordshire Record Office has 34 different spellings.","source":{"title":"John Bunyan (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bunyan"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"English Puritan preacher, raised when the Puritan spirit was at its height.","source":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Bunyan%2C_John","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica (1911) (via Wikisource)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"thornton-w-burgess","name":"Thornton W. Burgess","url":"/great-lives/thornton-w-burgess/","dates":"1874–1965","born":1874,"died":1965,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American conservationist and author of children's nature stories about Peter Rabbit, Jimmy Skunk and their animal neighbours.","bio":"Thornton Waldo Burgess was born in 1874 in Sandwich, Massachusetts, on Cape Cod. His father died the year he was born, and he was raised by his mother in humble circumstances. As a boy he earned money by tending cows, picking berries and mayflowers, selling candy and trapping muskrats. The woods and wetlands nearby became the setting of many stories, including the Smiling Pool and the Old Briar Patch. After high school he briefly attended a business college in Boston, but he wanted to be a writer and took a job as an editorial assistant at a publishing company in Springfield, Massachusetts. His first wife died a year after their marriage in 1905, leaving him to raise their son, and he is said to have begun writing bedtime stories to entertain the boy. His first book, Old Mother West Wind (1910), introduced animal characters such as Peter Rabbit, Jimmy Skunk and Sammy Jay. He went on to write more than 170 books and some 15,000 stories for his daily newspaper column, Bedtime Stories, and broadcast nature programmes on the radio. He was also a conservationist. He died in 1965.","keyDates":[{"date":"1874","event":"Born in Sandwich, Massachusetts"},{"date":"1910","event":"Old Mother West Wind published"},{"date":"1912","event":"Begins radio broadcasts"},{"date":"1965","event":"Dies"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Thornton W. Burgess","relatedWorks":["the-burgess-bird-book-for-children"],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"library","work":"the-burgess-bird-book-for-children","url":"/works/the-burgess-bird-book-for-children/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thornton_W._Burgess","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"edmund-burke","name":"Edmund Burke","url":"/great-lives/edmund-burke/","dates":"1729–1797","born":1729,"died":1797,"era":"18th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders","philosophers"],"knownFor":"Irish-born statesman and writer, critic of the French Revolution and founder of modern conservatism.","bio":"Edmund Burke was born in Dublin to a Protestant father and Catholic mother and studied at Trinity College. He moved to London to study law but turned to writing; his book on the sublime and the beautiful made his name. In 1765 he entered Parliament, where he served for nearly thirty years as a leading Whig. He urged conciliation with the American colonies, arguing that taxing them against their will was unwise. He worked against the persecution of Catholics in Ireland, and for years he led the impeachment of Warren Hastings, governor-general of India, for abuses there. In 1790 he published Reflections on the Revolution in France, warning that the revolution's attempt to remake society from abstract principles would lead to violence and tyranny, as happened in the Terror. He argued that society is a partnership between the living, the dead and those yet to be born, and that change should come gradually, building on inherited institutions. Thomas Paine answered him in Rights of Man. Burke died in 1797.","keyDates":[{"date":"1729","event":"Born in Dublin"},{"date":"1765","event":"Enters Parliament"},{"date":"1775","event":"Speech on Conciliation with America"},{"date":"1790","event":"Reflections on the Revolution in France"},{"date":"1797","event":"Dies at Beaconsfield"}],"quotes":[{"text":"People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.","work":"reflections-on-the-revolution-in-france","location":"Early pages, on liberty as an entailed inheritance","verified":true},{"text":"A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.","work":"reflections-on-the-revolution-in-france","location":"Early pages, on the Revolution of 1688 and the Act of Settlement","verified":true}],"author":"Edmund Burke","relatedWorks":["reflections-on-the-revolution-in-france","burke-paine-debate"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"reflections-on-the-revolution-in-france","url":"/works/reflections-on-the-revolution-in-france/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"burke-paine-debate","url":"/works/burke-paine-debate/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[{"text":"The debating club he founded as a student in 1747 grew into the College Historical Society at Trinity College Dublin, the oldest undergraduate society in the world.","source":{"title":"Edmund Burke (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Burke"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"His family's historic heritage was Roman Catholic.","source":"https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/burke/","sourceName":"Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"frances-hodgson-burnett","name":"Frances Hodgson Burnett","url":"/great-lives/frances-hodgson-burnett/","dates":"1849–1924","born":1849,"died":1924,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"English-American novelist and playwright, author of Little Lord Fauntleroy, A Little Princess and The Secret Garden.","bio":"Frances Hodgson was born in 1849 in Cheetham Hill, Manchester, England. Her father, who sold ironmongery, died when she was three, and the family's fortunes declined. In 1865 they emigrated to the United States, settling near Knoxville, Tennessee. To earn money, Frances began selling stories to magazines while still a teenager. In 1873 she married Swan Burnett, who became a doctor, and they had two sons; the death of her elder son, Lionel, in 1890 grieved her deeply. Her novel Little Lord Fauntleroy (1886), about an American boy who discovers that he is heir to an English earldom, was a huge success and set a fashion for boys' velvet suits. A Little Princess (1905), developed from an earlier story and play, tells of Sara Crewe, a wealthy pupil left penniless at a London boarding school. The Secret Garden (1911) follows the orphaned Mary Lennox, who brings a neglected garden and her sickly cousin back to life. Burnett crossed the Atlantic many times and died in Plandome, New York, in 1924.","keyDates":[{"date":"1849","event":"Born in Manchester, England"},{"date":"1865","event":"Family emigrates to Tennessee"},{"date":"1886","event":"Little Lord Fauntleroy published"},{"date":"1905","event":"A Little Princess published"},{"date":"1911","event":"The Secret Garden published"},{"date":"1924","event":"Dies in Plandome, New York"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Frances Hodgson Burnett","relatedWorks":["a-little-princess","little-lord-fauntleroy","the-secret-garden"],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"library","work":"a-little-princess","url":"/works/a-little-princess/"},{"band":"3-5","kind":"library","work":"little-lord-fauntleroy","url":"/works/little-lord-fauntleroy/"},{"band":"3-5","kind":"library","work":"the-secret-garden","url":"/works/the-secret-garden/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"As a girl, one of her favourite books was Uncle Tom's Cabin, and she spent hours acting out scenes from it.","source":{"title":"Frances Hodgson Burnett (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Hodgson_Burnett"}}],"records":[{"text":"Her 1881 play became the longest-running play on Broadway in the 19th century.","source":{"title":"Frances Hodgson Burnett (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Hodgson_Burnett"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Raised in the Church of England; later explored Spiritualism, Christian Science and Theosophy without fully joining any.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Hodgson_Burnett","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"robert-burns","name":"Robert Burns","url":"/great-lives/robert-burns/","dates":"1759–1796","born":1759,"died":1796,"era":"18th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Scotland's national poet: To a Mouse, The Cotter's Saturday Night, Tam o' Shanter, Auld Lang Syne and hundreds of Scottish songs.","bio":"Robert Burns was born on 25 January 1759 at Alloway in Ayrshire, the eldest son of William Burnes, a poor tenant farmer and devout Presbyterian who saw that his children were taught to read the Bible and good books. Robert did heavy farm work from boyhood, first at Mount Oliphant and Lochlea and then, with his brother Gilbert, at Mossgiel. In 1786, planning to emigrate to Jamaica, he published Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect at Kilmarnock; its success brought him to Edinburgh as a celebrity instead. He married Jean Armour in 1788, farmed Ellisland near Dumfries, and became an excise officer. In his last years he wrote or restored hundreds of Scottish songs, including Auld Lang Syne and A Red, Red Rose. His life also included heavy drinking and several children born outside marriage. He died at Dumfries on 21 July 1796, aged thirty-seven.","keyDates":[{"date":"1759","event":"Born at Alloway, Ayrshire, 25 January"},{"date":"1784","event":"Takes Mossgiel farm with his brother Gilbert after their father dies"},{"date":"1786","event":"Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect published at Kilmarnock"},{"date":"1787","event":"Edinburgh edition; begins writing songs for The Scots Musical Museum"},{"date":"1788","event":"Marries Jean Armour; takes Ellisland farm"},{"date":"1791","event":"Tam o' Shanter printed; moves to Dumfries as an excise officer"},{"date":"1796","event":"Dies at Dumfries, 21 July"}],"quotes":[{"text":"The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men Gang aft agley,","work":"to-a-mouse"}],"author":"Robert Burns","relatedWorks":["poems-and-songs-of-robert-burns","to-a-mouse","the-cotters-saturday-night","to-a-louse","auld-lang-syne","john-anderson-my-jo","tam-o-shanter","scots-wha-hae","a-red-red-rose","a-mans-a-man-for-a-that","essay-on-burns"],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"library","work":"auld-lang-syne","url":"/works/auld-lang-syne/"},{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"to-a-mouse","url":"/works/to-a-mouse/"},{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"to-a-louse","url":"/works/to-a-louse/"},{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"a-red-red-rose","url":"/works/a-red-red-rose/"},{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"scots-wha-hae","url":"/works/scots-wha-hae/"},{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"john-anderson-my-jo","url":"/works/john-anderson-my-jo/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-cotters-saturday-night","url":"/works/the-cotters-saturday-night/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"tam-o-shanter","url":"/works/tam-o-shanter/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"a-mans-a-man-for-a-that","url":"/works/a-mans-a-man-for-a-that/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"poems-and-songs-of-robert-burns","url":"/works/poems-and-songs-of-robert-burns/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"essay-on-burns","url":"/works/essay-on-burns/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[{"name":"Robert Burns Birthplace Museum","note":"Robert Burns was born and spent his first years in the cottage at Alloway, Scotland. The National Trust for Scotland preserves the cottage alongside a museum, welcomes school visits, and shares its Burns collection online.","url":"https://www.nts.org.uk/visit/places/robert-burns-birthplace-museum","urlLabel":"Robert Burns Birthplace Museum — cottage and museum"}],"faith":{"note":"Raised in the Church of Scotland by a devout father; he satirised the strict Calvinist (Auld Licht) party and its hypocrisy in poems such as Holy Willie's Prayer, sided with the moderates, and also wrote prayers and psalm paraphrases.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Burns","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"robert-burton","name":"Robert Burton","url":"/great-lives/robert-burton/","dates":"1577–1640","born":1577,"died":1640,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["writers-poets","theologians-church-fathers"],"knownFor":"English scholar and clergyman, author of The Anatomy of Melancholy.","bio":"Robert Burton was born in 1577 at Lindley, in Leicestershire, England, into a gentry family. He was educated at grammar schools in Sutton Coldfield and Nuneaton and then at Brasenose College, Oxford. In 1599 he was elected a student, or fellow, of Christ Church, Oxford, where he lived for the rest of his life, serving as the college librarian. He was ordained and became vicar of St Thomas's Church in Oxford. He never married and spent his life among his books. Burton is known almost entirely for one work, The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), which he published under the pen name Democritus Junior and revised and expanded through five more editions during his life. It examines the causes, symptoms and cures of melancholy, what would now be called depression, drawing on medicine, philosophy, theology, history and literature, with thousands of quotations, and its wide-ranging, humorous digressions have delighted readers ever since. Burton also wrote a Latin comedy, Philosophaster. He died at Christ Church in 1640.","keyDates":[{"date":"1577","event":"Born at Lindley, Leicestershire"},{"date":"1599","event":"Student of Christ Church, Oxford"},{"date":"1616","event":"Vicar of St Thomas's, Oxford"},{"date":"1621","event":"The Anatomy of Melancholy published"},{"date":"1640","event":"Dies at Christ Church, Oxford"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Robert Burton","relatedWorks":["the-anatomy-of-melancholy"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-anatomy-of-melancholy","url":"/works/the-anatomy-of-melancholy/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"His Anatomy of Melancholy was one of John Keats's favourite books.","source":{"title":"Robert Burton (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Burton"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"An Anglican clergyman who served as vicar of St Thomas the Martyr's Church, Oxford.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Burton","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"virginia-lee-burton","name":"Virginia Lee Burton","url":"/great-lives/virginia-lee-burton/","dates":"1909–1968","born":1909,"died":1968,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["writers-poets","artists-composers-architects"],"knownFor":"American author and illustrator of Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel and the Caldecott Medal book The Little House.","bio":"Virginia Lee Burton was born in 1909 in Newton Centre, Massachusetts. Her father was the first dean of student affairs at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and her mother was a poet and artist from England. When she was about eight her family moved to California, settling in the artistic town of Carmel-by-the-Sea. She won a scholarship to the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco, using her long commute to practise quick sketches of fellow passengers. In 1928 she moved to Boston, where she worked as a sketcher for the Boston Evening Transcript. She married the sculptor George Demetrios, who had taught her drawing, and they settled at Folly Cove in Gloucester, Massachusetts, and had two sons. Her first published book, Choo Choo (1935), was about a runaway train engine. It was followed by Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel (1939), Katy and the Big Snow and The Little House (1943), which won the Caldecott Medal. She also founded the Folly Cove Designers, a group of textile artists. She died in 1968.","keyDates":[{"date":"1909","event":"Born in Newton Centre, Massachusetts"},{"date":"1928","event":"Moves to Boston"},{"date":"1935","event":"Choo Choo published"},{"date":"1939","event":"Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel published"},{"date":"1943","event":"The Little House published"},{"date":"1968","event":"Dies"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Virginia Lee Burton","relatedWorks":["the-little-house","mike-mulligan-and-his-steam-shovel"],"reading":[{"band":"K-2","kind":"library","work":"the-little-house","url":"/works/the-little-house/"},{"band":"K-2","kind":"library","work":"mike-mulligan-and-his-steam-shovel","url":"/works/mike-mulligan-and-his-steam-shovel/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Lee_Burton","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"vannevar-bush","name":"Vannevar Bush","url":"/great-lives/vannevar-bush/","dates":"1890–1974","born":1890,"died":1974,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["inventors","scientists-mathematicians"],"knownFor":"American engineer who led U.S. scientific research during the Second World War and wrote the essay \"As We May Think\".","bio":"Vannevar Bush was born in 1890 in Everett, Massachusetts, the son of a Universalist minister. He studied at Tufts College and earned a doctorate in engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard in 1916. He became a professor at MIT and later its vice president and dean of engineering. From 1927 he built the differential analyzer, a mechanical analog computer that could solve differential equations. He also helped found the company that became Raytheon. In 1938 he became president of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. During the Second World War he headed the Office of Scientific Research and Development, through which almost all American wartime military research was carried out, including work on radar and the proximity fuze, and he helped start the Manhattan Project. In 1945 he published 'As We May Think', an essay describing the memex, an imagined microfilm viewer whose linked records resembled hypertext; it inspired generations of computer scientists. His report Science, the Endless Frontier led to the creation of the National Science Foundation. He died in 1974.","keyDates":[{"date":"1890","event":"Born in Everett, Massachusetts"},{"date":"1916","event":"Doctorate in engineering"},{"date":"1927","event":"Begins building the differential analyzer"},{"date":"1941","event":"Heads the Office of Scientific Research and Development"},{"date":"1945","event":"As We May Think published"},{"date":"1974","event":"Dies"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Vannevar Bush","relatedWorks":["as-we-may-think"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"as-we-may-think","url":"/works/as-we-may-think/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vannevar_Bush","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"lord-byron","name":"Lord Byron","url":"/great-lives/lord-byron/","dates":"1788–1824","born":1788,"died":1824,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Romantic poet of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage and Hebrew Melodies, who died aiding the Greek war of independence.","bio":"George Gordon Byron was born in London on 22 January 1788 with a club foot and was raised in Aberdeen by his mother after his father's death. At ten he inherited the title of Baron Byron and the family estate of Newstead Abbey. He studied at Harrow and Trinity College, Cambridge, and in 1809-11 travelled through Portugal, Spain, Albania and Greece. The first two cantos of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, published in 1812, made him instantly famous. His marriage to Annabella Milbanke in 1815 produced a daughter, Ada, later known for her work on Babbage's calculating engine, but it broke down within a year amid scandal, and in 1816 Byron left England for good. In Switzerland and Italy he wrote The Prisoner of Chillon, the later cantos of Childe Harold and the satire Don Juan. In 1823 he went to Greece to aid its war of independence, and he died of fever at Missolonghi on 19 April 1824.","keyDates":[{"date":"1788","event":"Born in London, 22 January"},{"date":"1798","event":"Inherits the title of Baron Byron"},{"date":"1812","event":"Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Cantos I-II, published"},{"date":"1815","event":"Hebrew Melodies published; marries Annabella Milbanke"},{"date":"1816","event":"Leaves England; writes The Prisoner of Chillon"},{"date":"1824","event":"Dies at Missolonghi, Greece, 19 April"}],"quotes":[{"text":"I love not Man the less, but Nature more,","work":"childe-harolds-pilgrimage"},{"text":"The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,","work":"the-destruction-of-sennacherib"}],"author":"Lord Byron","relatedWorks":["childe-harolds-pilgrimage","the-prisoner-of-chillon","she-walks-in-beauty","the-destruction-of-sennacherib"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"she-walks-in-beauty","url":"/works/she-walks-in-beauty/"},{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-destruction-of-sennacherib","url":"/works/the-destruction-of-sennacherib/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-prisoner-of-chillon","url":"/works/the-prisoner-of-chillon/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"childe-harolds-pilgrimage","url":"/works/childe-harolds-pilgrimage/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Raised on Scottish Calvinist teaching in Aberdeen and baptised in the Church of England, Byron was a sceptic for most of his adult life, though he wrote the biblical Hebrew Melodies and remained preoccupied with sin, guilt and predestination.","source":"https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lord-Byron-poet","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"john-cade","name":"John Cade","url":"/great-lives/john-cade/","dates":"1912–1980","born":1912,"died":1980,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["physicians-medicine"],"knownFor":"Australian psychiatrist who in 1949 reported that lithium salts calm mania, the first effective drug treatment in modern psychiatry.","bio":"John Frederick Joseph Cade was born on 18 January 1912 in Murtoa, Victoria, Australia, the son of a doctor who later ran mental hospitals. He studied medicine at the University of Melbourne. In the Second World War he served as an army medical officer and spent more than three years as a prisoner of the Japanese at Changi in Singapore, where he observed many prisoners with mental disturbances. After the war he worked at the Repatriation Mental Hospital at Bundoora, near Melbourne. With simple equipment he tested whether the urine of manic patients contained a toxic substance, injecting guinea pigs with it and with salts including lithium. The animals given lithium became calm. After testing lithium on himself, he gave it to ten patients with mania, several of whom improved dramatically. His paper 'Lithium salts in the treatment of psychotic excitement' appeared in the Medical Journal of Australia in September 1949. Concerns about toxicity delayed wider use until the work of Mogens Schou and others in the 1950s and 1960s. Cade later ran Royal Park Psychiatric Hospital. He died on 16 November 1980.","keyDates":[{"date":"1912","event":"Born in Murtoa, Victoria, on 18 January"},{"date":"1942–1945","event":"Prisoner of war at Changi"},{"date":"1949","event":"Publishes his lithium paper in the Medical Journal of Australia"},{"date":"1952","event":"Becomes superintendent of Royal Park Psychiatric Hospital"},{"date":"1980","event":"Dies in Melbourne on 16 November"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["founding-papers-of-psychopharmacology"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"founding-papers-of-psychopharmacology","url":"/works/founding-papers-of-psychopharmacology/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Cade","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["The number of mania patients in the 1949 paper is ten; he also treated patients with schizophrenia and depression."]},{"slug":"caedmon","name":"Cædmon","url":"/great-lives/caedmon/","dates":"died c. 680","born":null,"died":680,"era":"medieval","categories":["writers-poets","saints-reformers"],"knownFor":"Anglo-Saxon cowherd of Whitby Abbey, the earliest English poet known by name, whose short Hymn survives.","bio":"Cædmon is the earliest English poet whose name is known. Almost everything known about him comes from the Ecclesiastical History of the English People, written by Bede around 731. According to Bede, Cædmon was an unlettered cowherd who worked for the double monastery of Whitby in Northumbria, led by the abbess Hild, in the seventh century. At feasts, when the harp was passed around for each guest to sing, he would leave because he knew no songs. One night, Bede says, a figure appeared to him in a dream and told him to sing about the creation, and he composed verses in praise of God the Creator. The abbess and scholars judged that he had received a gift from God, and he was invited to become a monk. He went on to turn stories from the Bible into Old English poetry. Only his short nine-line Hymn survives, preserved in manuscripts of Bede's history. Bede says he died peacefully, probably around 680.","keyDates":[{"date":"7th century","event":"Cowherd at the monastery of Whitby"},{"date":"c. 657–680","event":"Abbess Hild leads Whitby"},{"date":"c. 680","event":"Dies at Whitby"},{"date":"c. 731","event":"Bede records his story"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Cædmon","relatedWorks":["caedmons-hymn"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"caedmons-hymn","url":"/works/caedmons-hymn/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"The first Old English Christian poet; a herdsman who joined the monastery at Whitby.","source":"https://www.britannica.com/biography/Caedmon","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["Cædmon is known only from Bede's account; his dates are approximate."]},{"slug":"julius-caesar","name":"Julius Caesar","url":"/great-lives/julius-caesar/","dates":"100–44 BC","born":-100,"died":-44,"era":"ancient","categories":["statesmen-founders","military-leaders"],"knownFor":"Roman general and dictator whose rise and murder ended the Roman Republic.","bio":"Gaius Julius Caesar came from an old but not wealthy Roman family. A gifted speaker and politician, he formed an alliance with Pompey and Crassus and was elected consul in 59 BC. As governor in Gaul, modern France and Belgium, he fought a series of wars from 58 to 50 BC that added the whole region to Rome's territory and twice took him across the Channel to Britain. He wrote his own account of these wars in clear, plain Latin. When the Senate ordered him to give up his army, he crossed the Rubicon River into Italy in 49 BC, starting a civil war against Pompey, whom he defeated. As dictator he reformed the calendar, creating the Julian calendar, and pardoned many former enemies. Many senators feared he meant to make himself king, and on the Ides of March, 15 March 44 BC, a group led by Brutus and Cassius stabbed him to death in a meeting of the Senate. His adopted heir Octavian later became Rome's first emperor.","keyDates":[{"date":"59 BC","event":"Consul of Rome"},{"date":"58–50 BC","event":"Conquers Gaul"},{"date":"49 BC","event":"Crosses the Rubicon; civil war begins"},{"date":"44 BC","event":"Assassinated on the Ides of March"}],"quotes":[{"text":"in most cases men willingly believe what they wish","work":"the-conquest-of-gaul","location":"Book III.18","verified":true}],"author":"Julius Caesar","relatedWorks":["the-conquest-of-gaul","the-fall-of-the-roman-republic","the-twelve-caesars","the-civil-war"],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"book","title":"Who Was Julius Caesar?","author":"Nico Medina","isbn13":"9780448480831","publisher":"Paperback","year":2014,"format":""},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-conquest-of-gaul","url":"/works/the-conquest-of-gaul/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-fall-of-the-roman-republic","url":"/works/the-fall-of-the-roman-republic/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-twelve-caesars","url":"/works/the-twelve-caesars/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-civil-war","url":"/works/the-civil-war/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"book","title":"Caesar: Life of a Colossus","author":"Adrian Goldsworthy","isbn13":"9780300126891","publisher":"Yale University Press","year":2008,"format":"paperback"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Practiced Roman state religion; as a young man he was appointed priest of Jupiter (flamen Dialis).","source":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Caesar%2C_Gaius_Julius","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica (1911) (via Wikisource)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"john-c-calhoun","name":"John C. Calhoun","url":"/great-lives/john-c-calhoun/","dates":"1782–1850","born":1782,"died":1850,"era":"19th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"South Carolina statesman, vice president under two presidents, and leading defender of states' rights and slavery before the Civil War.","bio":"John Caldwell Calhoun was born in 1782 in the South Carolina backcountry, the son of a planter. He graduated from Yale College, studied law, and married Floride Bonneau Colhoun, a cousin, gaining a plantation worked by enslaved people. Elected to Congress in 1810, he was one of the 'war hawks' who pressed for the War of 1812. He served as secretary of war under James Monroe and as vice president under both John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson, but he broke with Jackson and resigned in 1832 to enter the Senate. He developed the theory of nullification, the claim that a state could refuse to enforce a federal law it judged unconstitutional, and South Carolina used it against a federal tariff in 1832. Calhoun became the leading Southern defender of slavery, which he called a 'positive good', and of the rights of the slaveholding states. He also served as secretary of state. His Disquisition on Government, published after his death, proposed a 'concurrent majority' to protect minority interests. He opposed the Compromise of 1850 and died in Washington that year.","keyDates":[{"date":"1782","event":"Born in South Carolina"},{"date":"1811","event":"Enters Congress"},{"date":"1817–1825","event":"Secretary of war"},{"date":"1825–1832","event":"Vice president"},{"date":"1832","event":"Nullification crisis; enters the Senate"},{"date":"1844–1845","event":"Secretary of state"},{"date":"1850","event":"Dies in Washington"}],"quotes":[],"author":"John C. Calhoun","relatedWorks":["calhoun-disquisition-on-government","compromise-of-1850-speeches"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"calhoun-disquisition-on-government","url":"/works/calhoun-disquisition-on-government/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"compromise-of-1850-speeches","url":"/works/compromise-of-1850-speeches/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Son of a Presbyterian, he adhered to his father's religion.","source":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Appletons%27_Cyclop%C3%A6dia_of_American_Biography/Calhoun%2C_John_Caldwell","sourceName":"Appletons' Cyclopaedia of American Biography (via Wikisource)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"john-calvin","name":"John Calvin","url":"/great-lives/john-calvin/","dates":"1509–1564","born":1509,"died":1564,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["theologians-church-fathers","saints-reformers"],"knownFor":"French Reformer in Geneva whose Institutes shaped Reformed and Presbyterian churches.","bio":"John Calvin was born at Noyon in northern France and studied law and the classics in Paris, Orléans and Bourges. Around 1533 he experienced what he called a sudden conversion and joined the movement for reform. Persecution of Protestants in France forced him to flee, and in Basel in 1536 he published the first edition of the Institutes of the Christian Religion, a clear summary of Protestant teaching that he kept expanding for the rest of his life. Passing through Geneva that year, he was persuaded by the reformer William Farel to stay and help lead the church there. Expelled in 1538, he spent three happy years in Strasbourg, where he married Idelette de Bure, before Geneva called him back in 1541. He preached several times a week, wrote commentaries on most books of the Bible, set up a system of church discipline and an academy that trained ministers for France, Scotland and the Netherlands. He supported the execution of Michael Servetus for heresy in 1553. He died in Geneva in 1564.","keyDates":[{"date":"1509","event":"Born at Noyon, France"},{"date":"1536","event":"First edition of the Institutes; arrives in Geneva"},{"date":"1538–1541","event":"Exiled to Strasbourg"},{"date":"1559","event":"Founds the Geneva Academy; final Institutes"},{"date":"1564","event":"Dies in Geneva"}],"quotes":[{"text":"Our wisdom, in so far as it ought to be deemed true and solid Wisdom, consists almost entirely of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves.","work":"calvin-institutes","location":"Book I, ch. 1, sec. 1","verified":true}],"author":"John Calvin","relatedWorks":["calvin-institutes","calvin-selected-sermons"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"calvin-institutes","url":"/works/calvin-institutes/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"calvin-selected-sermons","url":"/works/calvin-selected-sermons/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"book","title":"Calvin","author":"Bruce Gordon","isbn13":"9780300170849","publisher":"Yale University Press","year":2011,"format":""}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"French Protestant reformer whose Institutes became the standard of belief in the Reformed churches.","source":"https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03195b.htm","sourceName":"Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"italo-calvino","name":"Italo Calvino","url":"/great-lives/italo-calvino/","dates":"1923–1985","born":1923,"died":1985,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Italian novelist and essayist, author of Invisible Cities, If on a Winter's Night a Traveler and Why Read the Classics?","bio":"Italo Calvino was born in 1923 in Santiago de las Vegas, Cuba, where his Italian parents, both botanists, were working, and the family returned to Sanremo, on the Italian Riviera, when he was a small child. He began studying agriculture at the University of Turin. During the Second World War he joined the Italian Resistance against the Germans and the Fascists, an experience he drew on in his first novel, The Path to the Nest of Spiders (1947). After the war he studied literature and worked for many years for the publisher Einaudi in Turin. His trilogy Our Ancestors includes The Baron in the Trees, about a boy who climbs into the trees and never comes down. He collected and retold Italian Folktales (1956). Later books became more playful and experimental, including Cosmicomics, Invisible Cities, in which Marco Polo describes imaginary cities to Kublai Khan, and If on a Winter's Night a Traveler (1979), about a reader trying to finish a novel. He lived for years in Paris and died in Siena in 1985. His essay collection Why Read the Classics? appeared after his death.","keyDates":[{"date":"1923","event":"Born in Cuba"},{"date":"1947","event":"The Path to the Nest of Spiders published"},{"date":"1956","event":"Italian Folktales published"},{"date":"1972","event":"Invisible Cities published"},{"date":"1979","event":"If on a Winter's Night a Traveler published"},{"date":"1985","event":"Dies in Siena"},{"date":"1991","event":"Why Read the Classics? published"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Italo Calvino","relatedWorks":["calvino-why-read-the-classics","if-on-a-winters-night-a-traveler"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"calvino-why-read-the-classics","url":"/works/calvino-why-read-the-classics/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"if-on-a-winters-night-a-traveler","url":"/works/if-on-a-winters-night-a-traveler/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Raised by freethinking parents without religious education; he described himself as an atheist.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italo_Calvino","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"albert-camus","name":"Albert Camus","url":"/great-lives/albert-camus/","dates":"1913–1960","born":1913,"died":1960,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["writers-poets","philosophers"],"knownFor":"French writer born in Algeria, author of The Stranger and The Plague, who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957.","bio":"Albert Camus was born in 1913 in Mondovi, in French Algeria. His father was killed in the First World War, and he grew up poor in Algiers with his mother, who was partly deaf and could not read. A teacher helped him win a scholarship, and he went on to study philosophy at the University of Algiers, where he also played goalkeeper until tuberculosis ended his playing. He worked as a journalist and in the theater, and in 1942 he published the novel The Stranger and the essay The Myth of Sisyphus, which explored what he called the absurd. During the German occupation of France he edited Combat, a newspaper of the French Resistance. His novel The Plague (1947) tells of an epidemic in the Algerian city of Oran. Later works include The Rebel and The Fall. In 1957 he received the Nobel Prize in Literature. He died in a car accident in France in 1960, at the age of 46.","keyDates":[{"date":"1913","event":"Born in Mondovi, Algeria"},{"date":"1942","event":"The Stranger published"},{"date":"1947","event":"The Plague published"},{"date":"1956","event":"The Fall published"},{"date":"1957","event":"Nobel Prize in Literature"},{"date":"1960","event":"Dies in a car accident"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Albert Camus","relatedWorks":["camus-the-plague","camus-the-stranger","camus-the-fall"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"camus-the-plague","url":"/works/camus-the-plague/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"camus-the-stranger","url":"/works/camus-the-stranger/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"camus-the-fall","url":"/works/camus-the-fall/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[{"text":"When he won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957 at 44, he was the second-youngest winner ever and the first literature laureate born in Africa.","source":{"title":"Albert Camus (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Camus"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Did not hold religious faith; he studied Christian thought but rejected it, holding that nothing lies beyond this life.","source":"https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/camus/","sourceName":"Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy","documented":true},"furtherReading":[{"series":"Very Short Introductions","title":"Albert Camus: A Very Short Introduction","author":"Oliver Gloag","publisher":"Oxford University Press","year":2020,"isbn13":"9780198792970","url":"https://bookshop.org/a/130650/9780198792970"}],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"william-carey","name":"William Carey","url":"/great-lives/william-carey/","dates":"1761–1834","born":1761,"died":1834,"era":"19th-century","categories":["saints-reformers"],"knownFor":"English Baptist shoemaker who became a missionary to India and Bible translator, often called the father of modern missions.","bio":"William Carey was born in 1761 at Paulerspury in Northamptonshire and trained as a shoemaker, teaching himself Latin, Greek, Hebrew and other languages at his workbench. He became a Baptist pastor and in 1792 published An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians, to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens, arguing that the command to preach the gospel to all nations still applied. The same year he helped found the Baptist Missionary Society, and in 1793 he sailed for Bengal with his family. After years managing an indigo works, in 1800 he moved to the Danish settlement of Serampore, where with Joshua Marshman and William Ward he set up a mission, a press and later Serampore College. He translated the Bible, in whole or in part, into many Indian languages, taught Bengali and Sanskrit at Fort William College in Calcutta, studied botany, and campaigned against widow-burning, which was outlawed in 1829. His first wife, Dorothy, suffered severe mental illness in India. He died at Serampore in 1834. He is often called the father of modern Protestant missions.","keyDates":[{"date":"1761","event":"Born in Northamptonshire"},{"date":"1792","event":"Publishes his Enquiry; Baptist Missionary Society founded"},{"date":"1793","event":"Sails for India"},{"date":"1800","event":"Serampore mission founded"},{"date":"1818","event":"Serampore College founded"},{"date":"1834","event":"Dies at Serampore"}],"quotes":[],"author":"William Carey","relatedWorks":["carey-enquiry"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"carey-enquiry","url":"/works/carey-enquiry/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Joined the Baptists in 1783 and became a missionary.","source":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dictionary_of_National_Biography%2C_1885-1900/Carey%2C_William_%281761-1834%29","sourceName":"Dictionary of National Biography (1885–1900) (via Wikisource)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"thomas-carlyle","name":"Thomas Carlyle","url":"/great-lives/thomas-carlyle/","dates":"1795–1881","born":1795,"died":1881,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets","philosophers"],"knownFor":"Scottish essayist and historian of The French Revolution, On Heroes, Past and Present and Frederick the Great; Victorian prophet of work and sincerity.","bio":"Thomas Carlyle was born in 1795 at Ecclefechan in Annandale, Scotland, the eldest son of a mason who later farmed and who belonged to a seceder Calvinist congregation. Educated for the ministry, Carlyle taught mathematics, studied German literature and gradually left orthodox dogmatic belief while keeping a fierce moral seriousness. He settled in London, published Sartor Resartus, then made his name with The French Revolution (1837). Lectures On Heroes and books such as Past and Present and the huge History of Frederick the Great carried his gospel of work, sincerity and strong leadership across Britain and America. A friend of Emerson and a famous Victorian sage, he also wrote harsh political pamphlets that still require careful teaching. He died in London in 1881 and was buried at Ecclefechan.","keyDates":[{"date":"1795","event":"Born at Ecclefechan, Scotland"},{"date":"1833–1834","event":"Sartor Resartus serialised"},{"date":"1837","event":"The French Revolution published"},{"date":"1840–1841","event":"On Heroes lectures / book"},{"date":"1843","event":"Past and Present published"},{"date":"1858–1865","event":"History of Frederick the Great issued"},{"date":"1881","event":"Dies in London; buried at Ecclefechan"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Thomas Carlyle","relatedWorks":["past-and-present","sartor-resartus","on-heroes-hero-worship","the-french-revolution-carlyle","latter-day-pamphlets","life-of-john-sterling","life-of-friedrich-schiller","early-kings-of-norway","essay-on-burns","on-the-choice-of-books","shall-turkey-live-or-die","carlyle-frederick-the-great","chartism"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"sartor-resartus","url":"/works/sartor-resartus/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"on-heroes-hero-worship","url":"/works/on-heroes-hero-worship/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"past-and-present","url":"/works/past-and-present/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-french-revolution-carlyle","url":"/works/the-french-revolution-carlyle/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"chartism","url":"/works/chartism/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"essay-on-burns","url":"/works/essay-on-burns/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Raised by a seceder Calvinist father in Scotland and prepared for the ministry; he abandoned the dogmatic system of his forefathers yet remained in sympathy with the spirit of their teaching, calling himself a mystic and condemning atheism while rejecting the accepted creeds.","source":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Carlyle,_Thomas","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica (1911) via Wikisource","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"andrew-carnegie","name":"Andrew Carnegie","url":"/great-lives/andrew-carnegie/","dates":"1835–1919","born":1835,"died":1919,"era":"19th-century","categories":["titans-of-industry"],"knownFor":"Scottish-American steel magnate who gave away most of his fortune to libraries and education.","bio":"Andrew Carnegie was born in Dunfermline, Scotland, the son of a handloom weaver put out of work by machines. In 1848 the family emigrated to Pittsburgh, where thirteen-year-old Andrew worked in a cotton mill as a bobbin boy for $1.20 a week. He became a telegraph messenger and operator, then assistant to a railroad superintendent, and invested his savings wisely. In the 1870s he turned to steel, adopting the Bessemer process and building huge, efficient mills. Carnegie Steel became the largest steel company in the world. In 1892 a strike at his Homestead works, while Carnegie was in Scotland, ended in a deadly battle between strikers and hired guards, and the union was broken. In 1901 he sold his company to J. P. Morgan for about 480 million dollars. In The Gospel of Wealth he had argued that the rich should use their fortunes for the public good during their lifetimes, and he spent his remaining years giving away some 350 million dollars, funding over 2,500 public libraries, Carnegie Hall, universities, scientific research and peace efforts. He died in 1919.","keyDates":[{"date":"1848","event":"Emigrates to Pittsburgh"},{"date":"1875","event":"Opens his first steel mill"},{"date":"1889","event":"Publishes The Gospel of Wealth"},{"date":"1892","event":"Homestead strike"},{"date":"1901","event":"Sells Carnegie Steel to J. P. Morgan"},{"date":"1919","event":"Dies in Massachusetts"}],"quotes":[{"text":"I resolved to stop accumulating and begin the infinitely more serious and difficult task of wise distribution.","work":"autobiography-of-andrew-carnegie","location":"Chapter XIX","verified":true}],"author":"Andrew Carnegie","relatedWorks":["autobiography-of-andrew-carnegie"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"autobiography-of-andrew-carnegie","url":"/works/autobiography-of-andrew-carnegie/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"book","title":"Andrew Carnegie","author":"David Nasaw","isbn13":"9780143112440","publisher":"Paperback","year":2007,"format":"paperback"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"The giant saguaro cactus has the scientific name Carnegiea gigantea, after him.","source":{"title":"Andrew Carnegie (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Carnegie"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Raised in a family of moderate Presbyterians who did not hold strictly orthodox views; as an adult he called the evolutionary philosopher Herbert Spencer his teacher.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Carnegie","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"charles-carroll-of-carrollton","name":"Charles Carroll of Carrollton","url":"/great-lives/charles-carroll-of-carrollton/","dates":"1737–1832","born":1737,"died":1832,"era":"18th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"The only Catholic signer of the Declaration, one of the richest men in the colonies, and the last of the fifty-six to die.","bio":"Charles Carroll of Carrollton was born in 1737 in Annapolis, educated in France and England, and returned to Maryland as heir to one of the greatest fortunes in the colonies. Because he was a Catholic, he was long barred from holding office in Maryland; the revolutionary crisis opened a public career to him. He was seated in the Continental Congress in July 1776, after the vote on independence, and signed the Declaration—the only Catholic among the fifty-six. He added 'of Carrollton' to his name, identifying the family seat. He later served as a United States senator from Maryland. Carroll held a very large number of people in slavery on his estates, and that fact stands beside his long defense of civil and religious liberty. He lived to the age of ninety-five, the last surviving signer, and in old age helped launch the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. He died in 1832, fifty-six years after the Declaration.","keyDates":[{"date":"1737","event":"Born in Annapolis, Maryland"},{"date":"1776","event":"Takes his seat in Congress and signs the Declaration"},{"date":"1789","event":"Becomes a United States senator from Maryland"},{"date":"1828","event":"Helps lay the first stone of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad"},{"date":"1832","event":"Dies, the last surviving signer of the Declaration"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["the-founding-documents"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-founding-documents","url":"/works/the-founding-documents/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":null,"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"lewis-carroll","name":"Lewis Carroll","url":"/great-lives/lewis-carroll/","dates":"1832–1898","born":1832,"died":1898,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets","scientists-mathematicians"],"knownFor":"English writer and Oxford mathematician, author of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass.","bio":"Lewis Carroll was the pen name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, born in 1832 at Daresbury, Cheshire, the eldest son of a clergyman in a family of eleven children. As a boy he entertained his brothers and sisters with games, puppet shows and handwritten family magazines. He studied at Rugby School and Christ Church, Oxford, where he stayed for the rest of his life as a lecturer in mathematics. He was ordained a deacon in the Church of England. Dodgson was also one of the leading amateur photographers of his day. He became friends with the family of Henry Liddell, the dean of Christ Church, and on a boat trip on the Thames in 1862 he told the Liddell sisters a story about a girl named Alice who falls down a rabbit hole. At the request of Alice Liddell he wrote it down, and it was published in 1865 as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, illustrated by John Tenniel. Through the Looking-Glass followed in 1871, and The Hunting of the Snark in 1876. He also published works on mathematics and logic. He died in Guildford in 1898.","keyDates":[{"date":"1832","event":"Born at Daresbury, Cheshire"},{"date":"1855","event":"Mathematical lecturer at Christ Church, Oxford"},{"date":"1862","event":"Tells the Alice story on a boat trip"},{"date":"1865","event":"Alice's Adventures in Wonderland published"},{"date":"1871","event":"Through the Looking-Glass published"},{"date":"1898","event":"Dies in Guildford"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Lewis Carroll","relatedWorks":["alices-adventures-in-wonderland","through-the-looking-glass","the-hunting-of-the-snark"],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"library","work":"alices-adventures-in-wonderland","url":"/works/alices-adventures-in-wonderland/"},{"band":"3-5","kind":"library","work":"through-the-looking-glass","url":"/works/through-the-looking-glass/"},{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-hunting-of-the-snark","url":"/works/the-hunting-of-the-snark/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"From a family of high-church Anglicans; he was an Anglican deacon.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Carroll","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"rachel-carson","name":"Rachel Carson","url":"/great-lives/rachel-carson/","dates":"1907–1964","born":1907,"died":1964,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["scientists-mathematicians"],"knownFor":"Marine biologist and writer whose Silent Spring warned about pesticides.","bio":"Rachel Carson grew up on a farm in Springdale, Pennsylvania, where she explored the woods and streams and decided early to be a writer. In college she switched from English to biology, and she earned a master's degree in zoology at Johns Hopkins. Short of money after her father's death, she supported her mother and later her orphaned nieces and nephew by working for the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries, later the Fish and Wildlife Service, writing radio scripts and pamphlets and becoming chief editor. Her book The Sea Around Us, published in 1951, became a bestseller and won the National Book Award, allowing her to write full time. In the late 1950s she studied the effects of synthetic pesticides such as DDT, which were sprayed widely. In Silent Spring, published in 1962, she argued that their careless use was killing birds, fish and other wildlife and could harm people. The chemical industry attacked the book, but a presidential science committee largely supported her findings, and in 1972 DDT was banned for most uses in the United States. She was ill with cancer while writing it and died in 1964.","keyDates":[{"date":"1907","event":"Born in Springdale, Pennsylvania"},{"date":"1936","event":"Joins the Bureau of Fisheries"},{"date":"1951","event":"The Sea Around Us"},{"date":"1962","event":"Silent Spring"},{"date":"1964","event":"Dies in Maryland"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"book","title":"Who Was Rachel Carson?","author":"Sarah Fabiny","isbn13":"9780448479590","publisher":"Paperback","year":2014,"format":""}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"As a girl, her favourite books were about the natural world, especially the ocean.","source":{"title":"Rachel Carson (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Carson"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Carson","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"jacques-cartier","name":"Jacques Cartier","url":"/great-lives/jacques-cartier/","dates":"1491–1557","born":1491,"died":1557,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["explorers"],"knownFor":"French navigator who explored the St. Lawrence River and named Canada.","bio":"Jacques Cartier was born in the port of Saint-Malo in Brittany and became an experienced sailor. In 1534 King Francis I of France sent him to look for a northwest passage to Asia and for gold. He crossed the Atlantic in twenty days, explored the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and at Gaspé raised a large cross claiming the land for France. There he met a group of St. Lawrence Iroquoians led by the chief Donnacona, and he took two of the chief's sons back to France. On his second voyage in 1535, guided by them, he sailed up the St. Lawrence River to the village of Stadacona, where Quebec City stands today, and to Hochelaga, now Montreal. He used the Iroquoian word kanata, meaning village, which became the name Canada. That winter his men suffered terribly from scurvy until the Iroquoians showed them how to make a cure from the bark and needles of a tree. A third voyage, in 1541, to found a colony failed; the gold and diamonds he brought back proved worthless. He died in Saint-Malo in 1557.","keyDates":[{"date":"1534","event":"First voyage to the Gulf of St. Lawrence"},{"date":"1535–1536","event":"Sails up the St. Lawrence to Hochelaga"},{"date":"1541–1542","event":"Third voyage"},{"date":"1557","event":"Dies at Saint-Malo"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[{"text":"He was the first European to describe and map the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, and the first to record the name 'Canada' for the land along the St. Lawrence River.","source":{"title":"Jacques Cartier (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Cartier"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Cartier","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"george-washington-carver","name":"George Washington Carver","url":"/great-lives/george-washington-carver/","dates":"c. 1864–1943","born":1864,"died":1943,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["scientists-mathematicians","inventors"],"knownFor":"Agricultural scientist at Tuskegee who taught crop rotation and found many uses for peanuts.","bio":"George Washington Carver was born into slavery in Diamond, Missouri, near the end of the Civil War. As a baby he and his mother were kidnapped by raiders; he was found and returned, but his mother was never seen again. Raised by Moses and Susan Carver, his former owners, he was a sickly child who loved plants and was called the plant doctor. He traveled to find schools that would admit Black students, finished high school in Kansas, and after being turned away from one college because of his race, studied art and then botany at Iowa State, where he became the first Black student and later the first Black faculty member. In 1896 Booker T. Washington invited him to Tuskegee Institute, where he taught for forty-seven years. Seeing that cotton had exhausted Southern soil, he taught farmers to rotate crops with peanuts, sweet potatoes and soybeans, which restore nitrogen, and developed hundreds of uses for them. He took a wagon school to farmers. He was a devout Christian who spoke of finding God in nature. He died in 1943.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 1864","event":"Born enslaved in Missouri"},{"date":"1894","event":"Graduates from Iowa State"},{"date":"1896","event":"Joins Tuskegee Institute"},{"date":"1921","event":"Testifies to Congress on peanuts"},{"date":"1943","event":"Dies at Tuskegee"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["up-from-slavery"],"reading":[{"band":"K-2","kind":"book","title":"A Picture Book of George Washington Carver","author":"David A. Adler","isbn13":"9780823416332","publisher":"Holiday House","year":1999,"format":""},{"band":"3-5","kind":"book","title":"Who Was George Washington Carver?","author":"Jim Gigliotti","isbn13":"9780448483122","publisher":"Grosset&Dunlap","year":2015,"format":""}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"In 1890 he studied art and piano at Simpson College in Iowa.","source":{"title":"George Washington Carver (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington_Carver"}},{"text":"Several kinds of fungi are named after him.","source":{"title":"George Washington Carver (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington_Carver"}}],"records":[{"text":"He was the first black student at Iowa State, and later its first African American faculty member.","source":{"title":"George Washington Carver (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington_Carver"}},{"text":"The George Washington Carver National Monument was the first national monument dedicated to an African American.","source":{"title":"George Washington Carver (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington_Carver"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Became a Christian as a boy and spoke of his faith in God throughout his life.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington_Carver","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["Exact birth year is unknown."]},{"slug":"mary-cassatt","name":"Mary Cassatt","url":"/great-lives/mary-cassatt/","dates":"1844–1926","born":1844,"died":1926,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["artists-composers-architects"],"knownFor":"American painter who joined the Impressionists in Paris and painted mothers and children.","bio":"Mary Cassatt was born in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania, now part of Pittsburgh, into a wealthy family. She studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, but wanting more serious training, she moved to Europe in 1866, copying paintings in museums and studying privately in Paris. Women could not then enroll at the École des Beaux-Arts. Her work was accepted at the official Paris Salon, but she grew frustrated with its rules. In 1877 Edgar Degas invited her to exhibit with the Impressionists, and she was the only American to do so. She painted the everyday lives of women: drinking tea, reading, and above all caring for children, painted with tenderness but without sentimentality. Inspired by Japanese woodblock prints, she made a celebrated series of color prints in 1891. She also advised wealthy American collectors such as the Havemeyers to buy Impressionist and old master paintings, helping bring great European art to American museums. She supported the movement for women's right to vote. Failing eyesight, caused by diabetes and cataracts, ended her painting around 1914. She died at her country home near Paris in 1926.","keyDates":[{"date":"1866","event":"Moves to Paris"},{"date":"1877","event":"Invited by Degas to join the Impressionists"},{"date":"1891","event":"Exhibits her color prints"},{"date":"c. 1914","event":"Stops painting due to failing eyesight"},{"date":"1926","event":"Dies in France"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[{"text":"Her painting In the Box set her auction record in 1996, selling for $4,072,500.","source":{"title":"Mary Cassatt (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Cassatt"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Cassatt","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"willa-cather","name":"Willa Cather","url":"/great-lives/willa-cather/","dates":"1873–1947","born":1873,"died":1947,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American novelist of the Great Plains, author of O Pioneers!, My Ántonia and Death Comes for the Archbishop.","bio":"Willa Cather was born in 1873 in Back Creek Valley, Virginia. When she was nine her family moved to Nebraska, where they settled near the prairie town of Red Cloud. There she came to know European immigrant farming families, whose lives later filled her novels. She studied at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, then moved to Pittsburgh, where she worked as a journalist and taught high school English. In 1906 she moved to New York City to take an editorial position at McClure's Magazine, and she published her first novel, Alexander's Bridge, in 1912. Encouraged by the writer Sarah Orne Jewett to write about the places she knew best, she turned to the prairie in O Pioneers! (1913) and My Ántonia (1918), the story of a Bohemian immigrant girl growing up on the Nebraska frontier. One of Ours (1922), about a young Nebraskan in the First World War, won the Pulitzer Prize. Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) was also widely popular. She lived in New York for most of her adult life with her companion Edith Lewis. She died in 1947.","keyDates":[{"date":"1873","event":"Born in Back Creek Valley, Virginia"},{"date":"1883","event":"Family moves to Nebraska"},{"date":"1906","event":"Joins McClure's Magazine"},{"date":"1913","event":"O Pioneers! published"},{"date":"1918","event":"My Ántonia published"},{"date":"1923","event":"Pulitzer Prize for One of Ours"},{"date":"1947","event":"Dies"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Willa Cather","relatedWorks":["death-comes-for-the-archbishop","my-antonia","cather-a-lost-lady"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"death-comes-for-the-archbishop","url":"/works/death-comes-for-the-archbishop/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"my-antonia","url":"/works/my-antonia/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"cather-a-lost-lady","url":"/works/cather-a-lost-lady/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"The University of Nebraska–Lincoln named a dormitory, Cather Hall, after her in 1963.","source":{"title":"Willa Cather (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willa_Cather"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willa_Cather","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"catherine-the-great","name":"Catherine the Great","url":"/great-lives/catherine-the-great/","dates":"1729–1796","born":1729,"died":1796,"era":"18th-century","categories":["kings-queens-emperors"],"knownFor":"German-born empress who expanded Russia and corresponded with Enlightenment thinkers.","bio":"Catherine was born Sophie, a princess of a small German state, and was brought to Russia at fourteen to marry the heir to the throne, the future Peter III. She learned Russian, joined the Orthodox Church, and read widely. The marriage was unhappy, and in 1762, months after Peter became emperor, she led a coup with the help of the guards regiments; Peter was killed days later. Catherine ruled for thirty-four years. She wrote to Voltaire and Diderot, bought great art collections that began the Hermitage museum, founded schools including one for girls, and drafted a long statement of legal principles. Yet she also extended serfdom, and after the huge Pugachev peasant revolt of 1773 to 1775 she strengthened the nobles' power over the serfs. Her wars against the Ottoman Empire won Crimea and the north coast of the Black Sea, and with Prussia and Austria she divided up Poland until it disappeared from the map. She died in 1796.","keyDates":[{"date":"1745","event":"Marries the future Peter III"},{"date":"1762","event":"Seizes the throne"},{"date":"1773–1775","event":"Pugachev rebellion"},{"date":"1783","event":"Annexes Crimea"},{"date":"1772–1795","event":"Partitions of Poland"},{"date":"1796","event":"Dies at St. Petersburg"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"book","title":"Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman","author":"Robert K. Massie","isbn13":"9780345408778","publisher":"Random House Publishing Group","year":2012,"format":""}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Raised a Protestant by a Lutheran father; she converted to Russian Orthodoxy.","source":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Catherine_II.","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica (1911) (via Wikisource)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"catherine-of-siena","name":"Catherine of Siena","url":"/great-lives/catherine-of-siena/","dates":"1347–1380","born":1347,"died":1380,"era":"medieval","categories":["saints-reformers","theologians-church-fathers"],"knownFor":"Italian mystic who cared for the sick and urged the pope to return to Rome.","bio":"Catherine Benincasa was the twenty-third or twenty-fourth child of a wool dyer in Siena, Italy. From childhood she devoted herself to prayer, and she refused her parents' plans for her marriage, at one point cutting off her hair. At about sixteen she joined the Dominican lay sisters known as Mantellate, living at home but in great self-denial. After three years of near seclusion, she went out to care for the poor and the sick, including plague victims, and visited prisoners; she accompanied a young man condemned to death to his execution. Though she learned to write only late, if at all, she dictated nearly four hundred letters to popes, kings, cities and ordinary people. At the time the popes had lived in Avignon in France for nearly seventy years; Catherine went to Avignon in 1376 and urged Pope Gregory XI to return to Rome, which he did the next year. Her book The Dialogue records her conversations with God. She died in Rome in 1380, aged thirty-three, and was declared a Doctor of the Church in 1970.","keyDates":[{"date":"1347","event":"Born in Siena"},{"date":"c. 1363","event":"Joins the Dominican Mantellate"},{"date":"1376","event":"Goes to Avignon to see Gregory XI"},{"date":"1377","event":"Pope returns to Rome"},{"date":"1378","event":"The Dialogue"},{"date":"1380","event":"Dies in Rome"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["golden-legend-popular-saints"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"golden-legend-popular-saints","url":"/works/golden-legend-popular-saints/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"As a child she was so cheerful that her family nicknamed her 'Euphrosyne', Greek for 'joy'.","source":{"title":"Catherine of Siena (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_of_Siena"}}],"records":[{"text":"She is considered the first woman writer in the Italian literary tradition.","source":{"title":"Catherine of Siena (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_of_Siena"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Italian mystic and Dominican tertiary, revered as a saint in the Roman Catholic Church.","source":"https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Catherine-of-Siena","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"edith-cavell","name":"Edith Cavell","url":"/great-lives/edith-cavell/","dates":"1865–1915","born":1865,"died":1915,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["physicians-medicine"],"knownFor":"British nurse and matron in Brussels who helped Allied soldiers escape German-occupied Belgium and was executed in 1915.","bio":"Edith Cavell was born on 4 December 1865 at the vicarage in Swardeston, Norfolk, the daughter of a Church of England clergyman. After years as a governess, including a post in Brussels, she trained as a nurse at the London Hospital, beginning in 1896, and later held senior posts in London infirmaries. In 1907 she returned to Brussels to direct a new nurses’ training school at the Berkendael Medical Institute. When the German army occupied Belgium in 1914 she remained at her post and treated wounded of both sides. She also joined a clandestine network that hid Allied soldiers and helped them escape through the Netherlands. Arrested on 5 August 1915, she admitted helping the men and was court-martialled in October. She was shot at dawn on 12 October 1915 at the Tir National in Brussels. After the war her body was brought to Britain; a funeral was held in Westminster Abbey, and she was buried in the precinct of Norwich Cathedral on 15 May 1919.","keyDates":[{"date":"1865","event":"Born at Swardeston, Norfolk, 4 December"},{"date":"1896","event":"Enters the London Hospital School of Nursing"},{"date":"1907","event":"Takes charge of a nurses’ training school in Brussels"},{"date":"5 August 1915","event":"Arrested by the German occupation authorities"},{"date":"12 October 1915","event":"Executed at dawn in Brussels"},{"date":"15 May 1919","event":"Buried at Norwich Cathedral after a funeral in Westminster Abbey"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":null,"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"benvenuto-cellini","name":"Benvenuto Cellini","url":"/great-lives/benvenuto-cellini/","dates":"1500–1571","born":1500,"died":1571,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["artists-composers-architects","writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Florentine goldsmith and sculptor of the Renaissance, maker of the bronze Perseus and author of a famous autobiography.","bio":"Benvenuto Cellini was born in Florence in 1500, the son of a musician who wanted him to become a flute player. Instead he trained as a goldsmith and became one of the finest metalworkers of the Italian Renaissance. He worked in Rome for popes and nobles, and he claimed to have helped defend the Castel Sant'Angelo during the sack of Rome in 1527. His violent temper involved him in brawls and killings, and he was imprisoned in the Castel Sant'Angelo, escaping once. He worked for King Francis I of France, for whom he made a famous gold salt cellar, now in Vienna. Returning to Florence in 1545, he worked for Duke Cosimo I de' Medici and cast the bronze statue of Perseus holding the head of Medusa, which stands in the Loggia dei Lanzi. Between 1558 and 1563 he dictated his Autobiography, a lively and boastful account of his life that was not published until 1728. He died in Florence in 1571.","keyDates":[{"date":"1500","event":"Born in Florence"},{"date":"1527","event":"In Rome during the sack of the city"},{"date":"1540–1543","event":"Makes the salt cellar for Francis I"},{"date":"1545–1554","event":"Casts the bronze Perseus"},{"date":"1558","event":"Begins dictating his Autobiography"},{"date":"1571","event":"Dies in Florence"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Benvenuto Cellini","relatedWorks":["autobiography-of-benvenuto-cellini"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"autobiography-of-benvenuto-cellini","url":"/works/autobiography-of-benvenuto-cellini/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"His father wanted him to be a musician, and he became a skilled player of the flute and the cornett, but at fifteen he was apprenticed to a goldsmith.","source":{"title":"Benvenuto Cellini (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benvenuto_Cellini"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benvenuto_Cellini","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"aulus-cornelius-celsus","name":"Aulus Cornelius Celsus","url":"/great-lives/aulus-cornelius-celsus/","dates":"c. 25 BC–c. AD 50","born":-25,"died":50,"era":"ancient","categories":["physicians-medicine"],"knownFor":"Roman writer of the early first century whose De Medicina is one of the best sources for ancient medicine.","bio":"Aulus Cornelius Celsus was a Roman writer who lived around the beginning of the first century AD, probably in the reign of the emperor Tiberius. Almost nothing is known about his life, and scholars disagree about whether he practiced as a physician or was a learned landowner writing for others like himself. He wrote a large encyclopedia in Latin, the Artes, covering subjects such as farming, law, rhetoric, philosophy, military science and medicine, but only the eight books on medicine, De Medicina, survive. They describe diet, drugs and surgery, summarize the debates between different Greek medical schools, and give the classic description of inflammation by its four signs of redness, swelling, heat and pain. The work was little noticed in the Middle Ages but was rediscovered in the fifteenth century and was among the first medical books printed, in 1478. Its clear Latin earned Celsus the nickname 'the Cicero of medicine' among later readers.","keyDates":[{"date":"early 1st century AD","event":"Writes the Artes encyclopedia"},{"date":"1478","event":"De Medicina printed in Florence"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Aulus Cornelius Celsus","relatedWorks":["on-medicine"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"on-medicine","url":"/works/on-medicine/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aulus_Cornelius_Celsus","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["His dates and profession are uncertain."]},{"slug":"miguel-de-cervantes","name":"Miguel de Cervantes","url":"/great-lives/miguel-de-cervantes/","dates":"1547–1616","born":1547,"died":1616,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Spanish novelist, playwright and poet, author of Don Quixote.","bio":"Miguel de Cervantes was born in 1547 in Alcalá de Henares, near Madrid, the son of a barber-surgeon who moved often in search of work. Little is known of his schooling. As a young man he went to Italy and joined the Spanish army. At the Battle of Lepanto in 1571, against the Ottoman fleet, he was wounded twice in the chest and lost the use of his left arm. In 1575, sailing home, he was captured by pirates and held for five years in Algiers, where he made four failed attempts to escape before he was ransomed. Back in Spain he wrote plays and a pastoral novel, La Galatea, and worked as a purchasing agent and tax collector; problems with his accounts led to jail more than once. Don Quixote, about a country gentleman who reads so many tales of chivalry that he sets out as a knight with his squire Sancho Panza, was published in two parts, in 1605 and 1615. It was immediately popular and is often called the first modern novel. Cervantes also wrote the Exemplary Novels. He died in Madrid in 1616.","keyDates":[{"date":"1547","event":"Born in Alcalá de Henares"},{"date":"1571","event":"Wounded at the Battle of Lepanto"},{"date":"1575–1580","event":"Captive in Algiers"},{"date":"1585","event":"La Galatea published"},{"date":"1605","event":"Don Quixote, Part One"},{"date":"1615","event":"Don Quixote, Part Two"},{"date":"1616","event":"Dies in Madrid"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Miguel de Cervantes","relatedWorks":["don-quixote"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"don-quixote","url":"/works/don-quixote/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A Catholic; some scholars suggest one or both parents may have been of Jewish ancestry (New Christians).","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miguel_de_Cervantes","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"jean-martin-charcot","name":"Jean-Martin Charcot","url":"/great-lives/jean-martin-charcot/","dates":"1825–1893","born":1825,"died":1893,"era":"19th-century","categories":["physicians-medicine"],"knownFor":"French neurologist at the Salpêtrière in Paris who described multiple sclerosis and taught Sigmund Freud.","bio":"Jean-Martin Charcot was born in Paris in 1825, the son of a carriage builder. He studied medicine in Paris and in 1862 became a physician at the Salpêtrière, a huge hospital that housed thousands of elderly and chronically ill women. Charcot used its patients to study diseases of the nervous system in detail, comparing symptoms during life with what was found in the brain and spinal cord after death. He gave the first full descriptions of multiple sclerosis and of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, still sometimes called Charcot's disease, and studied Parkinson's disease. In 1882 he became the first professor of diseases of the nervous system in France, a chair created for him. His Tuesday lectures, in which he demonstrated patients before large audiences, were famous, and his students included Sigmund Freud, Pierre Janet, Joseph Babinski and Georges Gilles de la Tourette. In his later years he studied hysteria and hypnosis, work that was influential but much debated. His lectures on diseases of the nervous system were translated widely. He died in 1893.","keyDates":[{"date":"1825","event":"Born in Paris"},{"date":"1862","event":"Physician at the Salpêtrière"},{"date":"1868","event":"Describes multiple sclerosis"},{"date":"1882","event":"First professor of nervous diseases in France"},{"date":"1885","event":"Freud studies with him"},{"date":"1893","event":"Dies"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Jean-Martin Charcot","relatedWorks":["lectures-on-the-diseases-of-the-nervous-system"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"lectures-on-the-diseases-of-the-nervous-system","url":"/works/lectures-on-the-diseases-of-the-nervous-system/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[{"text":"He was the first to describe and name multiple sclerosis.","source":{"title":"Jean-Martin Charcot (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Martin_Charcot"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Has been described as an atheist.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Martin_Charcot","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"charlemagne","name":"Charlemagne","url":"/great-lives/charlemagne/","dates":"c. 747–814","born":747,"died":814,"era":"medieval","categories":["kings-queens-emperors"],"knownFor":"King of the Franks crowned emperor in 800, who united much of western Europe and revived learning.","bio":"Charlemagne, whose name means Charles the Great, became king of the Franks in 768. Through many years of campaigns he conquered the Lombards in Italy, the Saxons in Germany, and Bavaria, and fought the Avars and the Muslim rulers of Spain, bringing most of western Europe under one ruler for the first time since Rome. His wars against the Saxons were long and harsh and included forced conversions. On Christmas Day 800, Pope Leo III crowned him emperor in Rome. Charlemagne could read but struggled to write, yet he brought scholars such as Alcuin of York to his court at Aachen, founded schools, and encouraged the careful copying of ancient books in a clear new handwriting called Carolingian minuscule. Many Latin classics survive today because they were copied in his time. He also standardized coins and weights and sent officials to check on local rulers. His friend Einhard wrote a short biography of him. He died at Aachen in 814, and his empire was divided among his grandsons.","keyDates":[{"date":"768","event":"Becomes king of the Franks"},{"date":"774","event":"Conquers the Lombard kingdom of Italy"},{"date":"800","event":"Crowned emperor by Pope Leo III"},{"date":"814","event":"Dies at Aachen"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["two-lives-of-charlemagne"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"two-lives-of-charlemagne","url":"/works/two-lives-of-charlemagne/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"book","title":"Charlemagne","author":"Derek Wilson","isbn13":"9780307274809","publisher":"Vintage","year":2007,"format":"paperback"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"The caliph Harun al-Rashid sent him an elephant named Abul-Abbas, which arrived at his capital, Aachen, in 802.","source":{"title":"Charlemagne (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlemagne"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Christian king of the Franks who promoted the renewal of Christian society and learning.","source":"https://www.britannica.com/biography/Charlemagne","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"charles-martel","name":"Charles Martel","url":"/great-lives/charles-martel/","dates":"c. 688–741","born":688,"died":741,"era":"medieval","categories":["military-leaders"],"knownFor":"Frankish ruler who stopped an Umayyad army near Tours in 732.","bio":"Charles Martel was the son of Pepin of Herstal, the mayor of the palace who held real power in the Frankish kingdom while the Merovingian kings were rulers in name only. When Pepin died in 714, Charles was imprisoned by his stepmother, but he escaped, raised an army, and by 718 had made himself master of the Frankish lands. He spent years fighting to unite them, campaigning against Frisians, Saxons, Bavarians and Alemanni, and he supported missionaries such as Boniface in Germany. In 732 an army of the Umayyad Caliphate, which had conquered most of Spain, raided north into Gaul under the governor Abd al-Rahman. Charles met it between Tours and Poitiers. His infantry held firm, and Abd al-Rahman was killed; the invaders withdrew. Later chroniclers gave Charles the name Martel, meaning the Hammer. Historians debate how decisive the battle was, but it ended the largest Umayyad advance into Gaul. Charles ruled without taking the title of king, and when he died in 741 he divided his lands between his sons. His son Pepin became king, and his grandson was Charlemagne.","keyDates":[{"date":"718","event":"Becomes master of the Frankish lands"},{"date":"732","event":"Battle of Tours"},{"date":"737","event":"Rules without a king on the throne"},{"date":"741","event":"Dies at Quierzy"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"His nickname, 'Martel', means 'the Hammer'.","source":{"title":"Charles Martel (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Martel"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A Frankish ruler whose support Pope Gregory II sought in 722 for Boniface's mission.","source":"https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03629a.htm","sourceName":"Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"samuel-chase","name":"Samuel Chase","url":"/great-lives/samuel-chase/","dates":"1741–1811","born":1741,"died":1811,"era":"18th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders","legal-scholars-lawgivers"],"knownFor":"Maryland signer later named to the Supreme Court, impeached by his political opponents in 1805 and acquitted.","bio":"Samuel Chase was born in 1741 in Somerset County, Maryland, studied law in Annapolis, and became a fiery patriot in the colonial assembly. He was away from Congress during the early July debates, returned in time to sign the Declaration of Independence, and later helped Maryland accept the Articles of Confederation. President Washington named him to the Supreme Court in 1796. Chase was a blunt, sometimes harsh partisan. In 1804–1805 the Jeffersonian majority in the House impeached him, chiefly for his conduct in politically charged trials; the Senate acquitted him, an important early test of judicial independence. He remained on the Court until his death in 1811. Chase owned enslaved people in Maryland. His life is not a simple hero tale: he risked much for independence, then showed, on the bench, both a real belief in law and a temper that gave his enemies cause.","keyDates":[{"date":"1741","event":"Born in Somerset County, Maryland"},{"date":"1776","event":"Signs the Declaration of Independence"},{"date":"1796","event":"Is appointed to the Supreme Court"},{"date":"1805","event":"Is impeached by the House and acquitted by the Senate"},{"date":"1811","event":"Dies in Maryland"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["the-founding-documents"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-founding-documents","url":"/works/the-founding-documents/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":null,"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"bruce-chatwin","name":"Bruce Chatwin","url":"/great-lives/bruce-chatwin/","dates":"1940–1989","born":1940,"died":1989,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"English travel writer and novelist, author of In Patagonia.","bio":"Bruce Chatwin was born in Sheffield, England, in 1940 and grew up in Birmingham. After school at Marlborough College he went to work at the auction house Sotheby's in London, starting as a porter and rising quickly to become an expert on impressionist art and a director. He left in 1966 to study archaeology at the University of Edinburgh but did not finish the degree. He then wrote for The Sunday Times Magazine. In 1974 he traveled to Patagonia, at the southern tip of South America, partly because of a piece of animal skin in his grandmother's cabinet that he had been told came from a giant ground sloth. The result, In Patagonia (1977), mixes travel, history and stories of the people he met, and it won the Hawthornden Prize. His other books include The Songlines, about Aboriginal Australia, and the novels On the Black Hill and Utz, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. He died in France in 1989.","keyDates":[{"date":"1940","event":"Born in Sheffield"},{"date":"1966","event":"Leaves Sotheby's to study archaeology"},{"date":"1977","event":"In Patagonia published"},{"date":"1987","event":"The Songlines published"},{"date":"1989","event":"Dies in France"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Bruce Chatwin","relatedWorks":["in-patagonia"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"in-patagonia","url":"/works/in-patagonia/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Not religious for most of his life; near its end he became an Orthodox Christian.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Chatwin","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"geoffrey-chaucer","name":"Geoffrey Chaucer","url":"/great-lives/geoffrey-chaucer/","dates":"c. 1343–1400","born":1343,"died":1400,"era":"medieval","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"English poet, author of The Canterbury Tales and Troilus and Criseyde, often called the father of English literature.","bio":"Geoffrey Chaucer was born in London around 1343, the son of a wine merchant. As a youth he served in the household of the Countess of Ulster, and in 1359–1360 he fought in the Hundred Years' War in France, where he was captured and ransomed; the king contributed to the ransom. He spent his life in royal service as a courtier, diplomat and official, traveling to France and Italy, where he may have encountered the works of Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio. From 1374 he was controller of customs for the port of London, and he later served as a justice of the peace, a member of Parliament and clerk of the king's works. Alongside these duties he wrote poetry in English at a time when French and Latin were the languages of the court and learning. His works include The Book of the Duchess, The Parliament of Fowls, Troilus and Criseyde and The Canterbury Tales, stories told by pilgrims of many ranks on their way to Canterbury, left unfinished. He died in 1400 and was buried in Westminster Abbey.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 1343","event":"Born in London"},{"date":"1359–1360","event":"Serves in France and is captured"},{"date":"1374","event":"Controller of customs in London"},{"date":"c. 1380s","event":"Troilus and Criseyde"},{"date":"c. 1387–1400","event":"The Canterbury Tales"},{"date":"1400","event":"Dies; buried in Westminster Abbey"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Geoffrey Chaucer","relatedWorks":["troilus-and-criseyde","the-canterbury-tales"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"troilus-and-criseyde","url":"/works/troilus-and-criseyde/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-canterbury-tales","url":"/works/the-canterbury-tales/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A Christian whose works engage heavily with Christian faith; later writers debated whether he was a proto-Protestant.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffrey_Chaucer","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[{"series":"Very Short Introductions","title":"Geoffrey Chaucer: A Very Short Introduction","author":"David Wallace","publisher":"Oxford University Press","year":2019,"isbn13":null,"url":null}],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"anton-chekhov","name":"Anton Chekhov","url":"/great-lives/anton-chekhov/","dates":"1860–1904","born":1860,"died":1904,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Russian playwright and short-story writer, author of The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard.","bio":"Anton Chekhov was born in 1860 in Taganrog, a port on the Sea of Azov in southern Russia; his grandfather had been a serf who bought his freedom. His father's grocery business failed, and the family moved to Moscow, where Anton studied medicine at Moscow University and qualified as a doctor in 1884. To support his family he wrote hundreds of short humorous stories for magazines, and his writing gradually grew more serious. In 1890 he traveled across Siberia to the prison island of Sakhalin and wrote a study of the conditions there. He bought a small estate at Melikhovo, near Moscow, where he treated local peasants. His plays The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard, staged by the Moscow Art Theatre, changed modern drama with their quiet, everyday action. Ill with tuberculosis, he moved to Yalta and married the actress Olga Knipper in 1901. He died at a German spa town in 1904, aged 44.","keyDates":[{"date":"1860","event":"Born in Taganrog"},{"date":"1884","event":"Qualifies as a doctor"},{"date":"1890","event":"Travels to Sakhalin Island"},{"date":"1899","event":"Uncle Vanya at the Moscow Art Theatre"},{"date":"1904","event":"The Cherry Orchard staged; dies in Germany"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Anton Chekhov","relatedWorks":["chekhov-uncle-vanya"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"chekhov-uncle-vanya","url":"/works/chekhov-uncle-vanya/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Raised in the Russian Orthodox Church by a devout father who led the parish choir; his own adult beliefs are not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton_Chekhov","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"wu-chengen","name":"Wu Cheng'en","url":"/great-lives/wu-chengen/","dates":"1500–1582","born":1500,"died":1582,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Chinese novelist and poet of the Ming dynasty, widely considered the author of Journey to the West, the story of the Monkey King.","bio":"Wu Cheng'en was born around 1500 in Lianshui, in Jiangsu province, China, during the Ming dynasty, and later lived in Huai'an. His father, Wu Rui, worked as an artisan because the family was poor but loved literature, and his son grew up enjoying classic books and popular stories. Wu took the imperial examinations several times, hoping to become an official, but never passed. Only in middle age did he enter the imperial university in Nanjing, and he later held posts in Beijing and Changxing. Disliking official work, he resigned and probably spent his last years writing in his hometown. He remained poor all his life. Journey to the West, a long tale of a pilgrimage full of magic and adventure, known in Arthur Waley's English abridgment as Monkey, was published anonymously in 1592, after his death, and is one of the great classic Chinese novels. Unusually for a serious writer of the time, its author wrote in the everyday language rather than classical Chinese. Scholars in the early twentieth century, including Hu Shih, identified Wu as the likely author.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 1500","event":"Born in Lianshui, Jiangsu"},{"date":"1582","event":"Dies (traditional date)"},{"date":"1592","event":"Journey to the West published anonymously"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Wu Cheng'en","relatedWorks":["journey-to-the-west-a-mission-to-heaven"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"journey-to-the-west-a-mission-to-heaven","url":"/works/journey-to-the-west-a-mission-to-heaven/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wu_Cheng%27en","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["Birth and death dates uncertain (c. 1500–1582 or 1505–1580).","Authorship of Journey to the West is widely accepted but not certain."]},{"slug":"ron-chernow","name":"Ron Chernow","url":"/great-lives/ron-chernow/","dates":"born 1949","born":1949,"died":null,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American biographer, author of Washington: A Life and Alexander Hamilton, which inspired the musical Hamilton.","bio":"Ron Chernow, an American biographer and journalist, was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1949. His father owned a discount store and founded a stock brokerage firm, and his mother was a bookkeeper. He was class president and valedictorian at Forest Hills High School in Queens, graduated summa cum laude from Yale University in 1970, and studied English literature at Pembroke College, Cambridge. From 1973 to 1982 he wrote more than sixty articles as a freelance journalist, and he later directed financial policy studies at the Twentieth Century Fund before returning to writing in 1986. His first book, The House of Morgan (1990), a history of the banking dynasty, won the National Book Award for Nonfiction. He went on to write The Warburgs, Titan, a life of John D. Rockefeller (1998), and Alexander Hamilton (2004), which inspired Lin-Manuel Miranda's musical Hamilton, on which Chernow served as historical consultant. Washington: A Life (2010) won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography in 2011. He married Valerie Stearn in 1979; she died in 2006.","keyDates":[{"date":"1949","event":"Born in Brooklyn, New York"},{"date":"1970","event":"Graduates from Yale University"},{"date":"1990","event":"The House of Morgan published"},{"date":"1998","event":"Titan published"},{"date":"2004","event":"Alexander Hamilton published"},{"date":"2011","event":"Pulitzer Prize for Washington: A Life"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Ron Chernow","relatedWorks":["chernow-washington"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"chernow-washington","url":"/works/chernow-washington/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Gives his religion as 'Jewish, though more in the breach than the observance'.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Chernow","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"g-k-chesterton","name":"G. K. Chesterton","url":"/great-lives/g-k-chesterton/","dates":"1874–1936","born":1874,"died":1936,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["theologians-church-fathers"],"knownFor":"English writer of the Father Brown stories, Orthodoxy and witty essays.","bio":"Gilbert Keith Chesterton was born in London, the son of a real estate agent, and studied art at the Slade School. He became a journalist and one of the most famous writers of his day, producing about a hundred books and thousands of newspaper essays. A huge man who wore a cape and a broad hat, he was known for his cheerful humor and his love of paradox, turning ideas upside down to show their truth. He debated friendly opponents such as George Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells. In Orthodoxy, published in 1908, he explained how he had come to Christian belief, describing it as finding that the truth was stranger and more exciting than any heresy. He created Father Brown, a quiet Catholic priest who solves crimes through his understanding of human nature, and wrote novels, poems such as Lepanto, and biographies of Francis of Assisi, Thomas Aquinas and Charles Dickens. In 1922 he entered the Catholic Church. His book The Everlasting Man helped lead C. S. Lewis toward Christianity. He died in 1936 at his home in Beaconsfield.","keyDates":[{"date":"1874","event":"Born in London"},{"date":"1908","event":"Orthodoxy"},{"date":"1911","event":"The Innocence of Father Brown; Lepanto"},{"date":"1922","event":"Enters the Catholic Church"},{"date":"1925","event":"The Everlasting Man"},{"date":"1936","event":"Dies at Beaconsfield"}],"quotes":[{"text":"I did try to found a heresy of my own; and when I had put the last touches to it, I discovered that it was orthodoxy.","work":"chesterton-orthodoxy","location":"Chapter I, Introduction in Defence of Everything Else","verified":true},{"text":"Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead.","work":"chesterton-orthodoxy","location":"Chapter IV, The Ethics of Elfland","verified":true}],"author":"G. K. Chesterton","relatedWorks":["lepanto","the-innocence-of-father-brown","chesterton-orthodoxy"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"lepanto","url":"/works/lepanto/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-innocence-of-father-brown","url":"/works/the-innocence-of-father-brown/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"chesterton-orthodoxy","url":"/works/chesterton-orthodoxy/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"He usually wore a cape and a crumpled hat and carried a swordstick, and he loved friendly public debates with men such as George Bernard Shaw.","source":{"title":"G. K. Chesterton (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton"}},{"text":"According to his autobiography, he and Shaw once played cowboys in a silent film that was never released.","source":{"title":"G. K. Chesterton (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A Christian from his youth who moved from Anglicanism to the Catholic Church in 1922.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"frederic-chopin","name":"Frédéric Chopin","url":"/great-lives/frederic-chopin/","dates":"1810–1849","born":1810,"died":1849,"era":"19th-century","categories":["artists-composers-architects"],"knownFor":"Polish composer and pianist whose works explored every mood of the piano.","bio":"Frédéric Chopin was born near Warsaw, Poland, to a French father who taught French and a Polish mother. He was a child prodigy who performed in public at seven and published his first polonaise the same year. He studied at the Warsaw Conservatory and in 1830 left Poland to make his career abroad. Weeks later, Poland rose against Russian rule, and the uprising was crushed; Chopin never returned home. He settled in Paris in 1831, where he gave few public concerts but became famous through private performances in salons, teaching and publishing. Nearly all his music is for solo piano: nocturnes, études, preludes, ballades, waltzes, and mazurkas and polonaises drawn from Polish dances. He developed new ways of using the piano's sound, with singing melodies and rich harmonies. From 1838 to 1847 he had a relationship with the novelist George Sand and spent summers at her country house at Nohant, where he wrote many of his finest works. He suffered for years from a lung illness, probably tuberculosis. He died in Paris in 1849 at thirty-nine. At his request, his heart was taken back to Warsaw.","keyDates":[{"date":"1810","event":"Born near Warsaw"},{"date":"1830","event":"Leaves Poland"},{"date":"1831","event":"Settles in Paris"},{"date":"1838–1847","event":"Relationship with George Sand"},{"date":"1849","event":"Dies in Paris"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"Every one of his compositions includes the piano.","source":{"title":"Frédéric Chopin (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fr%C3%A9d%C3%A9ric_Chopin"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Baptized Catholic; his adult beliefs are not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fr%C3%A9d%C3%A9ric_Chopin","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"agatha-christie","name":"Agatha Christie","url":"/great-lives/agatha-christie/","dates":"1890–1976","born":1890,"died":1976,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"English detective novelist, creator of Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple and one of the best-selling authors of all time.","bio":"Agatha Miller was born in Torquay, England, in 1890 and was mostly educated at home. During the First World War she worked in a hospital dispensary, where she learned about poisons that later appeared in her books. She married Archibald Christie in 1914, and her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, introduced the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926) made her famous. That same year she disappeared for several days, an episode that drew national attention. After her divorce she married the archaeologist Max Mallowan in 1930 and often joined his excavations in Syria and Iraq, which inspired novels such as Murder in Mesopotamia and Death on the Nile. She created the village detective Miss Marple, and her play The Mousetrap opened in London in 1952 and became the longest-running play in history. She wrote 66 detective novels and was made a Dame in 1971. She died in 1976.","keyDates":[{"date":"1890","event":"Born in Torquay"},{"date":"1920","event":"The Mysterious Affair at Styles published"},{"date":"1926","event":"The Murder of Roger Ackroyd published"},{"date":"1934","event":"Murder on the Orient Express published"},{"date":"1952","event":"The Mousetrap opens in London"},{"date":"1971","event":"Made a Dame"},{"date":"1976","event":"Dies"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Agatha Christie","relatedWorks":["the-mysterious-affair-at-styles","murder-on-the-orient-express","the-murder-on-the-links"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-mysterious-affair-at-styles","url":"/works/the-mysterious-affair-at-styles/"},{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"murder-on-the-orient-express","url":"/works/murder-on-the-orient-express/"},{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-murder-on-the-links","url":"/works/the-murder-on-the-links/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"As a girl she learned to play the piano and the mandolin.","source":{"title":"Agatha Christie (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agatha_Christie"}}],"records":[{"text":"Her murder mystery The Mousetrap, performed in London's West End since 1952, is the world's longest-running play.","source":{"title":"Agatha Christie (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agatha_Christie"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A lifelong, quietly devout member of the Church of England who attended church regularly.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agatha_Christie","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[{"series":"Very Short Introductions","title":"Agatha Christie: A Very Short Introduction","author":"Gill Plain","publisher":"Oxford University Press","year":2025,"isbn13":"9780198863748","url":"https://bookshop.org/a/130650/9780198863748"}],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"winston-churchill","name":"Winston Churchill","url":"/great-lives/winston-churchill/","dates":"1874–1965","born":1874,"died":1965,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"British prime minister who led his country through the Second World War.","bio":"Winston Churchill was born at Blenheim Palace, the son of a British politician and an American mother. He did poorly at school but became a cavalry officer and war reporter, fighting at Omdurman in Sudan and escaping from a prisoner-of-war camp in the Boer War. Elected to Parliament in 1900, he held many offices, including First Lord of the Admiralty in the First World War, when the failed Gallipoli campaign forced him out for a time. In the 1930s he was out of office and warned repeatedly against Nazi Germany's rearmament, while most leaders hoped to avoid war. In May 1940, as German armies swept into France, he became prime minister. His speeches and refusal to make peace with Hitler held Britain together when it stood almost alone, and he worked closely with Franklin Roosevelt and later with Stalin until victory in 1945. Voted out that year, he returned as prime minister from 1951 to 1955. He also painted and wrote many histories, winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1953.","keyDates":[{"date":"1874","event":"Born at Blenheim Palace"},{"date":"1900","event":"Elected to Parliament"},{"date":"1940","event":"Becomes prime minister"},{"date":"1945","event":"Allied victory in Europe"},{"date":"1953","event":"Nobel Prize in Literature"},{"date":"1965","event":"Dies in London"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Winston Churchill","relatedWorks":["we-shall-fight-on-the-beaches","their-finest-hour","the-river-war"],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"book","title":"Who Was Winston Churchill?","author":"Ellen Labrecque","isbn13":"9780448483009","publisher":"Grosset","year":2015,"format":"paperback"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"we-shall-fight-on-the-beaches","url":"/works/we-shall-fight-on-the-beaches/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"their-finest-hour","url":"/works/their-finest-hour/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-river-war","url":"/works/the-river-war/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"book","title":"Churchill: Walking with Destiny","author":"Andrew Roberts","isbn13":"9781101981009","publisher":"Paperback","year":2019,"format":"paperback"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[{"text":"At 33 he became the youngest Cabinet member since 1866.","source":{"title":"Winston Churchill (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winston_Churchill"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"In early letters he wrote that he did not accept the Christian or any religious belief; his later views are debated.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winston_Churchill","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"cicero","name":"Cicero","url":"/great-lives/cicero/","dates":"106–43 BC","born":-106,"died":-43,"era":"ancient","categories":["statesmen-founders","philosophers"],"knownFor":"Roman orator, lawyer and statesman whose Latin prose became a model for centuries.","bio":"Marcus Tullius Cicero was born at Arpinum, a country town, into a family that had never held high office in Rome. He made his name as a lawyer through his skill as a speaker, and in 63 BC he was elected consul. That year he uncovered a plot by the senator Catiline to overthrow the government and denounced him in four famous speeches. He had several of the conspirators executed without trial, and for this he was later exiled for a year. Cicero tried to defend the Republic as Caesar and Pompey grew more powerful. Out of politics during Caesar's dictatorship, he wrote books that made Greek philosophy available in Latin, on duty, friendship, old age, the gods and the best form of government. After Caesar's murder he attacked Mark Antony in a series of speeches called the Philippics. When Antony, Octavian and Lepidus joined forces, Antony had Cicero's name put on a death list, and he was killed in 43 BC. His letters, speeches and essays shaped Latin style for centuries.","keyDates":[{"date":"63 BC","event":"Consul; speeches against Catiline"},{"date":"58 BC","event":"Exiled from Rome"},{"date":"45–44 BC","event":"Writes major philosophical works"},{"date":"43 BC","event":"Killed on Antony's orders"}],"quotes":[{"text":"Now the foundation of justice is faithfulness, which is a perseverance and truth in all our declarations and in all our promises.","work":"cicero-on-duties","location":"Book I, ch. VII","verified":true}],"author":"Marcus Tullius Cicero","relatedWorks":["cicero-first-catilinarian","cicero-on-duties","plutarch-lives","sallust-catiline-and-jugurtha","cicero-republic-and-laws"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"cicero-first-catilinarian","url":"/works/cicero-first-catilinarian/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"cicero-on-duties","url":"/works/cicero-on-duties/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"plutarch-lives","url":"/works/plutarch-lives/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"cicero-republic-and-laws","url":"/works/cicero-republic-and-laws/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"book","title":"Cicero: The Life and Times of Rome's Greatest Politician","author":"Anthony Everitt","isbn13":"9781588360342","publisher":"Random House Publishing Group","year":2011,"format":""}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"His family name, Cicero, comes from the Latin word for chickpea (cicer).","source":{"title":"Cicero (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cicero"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented beyond the Roman religion of his day; he held the Roman priestly office of augur.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cicero","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[{"series":"Very Short Introductions","title":"Cicero: A Very Short Introduction","author":"Yelena Baraz","publisher":"Oxford University Press","year":2025,"isbn13":"9780192885807","url":"https://bookshop.org/a/130650/9780192885807"}],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"abraham-clark","name":"Abraham Clark","url":"/great-lives/abraham-clark/","dates":"1726–1794","born":1726,"died":1794,"era":"18th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"New Jersey surveyor and 'poor man's counselor' who signed the Declaration; two of his sons were captured while serving in the army.","bio":"Abraham Clark was born in 1726 in Elizabethtown, New Jersey, worked as a surveyor and as a lawyer who often took the causes of ordinary neighbors, and earned the nickname of the poor man's counselor. He sat in the provincial congress, was sent to the Continental Congress, and signed the Declaration of Independence. He remained a long-serving member of Congress during the war and was known for distrust of privilege and of a standing army. Two of his sons who served in the Continental Army were captured and held in British prisons; the family felt the cost of the war in a direct way. After independence Clark sat in the federal Congress and opposed measures he thought favored the wealthy. He died in 1794. His public life was less famous than that of some other signers, but it was consistent: a local man who took on a dangerous office and stayed with it.","keyDates":[{"date":"1726","event":"Born in Elizabethtown, New Jersey"},{"date":"1776","event":"Signs the Declaration of Independence"},{"date":"1776–1783","event":"Serves in Congress through the war; two sons are captured"},{"date":"1794","event":"Dies in New Jersey"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["the-founding-documents"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-founding-documents","url":"/works/the-founding-documents/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":null,"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"carl-von-clausewitz","name":"Carl von Clausewitz","url":"/great-lives/carl-von-clausewitz/","dates":"1780–1831","born":1780,"died":1831,"era":"19th-century","categories":["military-leaders","philosophers"],"knownFor":"Prussian general and military theorist, author of On War.","bio":"Carl von Clausewitz was born in 1780 in Burg, near Magdeburg, in Prussia. He joined the Prussian army at the age of twelve and first saw combat against the French in 1793. He studied at the military school in Berlin under Gerhard von Scharnhorst, who became his mentor, and was captured by the French after the Prussian defeat at Jena in 1806. With Scharnhorst and others he worked to reform the Prussian army. When Prussia allied with Napoleon in 1812, Clausewitz joined the Russian army and helped negotiate the Convention of Tauroggen, which took Prussian troops out of the French alliance. He served in the campaigns of 1813–1815, including the Waterloo campaign. From 1818 he directed the war college in Berlin and wrote his great study On War, which argues that war is a continuation of politics by other means and stresses chance, friction and the 'fog' of uncertainty. He died of cholera in Breslau in 1831, and his wife, Marie, published On War after his death.","keyDates":[{"date":"1780","event":"Born in Burg, Prussia"},{"date":"1806","event":"Captured after the Battle of Jena"},{"date":"1812","event":"Joins the Russian army"},{"date":"1815","event":"Serves in the Waterloo campaign"},{"date":"1818","event":"Director of the war college in Berlin"},{"date":"1831","event":"Dies in Breslau"},{"date":"1832","event":"On War published by his widow"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Carl von Clausewitz","relatedWorks":["on-war"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"on-war","url":"/works/on-war/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Raised in a Lutheran Protestant family; his personal beliefs are not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_von_Clausewitz","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[{"series":"Very Short Introductions","title":"Clausewitz: A Very Short Introduction","author":"Michael Howard","publisher":"Oxford University Press","year":2002,"isbn13":"9780192802576","url":"https://bookshop.org/a/130650/9780192802576"}],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"henry-clay","name":"Henry Clay","url":"/great-lives/henry-clay/","dates":"1777–1852","born":1777,"died":1852,"era":"19th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"Kentucky senator and Speaker of the House known as the Great Compromiser for his efforts to settle sectional disputes.","bio":"Henry Clay was born in 1777 in Hanover County, Virginia, during the American Revolution. His father, a Baptist minister, died when he was four. He worked as a clerk in Richmond, studied law, and in 1797 moved to Lexington, Kentucky, where he became a successful lawyer and planter who held enslaved people. He entered politics and served in the United States Senate and House of Representatives, where he was elected Speaker in his first term and became a leader of the 'war hawks' before the War of 1812. He helped negotiate the Treaty of Ghent that ended the war. He promoted what he called the 'American System' of tariffs, a national bank and roads and canals to build the economy. He served as secretary of state under John Quincy Adams and ran unsuccessfully for president several times. Known as the 'Great Compromiser', he helped arrange the Missouri Compromise of 1820, the tariff compromise of 1833 and the Compromise of 1850 over slavery in the new territories. He died in Washington, D.C., in 1852.","keyDates":[{"date":"1777","event":"Born in Hanover County, Virginia"},{"date":"1811","event":"Speaker of the House"},{"date":"1814","event":"Helps negotiate the Treaty of Ghent"},{"date":"1820","event":"Missouri Compromise"},{"date":"1825–1829","event":"Secretary of state"},{"date":"1850","event":"Compromise of 1850"},{"date":"1852","event":"Dies in Washington"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun, and Daniel Webster","relatedWorks":["compromise-of-1850-speeches"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"compromise-of-1850-speeches","url":"/works/compromise-of-1850-speeches/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[{"text":"At 34 he became the youngest Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives up to that time, a record he held until 1839.","source":{"title":"Henry Clay (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Clay"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Son of a Baptist clergyman; his personal beliefs are not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Appletons%27_Cyclop%C3%A6dia_of_American_Biography/Clay%2C_Henry","sourceName":"Appletons' Cyclopaedia of American Biography (via Wikisource)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"cleopatra","name":"Cleopatra VII","url":"/great-lives/cleopatra/","dates":"69–30 BC","born":-69,"died":-30,"era":"ancient","categories":["kings-queens-emperors"],"knownFor":"Last active ruler of Ptolemaic Egypt, ally of Julius Caesar and Mark Antony.","bio":"Cleopatra VII was the last of the Ptolemies, a Greek-speaking royal family descended from one of Alexander the Great's generals, which had ruled Egypt for nearly three hundred years. She became queen at about eighteen, sharing the throne with her younger brother, and was soon driven out in a power struggle. Julius Caesar, arriving in Egypt in 48 BC, took her side and restored her to the throne; she later had a son, Caesarion, whom she said was Caesar's. Ancient writers say she was highly intelligent and spoke many languages, and she was reportedly the first of her family to learn Egyptian. After Caesar's death she allied with the Roman general Mark Antony, and they had three children. Their alliance led to war with Octavian, Caesar's heir. After their defeat at Actium in 31 BC and Octavian's capture of Alexandria, Antony killed himself, and Cleopatra died soon after in 30 BC, by tradition from the bite of an asp. Egypt then became a Roman province.","keyDates":[{"date":"51 BC","event":"Becomes queen of Egypt"},{"date":"48 BC","event":"Allies with Julius Caesar"},{"date":"31 BC","event":"Defeated with Antony at Actium"},{"date":"30 BC","event":"Dies in Alexandria; Egypt becomes Roman"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["plutarch-lives","the-fall-of-the-roman-republic"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"book","title":"Cleopatra","author":"Diane Stanley","isbn13":"9780688154806","publisher":"HarperTrophy","year":1997,"format":"paperback"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"plutarch-lives","url":"/works/plutarch-lives/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"book","title":"Cleopatra: A Life","author":"Stacy Schiff","isbn13":"9780316001946","publisher":"Back Bay Books","year":2011,"format":"paperback"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"She was the first ruler of her Greek-speaking family, the Ptolemies, known to have learned the Egyptian language, and she could speak several languages.","source":{"title":"Cleopatra (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleopatra"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"As queen of Egypt she was the chief religious authority of her realm, presiding over ceremonies for Egyptian and Greek gods.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleopatra","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"george-clymer","name":"George Clymer","url":"/great-lives/george-clymer/","dates":"1739–1813","born":1739,"died":1813,"era":"18th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"Philadelphia merchant who took his seat after 4 July, signed the Declaration, and later signed the Constitution.","bio":"George Clymer was born in 1739 in Philadelphia, was orphaned young, and was raised by a wealthy uncle to be a merchant. He was an early opponent of the Stamp Act, served on local patriot committees, and in 1776 was named to the Continental Congress after the 4 July vote, as Pennsylvania reorganized its delegation. He signed the Declaration of Independence and later signed the Constitution, one of a small group of men who put their names to both. During the British advance on Philadelphia his family had to leave their home in Chester County, and the house was vandalized. After the war Clymer served in the first federal Congress and in offices dealing with public finance and treaties. He died in 1813. His career was that of a practical merchant who accepted hard public work and stayed with the new government after the fighting ended.","keyDates":[{"date":"1739","event":"Born in Philadelphia"},{"date":"1776","event":"Takes his seat in Congress and signs the Declaration"},{"date":"1787","event":"Signs the Constitution"},{"date":"1789","event":"Serves in the First Congress"},{"date":"1813","event":"Dies at Morrisville, Pennsylvania"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["the-founding-documents"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-founding-documents","url":"/works/the-founding-documents/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":null,"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"edward-coke","name":"Sir Edward Coke","url":"/great-lives/edward-coke/","dates":"1552–1634","born":1552,"died":1634,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["legal-scholars-lawgivers"],"knownFor":"English judge who defended the common law against royal power and drafted the Petition of Right.","bio":"Edward Coke, pronounced Cook, was born in Norfolk, England, studied at Cambridge and trained as a lawyer in London's Inns of Court. He rose quickly, becoming Speaker of the House of Commons and then Attorney General under Elizabeth I, when he prosecuted the Earl of Essex and later Sir Walter Raleigh and the Gunpowder Plot conspirators with great harshness. As a judge under James I, first Chief Justice of the Common Pleas and then of the King's Bench, he took a different role, insisting that the king himself was under the law. In Dr. Bonham's Case in 1610 he suggested that judges could declare void an act contrary to common right and reason. James dismissed him in 1616. Returning to Parliament, he became a leader of the opposition to royal overreach and in 1628 helped draft the Petition of Right, which declared that the king could not tax without Parliament's consent or imprison people without cause shown. His Reports and Institutes of the Lawes of England were studied by generations of lawyers, including American founders. He died in 1634.","keyDates":[{"date":"1592","event":"Solicitor General"},{"date":"1594","event":"Attorney General"},{"date":"1606","event":"Chief Justice of the Common Pleas"},{"date":"1610","event":"Dr. Bonham's Case"},{"date":"1616","event":"Dismissed by James I"},{"date":"1628","event":"Petition of Right"},{"date":"1634","event":"Dies"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["commentaries-on-the-laws-of-england","magna-carta","petition-of-right-habeas-corpus-and-bill-of-rights"],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented; a member of the Church of England.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Coke","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"samuel-taylor-coleridge","name":"Samuel Taylor Coleridge","url":"/great-lives/samuel-taylor-coleridge/","dates":"1772–1834","born":1772,"died":1834,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets","philosophers"],"knownFor":"Romantic poet of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan, co-author of Lyrical Ballads, and critic of Biographia Literaria.","bio":"Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born on 21 October 1772 at Ottery St Mary in Devon, the youngest child of the vicar John Coleridge. After his father's death he was sent to Christ's Hospital in London, where Charles Lamb became his lifelong friend. At Cambridge he fell into debt, briefly enlisted in the dragoons under a false name, and left without a degree. With Robert Southey he dreamed of a utopian community in America and married Sara Fricker. In 1797-98, living near William Wordsworth in Somerset, he wrote his greatest poems, and the two published Lyrical Ballads in 1798. Illness and a growing dependence on opium darkened the following years, but he lectured brilliantly on Shakespeare and published Biographia Literaria in 1817. From 1816 he lived with the physician James Gillman at Highgate, where he wrote Aids to Reflection and became a sage to younger thinkers. He died there on 25 July 1834.","keyDates":[{"date":"1772","event":"Born at Ottery St Mary, Devon, 21 October"},{"date":"1791","event":"Enters Jesus College, Cambridge"},{"date":"1795","event":"Marries Sara Fricker; meets Wordsworth"},{"date":"1798","event":"Lyrical Ballads published with Wordsworth"},{"date":"1816","event":"Christabel and Kubla Khan published; moves to Dr Gillman at Highgate"},{"date":"1817","event":"Biographia Literaria published"},{"date":"1825","event":"Aids to Reflection published"},{"date":"1834","event":"Dies at Highgate, 25 July"}],"quotes":[{"text":"He prayeth best, who loveth best All things both great and small;","work":"the-rime-of-the-ancient-mariner"}],"author":"Samuel Taylor Coleridge","relatedWorks":["the-rime-of-the-ancient-mariner","kubla-khan","frost-at-midnight","biographia-literaria","lyrical-ballads"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-rime-of-the-ancient-mariner","url":"/works/the-rime-of-the-ancient-mariner/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"frost-at-midnight","url":"/works/frost-at-midnight/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"kubla-khan","url":"/works/kubla-khan/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"lyrical-ballads","url":"/works/lyrical-ballads/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"biographia-literaria","url":"/works/biographia-literaria/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Son of an Anglican vicar; a Unitarian preacher in his twenties, he returned to Trinitarian Anglican Christianity and became an influential Christian philosopher through works such as Aids to Reflection (1825).","source":"https://www.britannica.com/biography/Samuel-Taylor-Coleridge","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"wilkie-collins","name":"Wilkie Collins","url":"/great-lives/wilkie-collins/","dates":"1824–1889","born":1824,"died":1889,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"English novelist, author of The Woman in White and The Moonstone, pioneer of the mystery and detective novel.","bio":"William Wilkie Collins was born in London in 1824, the son of the landscape painter William Collins. As a boy he spent two years with his family in Italy and France. He worked for a tea merchant and then studied law, becoming a barrister, though he never practised. His first published book was a biography of his father. In 1851 he met Charles Dickens, who became a close friend; Collins wrote for Dickens's magazines, and the two collaborated on plays and fiction. His novel The Woman in White (1859–1860), a thrilling mystery told by several narrators, was first published as a serial in Dickens's magazine All the Year Round and was a huge success. The Moonstone (1868), about the theft of a precious diamond, established many of the ground rules of the modern detective novel. Collins also wrote No Name, Armadale and many short stories and plays. From the 1850s he suffered from gout and took laudanum, a drug containing opium, to treat it. He died in London in 1889.","keyDates":[{"date":"1824","event":"Born in London"},{"date":"1851","event":"Meets Charles Dickens"},{"date":"1859","event":"The Woman in White begins serial publication"},{"date":"1868","event":"The Moonstone published"},{"date":"1889","event":"Dies in London"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Wilkie Collins","relatedWorks":["the-moonstone","the-woman-in-white"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-moonstone","url":"/works/the-moonstone/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-woman-in-white","url":"/works/the-woman-in-white/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A professing Christian from a deeply religious family.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilkie_Collins","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"carlo-collodi","name":"Carlo Collodi","url":"/great-lives/carlo-collodi/","dates":"1826–1890","born":1826,"died":1890,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Italian writer and journalist, author of The Adventures of Pinocchio.","bio":"Carlo Lorenzini was born in Florence in 1826, the eldest child of a cook and a seamstress. He spent most of his childhood with his grandmother in the town of Collodi, his mother's birthplace, and later took its name as his pen name. After studying at a seminary, he worked in a Florentine bookshop from 1844. He volunteered to fight for Italian independence in 1848 and again in 1860 and founded a satirical newspaper. In 1875 he translated French fairy tales by Charles Perrault and others into Italian, and he went on to write schoolbooks for children. In 1881 a children's magazine began publishing his serial The Story of a Puppet, about a wooden puppet made by the poor carpenter Geppetto who longs to become a real boy. It was published as a book, The Adventures of Pinocchio, in 1883 and became one of the most translated books in the world. Collodi died in Florence in 1890.","keyDates":[{"date":"1826","event":"Born in Florence"},{"date":"1848","event":"Volunteers in the first war of independence"},{"date":"1875","event":"Translates French fairy tales"},{"date":"1881","event":"Pinocchio begins as a magazine serial"},{"date":"1883","event":"The Adventures of Pinocchio published as a book"},{"date":"1890","event":"Dies in Florence"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Carlo Collodi","relatedWorks":["the-adventures-of-pinocchio"],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"library","work":"the-adventures-of-pinocchio","url":"/works/the-adventures-of-pinocchio/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented; he studied at a seminary as a boy but did not become a priest.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlo_Collodi","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"padraic-colum","name":"Padraic Colum","url":"/great-lives/padraic-colum/","dates":"1881–1972","born":1881,"died":1972,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Irish poet, playwright and children's author who retold myths and legends, including The Golden Fleece.","bio":"Padraic Colum was born in 1881 in Longford, Ireland, in the workhouse where his father worked, the first of eight children. He moved to Dublin as a young man and began writing poems and plays. He became part of the Irish Literary Revival, knew writers such as W. B. Yeats and Lady Gregory, and wrote plays for the theater that became the Abbey Theatre, including The Land (1905). He was also a friend of James Joyce. In 1912 he married Mary Gunning Maguire, a critic, and in 1914 they moved to the United States, where they spent most of the rest of their lives. Colum wrote many books for children that retell traditional stories, including The King of Ireland's Son, The Adventures of Odysseus and the Tale of Troy, and The Golden Fleece and the Heroes Who Lived Before Achilles (1921), which was later cited as a Newbery Honor book. In 1922 he was commissioned to retell Hawaiian folklore for young people. He died in Enfield, Connecticut, in 1972.","keyDates":[{"date":"1881","event":"Born in Longford, Ireland"},{"date":"1905","event":"The Land staged"},{"date":"1912","event":"Marries Mary Maguire"},{"date":"1914","event":"Moves to the United States"},{"date":"1921","event":"The Golden Fleece published"},{"date":"1972","event":"Dies in Enfield, Connecticut"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Padraic Colum","relatedWorks":["colum-the-golden-fleece"],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"library","work":"colum-the-golden-fleece","url":"/works/colum-the-golden-fleece/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented; the Catholic Library Association gave him its Regina Medal in 1961.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Padraic_Colum","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"christopher-columbus","name":"Christopher Columbus","url":"/great-lives/christopher-columbus/","dates":"1451–1506","born":1451,"died":1506,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["explorers"],"knownFor":"Genoese sailor whose voyages for Spain began lasting contact between Europe and the Americas.","bio":"Christopher Columbus was born in Genoa, Italy, the son of a wool weaver, and went to sea young. He settled in Portugal, sailed to Africa and the Atlantic islands, and became convinced he could reach Asia by sailing west. Most scholars thought the distance far greater than he claimed, and they were right. After years of refusals, Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain agreed to back him. In August 1492 he sailed with three ships, the Niña, the Pinta and the Santa María, and on 12 October landed on an island in the Bahamas. He went on to Cuba and Hispaniola, believing he was near Asia. He made three more voyages, reaching the coast of South and Central America. As governor of Hispaniola he ruled harshly, and the native Taíno people suffered forced labor, violence and disease; in 1500 complaints led to his arrest and return to Spain in chains, though he was later released. He died in Valladolid in 1506, still believing he had reached Asia.","keyDates":[{"date":"1451","event":"Born in Genoa"},{"date":"1492","event":"First voyage; lands in the Bahamas on 12 October"},{"date":"1493–1504","event":"Three further voyages"},{"date":"1500","event":"Arrested and sent back to Spain"},{"date":"1506","event":"Dies at Valladolid"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[{"band":"K-2","kind":"book","title":"A Picture Book of Christopher Columbus","author":"David A. Adler","isbn13":"9780823409495","publisher":"Holiday House","year":1991,"format":"paperback"},{"band":"3-5","kind":"book","title":"Who Was Christopher Columbus?","author":"Bonnie Bader","isbn13":"9780448463339","publisher":"Scholastic","year":2013,"format":""},{"band":"3-5","kind":"book","title":"Where Do You Think You're Going, Christopher Columbus?","author":"Jean Fritz","isbn13":"9780698115804","publisher":"Putnam Juvenile","year":1997,"format":"paperback"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[{"text":"His voyages were the first known European contact with the Caribbean and with Central and South America.","source":{"title":"Christopher Columbus (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Columbus"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A Catholic who said the conversion of non-believers was one reason for his voyages; he grew increasingly religious in his later years.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Columbus","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"confucius","name":"Confucius","url":"/great-lives/confucius/","dates":"551–479 BC","born":-551,"died":-479,"era":"ancient","categories":["philosophers"],"knownFor":"Chinese teacher whose sayings on virtue, family and government shaped East Asian civilization.","bio":"Confucius, in Chinese Kong Fuzi or Master Kong, was born in the small state of Lu in eastern China. His family was of low noble rank, his father died when he was young, and he grew up poor, working as a keeper of granaries and herds while studying the old rituals, poetry and history. He became a teacher who accepted students from any background who were eager to learn. He believed society could be restored through good character: rulers should govern by moral example rather than force; people should practice ren, meaning humaneness, and li, meaning proper ritual and courtesy; and sons should honor their parents. He held a minor office in Lu but, disappointed in its rulers, spent years traveling among other states looking for a ruler who would follow his advice, without success. He returned home and taught until his death. His students collected his sayings in the Analects, which includes his teaching never to do to others what you would not want done to yourself. Confucian teaching became the basis of Chinese education for two thousand years.","keyDates":[{"date":"551 BC","event":"Born in the state of Lu"},{"date":"c. 500 BC","event":"Holds office in Lu"},{"date":"c. 497–484 BC","event":"Travels among other states"},{"date":"479 BC","event":"Dies in Lu"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"An asteroid, 7853 Confucius, is named after him.","source":{"title":"Confucius (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confucius"}}],"records":[{"text":"His family, the Kongs, has the longest recorded family tree still in existence in the world.","source":{"title":"Confucius (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confucius"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented; scholars debate whether Confucianism should be called a religion.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confucius","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"joseph-conrad","name":"Joseph Conrad","url":"/great-lives/joseph-conrad/","dates":"1857–1924","born":1857,"died":1924,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Polish-born British novelist of the sea and empire, author of Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim.","bio":"Joseph Conrad was born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski in 1857 in Berdychiv, then in the Russian Empire and now in Ukraine, to Polish parents. His father, a writer and translator, was exiled by the Russian authorities for his political activities, and both parents died while Conrad was a boy; he was raised by an uncle. At sixteen he went to Marseille to become a sailor, and he spent nearly twenty years at sea, mostly in the British merchant navy, becoming a captain and a British subject. In 1890 he captained a river steamer on the Congo River, an experience that inspired Heart of Darkness (1899). He settled in England and, writing in English, his third language, published his first novel, Almayer's Folly, in 1895. His other works include Lord Jim (1900), about a young officer haunted by an act of cowardice, Nostromo (1904), The Secret Agent (1907) and Under Western Eyes. He married Jessie George and had two sons. He died at his home in Kent in 1924.","keyDates":[{"date":"1857","event":"Born in Berdychiv"},{"date":"1874","event":"Goes to sea from Marseille"},{"date":"1890","event":"Travels up the Congo River"},{"date":"1895","event":"Almayer's Folly published"},{"date":"1899","event":"Heart of Darkness published"},{"date":"1900","event":"Lord Jim published"},{"date":"1924","event":"Dies in Kent"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Joseph Conrad","relatedWorks":["lord-jim","heart-of-darkness"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"lord-jim","url":"/works/lord-jim/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"heart-of-darkness","url":"/works/heart-of-darkness/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"As a child he read a book about the search for Sir John Franklin's lost Arctic expedition.","source":{"title":"Joseph Conrad (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Conrad"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Nominally a Catholic; biographer Jeffrey Meyers describes him as an atheist.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Conrad","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"constantine-the-great","name":"Constantine the Great","url":"/great-lives/constantine-the-great/","dates":"c. 272–337","born":272,"died":337,"era":"ancient","categories":["kings-queens-emperors"],"knownFor":"First Roman emperor to become a Christian; founder of Constantinople.","bio":"Constantine was the son of a Roman officer, Constantius, who became one of the empire's co-emperors. When his father died at York in Britain in 306, the troops there proclaimed Constantine emperor, and years of fighting with rival emperors followed. Before the battle of the Milvian Bridge outside Rome in 312, according to his biographer Eusebius, he saw a sign in the sky and was told that in this sign he would conquer; he had his soldiers mark their shields with a Christian symbol and won the battle. In 313 he and his co-emperor Licinius issued the Edict of Milan, granting toleration to Christians and returning their property. By 324 he ruled the whole empire alone. In 325 he called the Council of Nicaea, where bishops wrote the first form of the Nicene Creed. He rebuilt the old Greek city of Byzantium as a new capital, named Constantinople, now Istanbul, dedicated in 330. He was baptized shortly before his death in 337.","keyDates":[{"date":"306","event":"Proclaimed emperor at York"},{"date":"312","event":"Wins the battle of the Milvian Bridge"},{"date":"313","event":"Edict of Milan grants toleration to Christians"},{"date":"325","event":"Calls the Council of Nicaea"},{"date":"330","event":"Dedicates Constantinople"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["the-history-of-the-church"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-history-of-the-church","url":"/works/the-history-of-the-church/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"book","title":"Constantine the Emperor","author":"David Potter","isbn13":"9780190231620","publisher":"Oxford University Press, Incorporated","year":2015,"format":""}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Ascribed his success to his conversion to Christianity and the support of the Christian God.","source":"https://www.britannica.com/biography/Constantine-I-Roman-emperor","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"james-cook","name":"James Cook","url":"/great-lives/james-cook/","dates":"1728–1779","born":1728,"died":1779,"era":"18th-century","categories":["explorers"],"knownFor":"British navigator who charted New Zealand, eastern Australia and much of the Pacific.","bio":"James Cook was born in a Yorkshire village, the son of a farm laborer. He worked in a shop, then apprenticed with a ship owner in Whitby, learning seamanship and mathematics on coal ships. In 1755 he joined the Royal Navy, and during the Seven Years' War he made excellent charts of the St. Lawrence River and Newfoundland. In 1768 he commanded HMS Endeavour on a voyage to Tahiti to observe the transit of Venus across the Sun, carrying the botanist Joseph Banks. He then charted the coasts of New Zealand and the east coast of Australia, nearly wrecking on the Great Barrier Reef. On his second voyage, from 1772 to 1775, he crossed the Antarctic Circle and sailed farther south than anyone before, showing there was no great habitable southern continent. He kept his crews healthy with fresh food and sauerkraut, and lost very few men to scurvy. On his third voyage he searched for a northwest passage and visited Hawaii. In February 1779, in a dispute over a stolen boat at Kealakekua Bay, Hawaii, he was killed in a fight with islanders.","keyDates":[{"date":"1728","event":"Born in Marton, Yorkshire"},{"date":"1768–1771","event":"First voyage, on the Endeavour"},{"date":"1770","event":"Charts eastern Australia"},{"date":"1772–1775","event":"Second voyage; crosses the Antarctic Circle"},{"date":"1778","event":"Reaches Hawaii"},{"date":"1779","event":"Killed at Kealakekua Bay"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[{"text":"On 17 January 1773 his crews became the first recorded Europeans to cross the Antarctic Circle.","source":{"title":"James Cook (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Cook"}},{"text":"He made the first recorded voyage all the way around the main islands of New Zealand.","source":{"title":"James Cook (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Cook"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Cook","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"olivia-coolidge","name":"Olivia Coolidge","url":"/great-lives/olivia-coolidge/","dates":"1908–2006","born":1908,"died":2006,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"British-born American writer of books for young readers on Greek myths, history and biography, including The Trojan War.","bio":"Olivia Coolidge was born Margaret Olivia Ensor in London in 1908, the daughter of Sir Robert Ensor, a journalist and historian. She studied classics and philosophy at Somerville College, Oxford, earning a degree in 1931 and a master's degree in 1940. She taught Greek, Latin and English in Germany, England and the United States. In 1946 she married Archibald C. Coolidge of Connecticut, and she became stepmother to his four children. She published 27 books, many of them for young adults. Her first, The Greek Myths (1949), retold the ancient stories for modern readers, and it was followed by Legends of the North (1951), about Norse mythology, and The Trojan War (1952), a retelling of the Greek legends of the war. Her Men of Athens was a runner-up for the 1963 Newbery Medal. She also wrote Lives of Famous Romans, Makers of the Red Revolution, and biographies of figures including Winston Churchill, Gandhi, Edith Wharton, Eugene O'Neill and Tom Paine. She died in 2006.","keyDates":[{"date":"1908","event":"Born in London"},{"date":"1931","event":"Graduates from Somerville College, Oxford"},{"date":"1946","event":"Marries Archibald C. Coolidge"},{"date":"1949","event":"The Greek Myths published"},{"date":"1952","event":"The Trojan War published"},{"date":"1963","event":"Newbery Honor for Men of Athens"},{"date":"2006","event":"Dies"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Olivia Coolidge","relatedWorks":["the-trojan-war"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-trojan-war","url":"/works/the-trojan-war/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivia_Coolidge","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"james-fenimore-cooper","name":"James Fenimore Cooper","url":"/great-lives/james-fenimore-cooper/","dates":"1789–1851","born":1789,"died":1851,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American novelist of the frontier, author of The Last of the Mohicans and the Leatherstocking Tales.","bio":"James Fenimore Cooper was born in 1789 in Burlington, New Jersey, and grew up in Cooperstown, New York, a frontier settlement founded by his father, William Cooper, a land developer and congressman. He was expelled from Yale College for misbehavior and went to sea as a sailor, then served as a midshipman in the United States Navy. After marrying Susan DeLancey in 1811 he lived as a gentleman farmer. According to family accounts, he began writing after telling his wife he could write a better novel than the one he was reading. His second novel, The Spy (1821), set in the American Revolution, was a success. The Pioneers (1823) introduced the frontiersman Natty Bumppo, also called Hawkeye or Leatherstocking, who reappears in four more novels, including The Last of the Mohicans (1826), set during the French and Indian War, and The Prairie. He also wrote sea novels and a history of the navy. Cooper lived in Europe for several years and later returned to Cooperstown, where he died in 1851.","keyDates":[{"date":"1789","event":"Born in Burlington, New Jersey"},{"date":"1811","event":"Marries Susan DeLancey"},{"date":"1821","event":"The Spy published"},{"date":"1823","event":"The Pioneers introduces Natty Bumppo"},{"date":"1826","event":"The Last of the Mohicans published"},{"date":"1851","event":"Dies in Cooperstown"}],"quotes":[],"author":"James Fenimore Cooper","relatedWorks":["the-last-of-the-mohicans"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-last-of-the-mohicans","url":"/works/the-last-of-the-mohicans/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"Cooper Park in Comstock Township, Michigan, is named after him.","source":{"title":"James Fenimore Cooper (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Fenimore_Cooper"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Descended from a Quaker family.","source":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Appletons%27_Cyclop%C3%A6dia_of_American_Biography/Cooper%2C_James_Fenimore","sourceName":"Appletons' Cyclopaedia of American Biography (via Wikisource)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"nicolaus-copernicus","name":"Nicolaus Copernicus","url":"/great-lives/nicolaus-copernicus/","dates":"1473–1543","born":1473,"died":1543,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["scientists-mathematicians"],"knownFor":"Polish astronomer who proposed that the Earth and planets move around the Sun.","bio":"Nicolaus Copernicus was born in Toruń, in Poland, the son of a merchant. After his father died, his uncle, a bishop, paid for his education at Kraków and in Italy, where he studied church law, medicine and astronomy. He became a canon of the cathedral at Frombork in northern Poland, where he managed church lands, practiced medicine, wrote on money and coinage, and helped defend the town in war. In his spare time he studied the sky. Astronomers had long followed Ptolemy, who placed the Earth motionless at the center of the universe. Copernicus worked out a system in which the Sun stands near the center and the Earth turns daily on its axis and travels around the Sun each year, which explained why planets sometimes seem to move backward. He hesitated for years to publish. His book On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres was printed in 1543, and tradition says he received a copy on the day he died. Its ideas were later developed by Kepler and Galileo.","keyDates":[{"date":"1473","event":"Born in Toruń"},{"date":"1496–1503","event":"Studies in Italy"},{"date":"c. 1514","event":"Circulates a first sketch of his Sun-centered system"},{"date":"1543","event":"On the Revolutions published; dies at Frombork"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Nicolaus Copernicus","relatedWorks":["copernicus-on-the-revolutions","ptolemy-almagest"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"copernicus-on-the-revolutions","url":"/works/copernicus-on-the-revolutions/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A canon of the Catholic cathedral chapter of Warmia from 1497; whether he was ordained a priest is uncertain.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolaus_Copernicus","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[{"series":"Very Short Introductions","title":"Copernicus: A Very Short Introduction","author":"Owen Gingerich","publisher":"Oxford University Press","year":2016,"isbn13":"9780199330966","url":"https://bookshop.org/a/130650/9780199330966"}],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"frederick-copleston","name":"Frederick Copleston","url":"/great-lives/frederick-copleston/","dates":"1907–1994","born":1907,"died":1994,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["philosophers"],"knownFor":"English Jesuit priest and historian of philosophy; author of A History of Philosophy (1946–1975); debated Bertrand Russell on God (1948).","bio":"Frederick Charles Copleston was born in 1907 near Taunton in Somerset, the son of a judge who had served in Burma, and was raised in the Church of England; two of his uncles were Anglican bishops. At eighteen, while still at Marlborough College, he became a Catholic, to his family's distress. After studying classics and philosophy at St John's College, Oxford, he entered the Society of Jesus in 1930 and was ordained a priest in 1937. When the Second World War prevented further study in Rome, he began teaching the history of philosophy to young Jesuits at Heythrop and started writing A History of Philosophy, whose nine volumes appeared between 1946 and 1975. He lectured for many years at the Gregorian University in Rome, became Principal of Heythrop College in the University of London, and gave the Gifford Lectures at Aberdeen. He became known beyond the classroom for his 1948 BBC radio debate with Bertrand Russell on the existence of God. He died in London in 1994.","keyDates":[{"date":"1907","event":"Born near Taunton, Somerset"},{"date":"1925","event":"Received into the Catholic Church at eighteen"},{"date":"1930","event":"Enters the Society of Jesus"},{"date":"1937","event":"Ordained a Jesuit priest"},{"date":"1946","event":"Volume I of A History of Philosophy"},{"date":"1948","event":"BBC radio debate with Bertrand Russell on God"},{"date":"1970","event":"Principal of Heythrop College, University of London; Fellow of the British Academy"},{"date":"1975","event":"Volume IX completes the original series"},{"date":"1994","event":"Dies in London"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Frederick Copleston","relatedWorks":["copleston-greece-and-rome","copleston-augustine-to-scotus","copleston-ockham-to-suarez","copleston-descartes-to-leibniz","copleston-hobbes-to-hume","copleston-wolff-to-kant","copleston-fichte-to-nietzsche","copleston-bentham-to-russell","copleston-maine-de-biran-to-sartre","copleston-russian-philosophy","copleston-logical-positivism-and-existentialism"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"copleston-greece-and-rome","url":"/works/copleston-greece-and-rome/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"copleston-augustine-to-scotus","url":"/works/copleston-augustine-to-scotus/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"copleston-ockham-to-suarez","url":"/works/copleston-ockham-to-suarez/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"copleston-descartes-to-leibniz","url":"/works/copleston-descartes-to-leibniz/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"copleston-hobbes-to-hume","url":"/works/copleston-hobbes-to-hume/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"copleston-wolff-to-kant","url":"/works/copleston-wolff-to-kant/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"copleston-fichte-to-nietzsche","url":"/works/copleston-fichte-to-nietzsche/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"copleston-bentham-to-russell","url":"/works/copleston-bentham-to-russell/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"copleston-maine-de-biran-to-sartre","url":"/works/copleston-maine-de-biran-to-sartre/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"copleston-russian-philosophy","url":"/works/copleston-russian-philosophy/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"copleston-logical-positivism-and-existentialism","url":"/works/copleston-logical-positivism-and-existentialism/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"His family, the Coplestons of Devon, was so old that a traditional county rhyme claimed they were already at home when William the Conqueror arrived in 1066.","source":{"title":"Frederick Copleston (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Copleston"}},{"text":"In 1948 he debated the existence of God with Bertrand Russell on BBC radio, and the next year he debated logical positivism with his friend A. J. Ayer.","source":{"title":"Frederick Copleston (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Copleston"}},{"text":"By 1979 the American paperback edition of his History had sold about 1.6 million copies, according to a Washington Post report.","source":{"title":"A History of Philosophy (Copleston) (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_History_of_Philosophy_(Copleston)"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Raised in the Church of England (two uncles were Anglican bishops); received into the Catholic Church at eighteen, entered the Society of Jesus in 1930 and was ordained a Jesuit priest in 1937.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Copleston","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"hernan-cortes","name":"Hernán Cortés","url":"/great-lives/hernan-cortes/","dates":"1485–1547","born":1485,"died":1547,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["military-leaders","explorers"],"knownFor":"Spanish conquistador who brought down the Aztec Empire.","bio":"Hernán Cortés was born in Medellín, in Spain, to a family of minor nobility. He studied briefly at Salamanca and in 1504 sailed to the island of Hispaniola, later taking part in the Spanish conquest of Cuba. In 1519 the governor of Cuba named him to lead an expedition to the Mexican coast, then tried to cancel it; Cortés sailed anyway with about five hundred soldiers. He was aided by a Nahua woman, Malintzin, known as Doña Marina, who became his interpreter and adviser. He made alliances with the Tlaxcalans and other peoples who resented Aztec rule. In November 1519 the Aztec ruler Moctezuma II received him in the island city of Tenochtitlan, and Cortés soon took him prisoner. In 1520 the city rose against the Spaniards, Moctezuma was killed, and the Spaniards fled with heavy losses. Returning with thousands of allies and boats built for the lake, Cortés besieged Tenochtitlan, which fell in August 1521 after a smallpox epidemic had weakened it. He built Mexico City on its ruins and governed New Spain for a time, but lost favor with the crown. He died in Spain in 1547.","keyDates":[{"date":"1519","event":"Lands in Mexico; enters Tenochtitlan"},{"date":"1520","event":"Driven out of the city"},{"date":"1521","event":"Tenochtitlan falls"},{"date":"1547","event":"Dies in Spain"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A Catholic who sought to spread Christianity in Mexico.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hern%C3%A1n_Cort%C3%A9s","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"william-cowper","name":"William Cowper","url":"/great-lives/william-cowper/","dates":"1731–1800","born":1731,"died":1800,"era":"18th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Evangelical poet of The Task, John Gilpin and the Olney Hymns, and an early poetic voice against the slave trade.","bio":"William Cowper was born on 26 November 1731 at Great Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, where his father was rector. His mother died when he was six. After Westminster School he trained as a lawyer, but in 1763, facing an examination for a clerkship in the House of Lords, he suffered a breakdown and attempted suicide. At Dr Nathaniel Cotton's asylum in St Albans he recovered and underwent an evangelical conversion. He lived afterwards with the Unwin family, settling at Olney with Mary Unwin in 1767, where John Newton was curate; together they wrote the Olney Hymns (1779). Recurring depression, including the conviction that he was damned, troubled him for the rest of his life, yet he wrote cheerful letters, the comic John Gilpin and the long poem The Task (1785). He translated Homer and spoke out against slavery. He died at East Dereham, Norfolk, on 25 April 1800.","keyDates":[{"date":"1731","event":"Born at Great Berkhamsted, 26 November"},{"date":"1763","event":"Breakdown; confined at St Albans, where he is converted"},{"date":"1767","event":"Settles at Olney with Mary Unwin; meets John Newton"},{"date":"1779","event":"Olney Hymns published with Newton"},{"date":"1785","event":"The Task and John Gilpin published"},{"date":"1800","event":"Dies at East Dereham, 25 April"}],"quotes":[{"text":"God made the country, and man made the town.","work":"the-task-cowper"},{"text":"I was a stricken deer that left the herd Long since;","work":"the-task-cowper"}],"author":"William Cowper","relatedWorks":["the-task-cowper","john-gilpin","olney-hymns"],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"library","work":"john-gilpin","url":"/works/john-gilpin/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"olney-hymns","url":"/works/olney-hymns/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-task-cowper","url":"/works/the-task-cowper/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"An evangelical Anglican converted in 1764 at St Albans, Cowper co-wrote the Olney Hymns with John Newton, though recurrent depression left him long convinced he was excluded from grace.","source":"https://www.britannica.com/biography/William-Cowper","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"stephen-crane","name":"Stephen Crane","url":"/great-lives/stephen-crane/","dates":"1871–1900","born":1871,"died":1900,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American writer of The Red Badge of Courage, a novel of the Civil War, and of poems and short stories.","bio":"Stephen Crane was born in 1871 in Newark, New Jersey, the fourteenth child of a Methodist minister. He began writing at four and had published several articles by sixteen. He attended Lafayette College and Syracuse University, where he played baseball and rarely attended classes, and in 1891 he left to work as a reporter and writer. His first novel, Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (1893), about life in the city's slums, was published privately with money inherited from his mother and did not sell. The Red Badge of Courage (1895), the story of a young soldier's fear and courage in battle during the American Civil War, made him famous, although he had never seen a war. He later worked as a war correspondent in Greece and Cuba. In 1897, on his way to Cuba, he survived the sinking of a ship off Florida, an experience he turned into the short story 'The Open Boat'. He settled in England with his companion Cora Taylor, where Joseph Conrad and H. G. Wells befriended him. Suffering from tuberculosis, he died in Germany in 1900, aged 28.","keyDates":[{"date":"1871","event":"Born in Newark, New Jersey"},{"date":"1893","event":"Maggie: A Girl of the Streets published"},{"date":"1895","event":"The Red Badge of Courage published"},{"date":"1897","event":"Survives a shipwreck off Florida"},{"date":"1900","event":"Dies in Germany, aged 28"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Stephen Crane","relatedWorks":["the-red-badge-of-courage"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-red-badge-of-courage","url":"/works/the-red-badge-of-courage/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"His family nicknamed him 'Stevie'.","source":{"title":"Stephen Crane (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Crane"}},{"text":"He wrote his first known story, 'Uncle Jake and the Bell Handle', when he was 14.","source":{"title":"Stephen Crane (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Crane"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Son of a Methodist minister and a highly religious mother; his own beliefs differed from hers.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Crane","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"thomas-cranmer","name":"Thomas Cranmer","url":"/great-lives/thomas-cranmer/","dates":"1489–1556","born":1489,"died":1556,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["saints-reformers","theologians-church-fathers"],"knownFor":"Archbishop of Canterbury under Henry VIII and Edward VI who shaped the English Reformation and wrote much of the Book of Common Prayer.","bio":"Thomas Cranmer was born in 1489 at Aslockton in Nottinghamshire and studied and taught at Jesus College, Cambridge. In 1529 he suggested that Henry VIII's case for annulling his marriage to Catherine of Aragon be put to the universities, and he entered royal service. Made Archbishop of Canterbury in 1533, he declared the marriage void and crowned Anne Boleyn. Under Henry he promoted the English Bible and composed the English Litany (1544). Under the boy king Edward VI he led a more Protestant reformation, writing much of the Book of Common Prayer of 1549 and its revision in 1552, and drafting the Forty-Two Articles. When the Catholic Mary I came to the throne in 1553 he was tried for treason and heresy. In prison he signed several recantations, but at his execution at Oxford on 21 March 1556 he withdrew them and, according to Foxe's account, held into the fire first the hand that had signed them. His prayer book language shaped English worship for centuries. Anglicans still pray many of his collects every Sunday.","keyDates":[{"date":"1489","event":"Born in Nottinghamshire"},{"date":"1533","event":"Becomes Archbishop of Canterbury"},{"date":"1544","event":"English Litany"},{"date":"1549","event":"First Book of Common Prayer"},{"date":"1552","event":"Revised Prayer Book"},{"date":"1556","event":"Burned at Oxford"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Thomas Cranmer and the Church of England","relatedWorks":["book-of-common-prayer-1662","foxe-book-of-martyrs"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"foxe-book-of-martyrs","url":"/works/foxe-book-of-martyrs/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"book-of-common-prayer-1662","url":"/works/book-of-common-prayer-1662/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Archbishop of Canterbury who worked toward union between the German Protestants and the Church of England.","source":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dictionary_of_National_Biography%2C_1885-1900/Cranmer%2C_Thomas","sourceName":"Dictionary of National Biography (1885–1900) (via Wikisource)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"oliver-cromwell","name":"Oliver Cromwell","url":"/great-lives/oliver-cromwell/","dates":"1599–1658","born":1599,"died":1658,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["statesmen-founders","military-leaders"],"knownFor":"Puritan general who won the English Civil War and ruled as Lord Protector.","bio":"Oliver Cromwell was a country gentleman from Huntingdon who, after a religious conversion in his thirties, became a fervent Puritan. He was elected to Parliament, and when civil war broke out between King Charles I and Parliament in 1642, he raised a troop of cavalry. Though he had no military training, he proved a gifted commander, and his disciplined horsemen, called Ironsides, helped win the battles of Marston Moor and Naseby. He was a leader of the New Model Army. After Charles was defeated and tried, Cromwell was among those who signed his death warrant, and the king was beheaded in 1649. Cromwell then led a campaign in Ireland where his troops massacred garrisons and civilians at Drogheda and Wexford, and defeated the Scots. In 1653 he dissolved Parliament by force and became Lord Protector of England, Scotland and Ireland. He allowed wider religious toleration for Protestants and readmitted Jews to England. He refused the crown in 1657 and died in 1658. Two years later the monarchy was restored.","keyDates":[{"date":"1642","event":"Civil War begins"},{"date":"1645","event":"Victory at Naseby"},{"date":"1649","event":"Execution of Charles I; Irish campaign"},{"date":"1653","event":"Becomes Lord Protector"},{"date":"1658","event":"Dies in London"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["leviathan"],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[{"text":"In 1776 Connecticut named a warship the Oliver Cromwell, one of the first American naval vessels.","source":{"title":"Oliver Cromwell (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Cromwell"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A Puritan who spoke in Parliament for the free preaching of Puritan doctrine.","source":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dictionary_of_National_Biography%2C_1885-1900/Cromwell%2C_Oliver_%281599-1658%29","sourceName":"Dictionary of National Biography (1885–1900) (via Wikisource)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"marie-curie","name":"Marie Curie","url":"/great-lives/marie-curie/","dates":"1867–1934","born":1867,"died":1934,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["scientists-mathematicians","physicians-medicine"],"knownFor":"Polish-French physicist and chemist, the first person to win two Nobel Prizes.","bio":"Maria Skłodowska was born in Warsaw, Poland, then ruled by Russia, the youngest of five children of two teachers. Women could not attend university in Poland, so she studied secretly and worked as a governess to help pay for her sister's medical studies in Paris. In 1891 she followed her to Paris, studied physics and mathematics at the Sorbonne, and in 1895 married the physicist Pierre Curie. Following Henri Becquerel's discovery of rays from uranium, she studied these rays, named the effect radioactivity, and with Pierre discovered two new elements, polonium, named for Poland, and radium, after years of processing tons of ore in a leaky shed. In 1903 she shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Pierre and Becquerel. Pierre was killed by a horse-drawn wagon in 1906, and she took over his professorship, becoming the first woman professor at the Sorbonne. In 1911 she won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. During the First World War she set up mobile X-ray units to help treat wounded soldiers. She died in 1934 of an illness caused by radiation exposure.","keyDates":[{"date":"1867","event":"Born in Warsaw"},{"date":"1891","event":"Moves to Paris"},{"date":"1898","event":"Discovers polonium and radium with Pierre Curie"},{"date":"1903","event":"Nobel Prize in Physics"},{"date":"1911","event":"Nobel Prize in Chemistry"},{"date":"1914–1918","event":"Mobile X-ray units in the war"},{"date":"1934","event":"Dies in France"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[{"band":"K-2","kind":"book","title":"Marie Curie","author":"Maria Isabel Sanchez Vegara","isbn13":"9781847809629","publisher":"Frances Lincoln Books","year":2017,"format":""},{"band":"3-5","kind":"book","title":"Who Was Marie Curie?","author":"Megan Stine","isbn13":"9780448478968","publisher":"Grosset & Dunlap","year":2014,"format":""}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"As a girl in Warsaw she was nicknamed 'Mania'.","source":{"title":"Marie Curie (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Curie"}}],"records":[{"text":"She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the first person to win two, and the only person to win Nobel Prizes in two different sciences.","source":{"title":"Marie Curie (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Curie"}},{"text":"In 1906 she became the first woman professor at the University of Paris.","source":{"title":"Marie Curie (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Curie"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Raised Catholic by her mother; after the deaths of her mother and sister she became agnostic.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Curie","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"cyril-and-methodius","name":"Cyril and Methodius","url":"/great-lives/cyril-and-methodius/","dates":"c. 826–869 and c. 815–885","born":815,"died":885,"era":"medieval","categories":["saints-reformers"],"knownFor":"Greek brothers from Thessalonica, missionaries to the Slavs, who devised the first Slavic alphabet and translated the liturgy and Scriptures.","bio":"Constantine, who took the name Cyril as a monk shortly before his death, and his elder brother Methodius were born in Thessalonica in the Byzantine Empire and grew up speaking the Slavic dialect of the surrounding region. Constantine became a scholar and teacher in Constantinople, and Methodius an administrator and then a monk. In 862 or 863 Prince Rastislav of Great Moravia asked the emperor for teachers who could instruct his people in their own language. The brothers were sent, and for the mission Constantine devised the Glagolitic alphabet, from which the later Cyrillic script, named in his honour, developed. They translated the Gospels and the liturgy into Old Church Slavonic, which met opposition from Frankish clergy who held that worship should be in Latin, Greek or Hebrew. In Rome Pope Hadrian II approved the Slavonic liturgy. Cyril died in Rome in 869; Methodius became archbishop of Sirmium, endured imprisonment, and died in Moravia in 885. Both are honoured in the Orthodox and Catholic churches. They are honoured as apostles to the Slavs.","keyDates":[{"date":"863","event":"Mission to Great Moravia begins"},{"date":"c. 863","event":"Glagolitic alphabet devised"},{"date":"867–868","event":"Slavonic liturgy approved in Rome"},{"date":"869","event":"Cyril dies in Rome"},{"date":"885","event":"Methodius dies in Moravia"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Byzantine Christian missionaries to the Slavs, venerated as saints in Eastern Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, Anglicanism and Lutheranism.","source":"https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saints-Cyril-and-Methodius","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"cyrus-the-great","name":"Cyrus the Great","url":"/great-lives/cyrus-the-great/","dates":"c. 600–530 BC","born":-600,"died":-530,"era":"ancient","categories":["kings-queens-emperors"],"knownFor":"Founder of the Persian Empire, remembered for letting the exiled Jews return to Jerusalem.","bio":"Cyrus II, called Cyrus the Great, founded the Achaemenid Persian Empire, the largest empire the world had yet seen. He began as king of Anshan, a small Persian kingdom under the rule of the Medes. Around 550 BC he defeated the Median king Astyages, then conquered Lydia, the rich kingdom of King Croesus in Asia Minor, and in 539 BC took the great city of Babylon. Unlike many conquerors, Cyrus often left local customs, temples and rulers in place, and he presented himself to the Babylonians as a restorer of their gods. A clay cylinder from his reign records this policy. The Bible's books of Ezra and Isaiah describe Cyrus allowing the Jews who had been carried into exile in Babylon to return home and rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem. The Greek writer Xenophon later wrote an idealized book about his education. Cyrus died around 530 BC while fighting tribes in Central Asia, and his simple stone tomb still stands at Pasargadae in Iran.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 550 BC","event":"Defeats the Medes and unites Persia"},{"date":"c. 546 BC","event":"Conquers Lydia and King Croesus"},{"date":"539 BC","event":"Takes Babylon"},{"date":"c. 530 BC","event":"Dies on campaign; buried at Pasargadae"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["the-histories","the-persian-expedition"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-histories","url":"/works/the-histories/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented; ancient accounts, including the Bible, record his tolerance of the religions of conquered peoples.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrus_the_Great","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"alice-dalgliesh","name":"Alice Dalgliesh","url":"/great-lives/alice-dalgliesh/","dates":"1893–1979","born":1893,"died":1979,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Children's author and pioneering editor whose historical stories include The Courage of Sarah Noble and The Bears on Hemlock Mountain.","bio":"Alice Dalgliesh was born in 1893 in Trinidad, in the British West Indies, and spent part of her childhood in England before moving to the United States as a young woman; she later became an American citizen. She trained as a teacher and taught kindergarten and elementary school for many years while beginning to write. In 1934 she became the founding editor of the children's book department at Charles Scribner's Sons in New York, where she published books by many well-known authors and illustrators, and she later served as the first president of the Children's Book Council. She wrote more than forty books for children, many of them historical. Three were runners-up for the Newbery Medal: The Silver Pencil, partly based on her own life, The Bears on Hemlock Mountain, about a boy sent over a mountain alone, and The Courage of Sarah Noble, about a girl who travels with her father to a new settlement in early Connecticut. She died in 1979.","keyDates":[{"date":"1893","event":"Born in Trinidad"},{"date":"1934","event":"Founding editor of children's books at Scribner's"},{"date":"1952","event":"The Bears on Hemlock Mountain published"},{"date":"1954","event":"The Courage of Sarah Noble published"},{"date":"1979","event":"Dies"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Alice Dalgliesh","relatedWorks":["the-bears-on-hemlock-mountain","the-courage-of-sarah-noble"],"reading":[{"band":"K-2","kind":"library","work":"the-bears-on-hemlock-mountain","url":"/works/the-bears-on-hemlock-mountain/"},{"band":"K-2","kind":"library","work":"the-courage-of-sarah-noble","url":"/works/the-courage-of-sarah-noble/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Dalgliesh","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"father-damien","name":"Saint Damien of Molokai","url":"/great-lives/father-damien/","dates":"1840–1889","born":1840,"died":1889,"era":"19th-century","categories":["saints-reformers"],"knownFor":"Belgian priest who served the leprosy settlement on Molokai, Hawaii, until he died of the disease.","bio":"Jozef De Veuster was born in Tremelo, Belgium, the son of a farmer. He joined the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts, taking the name Damien, and in 1864 took his brother's place on a mission to the Kingdom of Hawaii, where he was ordained a priest. In Hawaii, leprosy, now called Hansen's disease, was spreading, and the government sent those infected to an isolated settlement at Kalaupapa on the island of Molokai, cut off by high cliffs. In 1873 Damien volunteered to go there. He found the residents living in poverty and neglect. He built houses, a church, an orphanage and a water system, dressed wounds, made coffins and dug graves, and pressed the government for supplies. He also taught and organized the residents. In 1884 he discovered he had caught the disease himself. He kept working, and in his last years was joined by helpers, including Marianne Cope, a Franciscan sister from New York, and a Civil War veteran, Joseph Dutton. He died at Kalaupapa in 1889, at forty-nine. The writer Robert Louis Stevenson defended his memory against a critic. He was canonized in 2009.","keyDates":[{"date":"1864","event":"Arrives in Hawaii and is ordained"},{"date":"1873","event":"Goes to Kalaupapa, Molokai"},{"date":"1884","event":"Learns he has leprosy"},{"date":"1889","event":"Dies at Kalaupapa"},{"date":"2009","event":"Canonized"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Catholic missionary priest who devoted himself to the lepers deported to Molokai, Hawaii.","source":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Damien%2C_Father","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica (1911) (via Wikisource)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"dante-alighieri","name":"Dante Alighieri","url":"/great-lives/dante-alighieri/","dates":"1265–1321","born":1265,"died":1321,"era":"medieval","categories":["writers-poets","philosophers"],"knownFor":"Florentine poet, author of the Divine Comedy, which helped establish Italian as a literary language.","bio":"Dante Alighieri was born in Florence in 1265 into a family of minor nobility. As a boy he met Beatrice Portinari, whom he loved from afar and later celebrated in his poems; she died in 1290, and his book La Vita Nuova tells the story of his love for her. Dante studied philosophy and poetry, fought for Florence at the Battle of Campaldino in 1289, and became active in the city's politics, serving as one of its priors in 1300. In the conflicts between rival factions, he was exiled in 1302 while away from the city and never returned. He spent the rest of his life wandering among Italian courts, including Verona and Ravenna. In exile he wrote the Divine Comedy, an epic poem describing a journey through Hell, Purgatory and Paradise, guided first by the Roman poet Virgil and then by Beatrice. Writing it in Tuscan Italian rather than Latin helped make that language the basis of modern Italian. He also wrote De Monarchia, on politics. He died in Ravenna in 1321.","keyDates":[{"date":"1265","event":"Born in Florence"},{"date":"1289","event":"Fights at the Battle of Campaldino"},{"date":"1300","event":"Serves as a prior of Florence"},{"date":"1302","event":"Exiled from Florence"},{"date":"c. 1308–1320","event":"Writes the Divine Comedy"},{"date":"1321","event":"Dies in Ravenna"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Dante Alighieri; R. W. Church","relatedWorks":["dante-de-monarchia","the-divine-comedy"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"dante-de-monarchia","url":"/works/dante-de-monarchia/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-divine-comedy","url":"/works/the-divine-comedy/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Catholic; his Divine Comedy is a Christian poem, and a pope praised him in a 1921 encyclical.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dante_Alighieri","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[{"series":"Very Short Introductions","title":"Dante: A Very Short Introduction","author":"Peter Hainsworth, David Robey","publisher":"Oxford University Press","year":2015,"isbn13":"9780199684779","url":"https://bookshop.org/a/130650/9780199684779"}],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"charles-darwin","name":"Charles Darwin","url":"/great-lives/charles-darwin/","dates":"1809–1882","born":1809,"died":1882,"era":"19th-century","categories":["scientists-mathematicians"],"knownFor":"English naturalist who proposed evolution by natural selection.","bio":"Charles Darwin was born in Shrewsbury, England, the son of a doctor and grandson of the potter Josiah Wedgwood. He began studying medicine at Edinburgh but could not bear operations without anesthetic, and then studied at Cambridge to become a clergyman, while collecting beetles and learning geology and botany. In 1831 he joined HMS Beagle as a naturalist on a five-year voyage around the world. In South America and the Galápagos Islands he collected fossils, plants and animals and noticed how species varied from place to place. Back in England he married his cousin Emma Wedgwood, settled at Down House in Kent, and, often ill, spent twenty years gathering evidence for a theory that species change over long periods through natural selection, as individuals better suited to their surroundings survive and leave more offspring. When Alfred Russel Wallace sent him a paper with similar ideas, their work was presented together in 1858, and On the Origin of Species appeared in 1859, provoking intense debate. He also wrote on barnacles, orchids, earthworms and human origins. He died in 1882 and was buried in Westminster Abbey.","keyDates":[{"date":"1809","event":"Born in Shrewsbury"},{"date":"1831–1836","event":"Voyage of the Beagle"},{"date":"1839","event":"Marries Emma Wedgwood"},{"date":"1858","event":"Joint paper with Wallace"},{"date":"1859","event":"On the Origin of Species"},{"date":"1882","event":"Dies at Down House"}],"quotes":[{"text":"There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one","work":"on-the-origin-of-species","location":"Conclusion","verified":true},{"text":"from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved","work":"on-the-origin-of-species","location":"Conclusion","verified":true}],"author":"Charles Darwin","relatedWorks":["the-voyage-of-the-beagle","on-the-origin-of-species","the-descent-of-man","the-expression-of-the-emotions-in-man-and-animals"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-voyage-of-the-beagle","url":"/works/the-voyage-of-the-beagle/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"on-the-origin-of-species","url":"/works/on-the-origin-of-species/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-descent-of-man","url":"/works/the-descent-of-man/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-expression-of-the-emotions-in-man-and-animals","url":"/works/the-expression-of-the-emotions-in-man-and-animals/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"In the Galápagos Islands he heard that each island's tortoises had differently shaped shells, but he did not collect any, even after eating tortoises taken on board the ship as food.","source":{"title":"Charles Darwin (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Darwin"}}],"records":[{"text":"He was the first person to recognise how important it is that some plants are meat-eaters, catching insects for food.","source":{"title":"Charles Darwin (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Darwin"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"His mother's family were Unitarians; he was an agnostic.","source":"https://www.britannica.com/biography/Charles-Darwin","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica","documented":true},"furtherReading":[{"series":"Very Short Introductions","title":"Darwin: A Very Short Introduction","author":"Jonathan Howard","publisher":"Oxford University Press","year":2001,"isbn13":"9780192854544","url":"https://bookshop.org/a/130650/9780192854544"}],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"daniel-defoe","name":"Daniel Defoe","url":"/great-lives/daniel-defoe/","dates":"c. 1660–1731","born":1660,"died":1731,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"English writer, journalist and merchant, author of Robinson Crusoe.","bio":"Daniel Defoe was born in London around 1660, the son of a candle maker named James Foe; he later added the 'De' to his name. His family were Presbyterian Dissenters, and he was educated at a Dissenting academy. He became a merchant, dealing in goods such as hosiery and wine, and traveled in Europe, but his business ventures often ended in debt. He took part in the rebellion of the Duke of Monmouth in 1685. A prolific pamphleteer, he was fined, pilloried and imprisoned in 1703 for a satirical pamphlet about the treatment of Dissenters. Afterward he worked as a writer and secret agent for the government, including in Scotland before the union with England in 1707, and published a newspaper, the Review. In 1719, when he was nearly sixty, he published Robinson Crusoe, the story of a man shipwrecked alone on an island, which is often called one of the first English novels. Moll Flanders and A Journal of the Plague Year followed. He died in London in 1731.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 1660","event":"Born in London"},{"date":"1685","event":"Joins the Monmouth Rebellion"},{"date":"1703","event":"Pilloried and imprisoned for a pamphlet"},{"date":"1719","event":"Robinson Crusoe published"},{"date":"1722","event":"Moll Flanders and A Journal of the Plague Year"},{"date":"1731","event":"Dies in London"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Daniel Defoe","relatedWorks":["robinson-crusoe"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"robinson-crusoe","url":"/works/robinson-crusoe/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Raised a Presbyterian and intended for the ministry, but chose a career as a merchant.","source":"https://www.britannica.com/biography/Daniel-Defoe","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"rene-descartes","name":"René Descartes","url":"/great-lives/rene-descartes/","dates":"1596–1650","born":1596,"died":1650,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["philosophers","scientists-mathematicians"],"knownFor":"French philosopher and mathematician, author of I think, therefore I am.","bio":"René Descartes was born in La Haye, France, and was educated at the Jesuit college of La Flèche, where he was allowed to stay in bed late in the morning because of poor health, a habit he kept for life. He studied law but decided to learn from the great book of the world, and served as a volunteer soldier. In November 1619, in Germany, he had a series of dreams that convinced him to build all knowledge on a certain foundation, like mathematics. He spent most of his adult life in the Netherlands. In his Discourse on Method of 1637 and Meditations of 1641 he resolved to doubt everything that could be doubted, and found one thing he could not doubt: that he was thinking. I think, therefore I am. From there he argued for the existence of God and of the material world. He invented the coordinate system that links algebra and geometry, still called Cartesian, and wrote on optics and the body. In 1649 Queen Christina of Sweden invited him to Stockholm, where he caught pneumonia and died in 1650.","keyDates":[{"date":"1619","event":"Dreams that set his philosophical program"},{"date":"1637","event":"Discourse on Method and Geometry"},{"date":"1641","event":"Meditations on First Philosophy"},{"date":"1649","event":"Moves to Stockholm"},{"date":"1650","event":"Dies in Stockholm"}],"quotes":[{"text":"I think, therefore I am","work":"discourse-on-method","location":"Part IV","verified":true},{"text":"The first was never to accept anything for true which I did not clearly know to be such","work":"discourse-on-method","location":"Part II","verified":true}],"author":"Rene Descartes","relatedWorks":["discourse-on-method","meditations-on-first-philosophy","the-passions-of-the-soul","descartes-meditations-with-objections","descartes-rules-for-the-direction-of-the-mind","descartes-geometry"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"discourse-on-method","url":"/works/discourse-on-method/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"meditations-on-first-philosophy","url":"/works/meditations-on-first-philosophy/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-passions-of-the-soul","url":"/works/the-passions-of-the-soul/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"descartes-meditations-with-objections","url":"/works/descartes-meditations-with-objections/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"descartes-rules-for-the-direction-of-the-mind","url":"/works/descartes-rules-for-the-direction-of-the-mind/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"descartes-geometry","url":"/works/descartes-geometry/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"The Cartesian coordinate system, the x-and-y grid used for drawing graphs, is named after him.","source":{"title":"René Descartes (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Descartes"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A Roman Catholic, educated at the Jesuit College of La Flèche.","source":"https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/descartes/","sourceName":"Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy","documented":true},"furtherReading":[{"series":"Very Short Introductions","title":"Descartes: A Very Short Introduction","author":"Tom Sorell","publisher":"Oxford University Press","year":2000,"isbn13":"9780192854094","url":"https://bookshop.org/a/130650/9780192854094"}],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"john-dewey","name":"John Dewey","url":"/great-lives/john-dewey/","dates":"1859–1952","born":1859,"died":1952,"era":"19th-century","categories":["philosophers"],"knownFor":"American philosopher, psychologist and educational reformer, a leading figure of pragmatism.","bio":"John Dewey was born in 1859 in Burlington, Vermont, and studied at the University of Vermont and then at Johns Hopkins University, where he earned a doctorate in philosophy. He taught at the University of Michigan and in 1894 moved to the University of Chicago, where he founded a Laboratory School to test his ideas about teaching. He believed that children learn best through activity and experience, and that schools should prepare citizens for life in a democracy. In 1904 he moved to Columbia University in New York, where he taught for the rest of his career. With Charles Sanders Peirce and William James, he is regarded as one of the founders of pragmatism, the view that ideas should be judged by their practical consequences. His books include Democracy and Education (1916), Experience and Nature (1925) and Experience and Education (1938), a short reply to critics of progressive education. He lectured in Japan and China and was active in many public causes. He died in New York City in 1952.","keyDates":[{"date":"1859","event":"Born in Burlington, Vermont"},{"date":"1894","event":"Moves to the University of Chicago"},{"date":"1904","event":"Joins Columbia University"},{"date":"1916","event":"Democracy and Education published"},{"date":"1938","event":"Experience and Education published"},{"date":"1952","event":"Dies in New York City"}],"quotes":[],"author":"John Dewey","relatedWorks":["dewey-experience-and-education"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"dewey-experience-and-education","url":"/works/dewey-experience-and-education/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Raised in the Congregationalist Church.","source":"https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dewey/","sourceName":"Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"charles-dickens","name":"Charles Dickens","url":"/great-lives/charles-dickens/","dates":"1812–1870","born":1812,"died":1870,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"English novelist of the Victorian age, author of Oliver Twist, A Christmas Carol, David Copperfield and Great Expectations.","bio":"Charles Dickens was born in 1812 in Portsmouth, England, and grew up mainly in Kent and London. When he was twelve his father was imprisoned for debt in the Marshalsea prison, and Charles was sent to work in a factory pasting labels on pots of boot polish, an experience he never forgot. He later worked as a law clerk and as a shorthand reporter in Parliament. His sketches of London life and The Pickwick Papers (1836–1837) made him famous while still in his twenties. Most of his novels first appeared in monthly or weekly parts, including Oliver Twist, A Christmas Carol (1843), David Copperfield, which draws on his own youth, Bleak House, Hard Times, A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations. They portray the poor, debtors' prisons, schools and courts of Victorian England with humor and memorable characters. Dickens also edited magazines, supported charities, and gave popular public readings in Britain and America. He died at his home, Gad's Hill Place in Kent, in 1870 and was buried in Westminster Abbey.","keyDates":[{"date":"1812","event":"Born in Portsmouth"},{"date":"1824","event":"Works in a blacking factory while his father is in debtors' prison"},{"date":"1836","event":"The Pickwick Papers begins"},{"date":"1843","event":"A Christmas Carol published"},{"date":"1850","event":"David Copperfield completed"},{"date":"1861","event":"Great Expectations published"},{"date":"1870","event":"Dies at Gad's Hill Place"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Charles Dickens","relatedWorks":["great-expectations","david-copperfield","bleak-house","hard-times","a-tale-of-two-cities","a-christmas-carol","oliver-twist","little-dorrit","the-pickwick-papers"],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"library","work":"a-christmas-carol","url":"/works/a-christmas-carol/"},{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"oliver-twist","url":"/works/oliver-twist/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"great-expectations","url":"/works/great-expectations/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"david-copperfield","url":"/works/david-copperfield/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"bleak-house","url":"/works/bleak-house/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"hard-times","url":"/works/hard-times/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"a-tale-of-two-cities","url":"/works/a-tale-of-two-cities/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"little-dorrit","url":"/works/little-dorrit/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-pickwick-papers","url":"/works/the-pickwick-papers/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"His early pen name 'Boz' came from a family nickname.","source":{"title":"Charles Dickens (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Dickens"}},{"text":"His favourite actor was Charles Mathews, and Dickens learned Mathews's one-man comedy sketches, in which he played every character, by heart.","source":{"title":"Charles Dickens (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Dickens"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[{"name":"Charles Dickens Museum","note":"From 1837 to 1839 Dickens lived at 48–49 Doughty Street in London, where he wrote early novels including Oliver Twist. The Charles Dickens Museum now fills that house and offers learning programs for schools and families. (It is not his childhood home.)","url":"https://dickensmuseum.com/pages/learning","urlLabel":"Charles Dickens Museum — learning"}],"faith":{"note":"Critical of some forms of organised religion; he wrote The Life of Our Lord (1846) to share his Christian faith with his children.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Dickens","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[{"series":"Very Short Introductions","title":"Charles Dickens: A Very Short Introduction","author":"Jenny Hartley","publisher":"Oxford University Press","year":2019,"isbn13":"9780198714996","url":"https://bookshop.org/a/130650/9780198714996"}],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"emily-dickinson","name":"Emily Dickinson","url":"/great-lives/emily-dickinson/","dates":"1830–1886","born":1830,"died":1886,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American poet of Amherst, Massachusetts, whose nearly 1,800 short poems were mostly published after her death.","bio":"Emily Dickinson was born in 1830 in Amherst, Massachusetts, into a prominent family; her father was a lawyer, treasurer of Amherst College and a member of Congress. She attended Amherst Academy and spent a year at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary. She never married and, from her thirties, rarely left her family's house, the Homestead, where she gardened, baked and wrote letters to a circle of friends. She wrote nearly 1,800 poems, most of them short, using dashes, slant rhymes and unusual capital letters, and often writing about death, nature, faith and the inner life. She sent some poems to the editor Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who corresponded with her for years, but only about ten were published in her lifetime, usually without her name and with changes. After her death in Amherst in 1886, her sister Lavinia found her poems, many in small hand-sewn booklets, and the first collection was published in 1890. Later editions restored her original wording and punctuation.","keyDates":[{"date":"1830","event":"Born in Amherst, Massachusetts"},{"date":"1847–1848","event":"Attends Mount Holyoke Female Seminary"},{"date":"1862","event":"Begins writing to Thomas Wentworth Higginson"},{"date":"1886","event":"Dies in Amherst"},{"date":"1890","event":"First collection of her poems published"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Emily Dickinson","relatedWorks":["poems-of-emily-dickinson","because-i-could-not-stop-for-death"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"poems-of-emily-dickinson","url":"/works/poems-of-emily-dickinson/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"because-i-could-not-stop-for-death","url":"/works/because-i-could-not-stop-for-death/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"She described herself in a letter: 'I am small, like the wren, and my hair is bold, like the chestnut bur.'","source":{"title":"Emily Dickinson (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Dickinson"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[{"name":"Emily Dickinson Museum","note":"Emily Dickinson was born and wrote most of her poetry at the Homestead in Amherst, Massachusetts. The museum offers K–12 programs exploring her life and verse.","url":"https://www.emilydickinsonmuseum.org/education/","urlLabel":"Emily Dickinson Museum — education"}],"faith":{"note":"Raised in a Calvinist family that practiced daily religious observances; she did not make a public confession of faith during the 1845 Amherst revival.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Dickinson","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"john-dickinson","name":"John Dickinson","url":"/great-lives/john-dickinson/","dates":"1732–1808","born":1732,"died":1808,"era":"18th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders","writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American lawyer and Founding Father, author of Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania.","bio":"John Dickinson was born in 1732 in Talbot County, Maryland, and grew up in Delaware. He studied law in Philadelphia and then at the Middle Temple in London before returning to practice law in Philadelphia. He served in the assemblies of both Delaware and Pennsylvania. When the British Parliament passed the Townshend Acts, taxing goods imported into the colonies, he wrote a series of essays, Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania (1767–1768), arguing that Parliament had no right to tax the colonies to raise revenue. They were reprinted widely and made him famous. He also wrote the words of The Liberty Song. In the Continental Congress he hoped for reconciliation with Britain and refused to sign the Declaration of Independence in 1776, but he then served in the militia. He wrote the first draft of the Articles of Confederation, later served as president of both Delaware and Pennsylvania, and was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention in 1787. He died in Wilmington, Delaware, in 1808.","keyDates":[{"date":"1732","event":"Born in Talbot County, Maryland"},{"date":"1767–1768","event":"Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania"},{"date":"1776","event":"Declines to sign the Declaration of Independence"},{"date":"1776","event":"Drafts the Articles of Confederation"},{"date":"1787","event":"Delegate to the Constitutional Convention"},{"date":"1808","event":"Dies in Wilmington, Delaware"}],"quotes":[],"author":"John Dickinson","relatedWorks":["letters-from-a-farmer-in-pennsylvania","declaration-of-the-causes-and-necessity-of-taking-up-arms","olive-branch-petition"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"letters-from-a-farmer-in-pennsylvania","url":"/works/letters-from-a-farmer-in-pennsylvania/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Raised among Quakers; he was buried in the Friends' burial ground in Wilmington, Delaware.","source":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Dickinson%2C_John","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica (1911) (via Wikisource)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"denis-diderot","name":"Denis Diderot","url":"/great-lives/denis-diderot/","dates":"1713–1784","born":1713,"died":1784,"era":"18th-century","categories":["philosophers","writers-poets"],"knownFor":"French Enlightenment philosopher and chief editor of the Encyclopédie.","bio":"Denis Diderot was born in 1713 at Langres in France, the son of a master cutler. Educated by the Jesuits, he moved to Paris, studied there, and lived for years by tutoring and translating. In 1749 his Letter on the Blind, which questioned the argument from design, led to his imprisonment for several months at Vincennes. From 1747 he directed, at first with the mathematician Jean le Rond d'Alembert, the Encyclopédie, a vast reference work on the sciences, arts and trades that spread the ideas of the Enlightenment and was repeatedly suppressed by the authorities. Its seventeen volumes of text were completed in 1765, with volumes of plates following until 1772. Diderot also wrote plays, art criticism, and fiction such as Jacques the Fatalist and Rameau's Nephew, much of which was published only after his death. In 1773 he travelled to St Petersburg at the invitation of Catherine the Great, who had bought his library. He died in Paris in 1784.","keyDates":[{"date":"1713","event":"Born at Langres"},{"date":"1749","event":"Imprisoned at Vincennes"},{"date":"1751","event":"First volume of the Encyclopédie"},{"date":"1773","event":"Visits Catherine the Great"},{"date":"1784","event":"Dies in Paris"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Denis Diderot","relatedWorks":["diderot-rameaus-nephew"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"diderot-rameaus-nephew","url":"/works/diderot-rameaus-nephew/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Educated by Jesuits and tonsured, he did not enter the church; he moved from Roman Catholicism to deism and then to atheism.","source":"https://www.britannica.com/biography/Denis-Diderot","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"dioscorides","name":"Pedanius Dioscorides","url":"/great-lives/dioscorides/","dates":"c. 40–90","born":40,"died":90,"era":"ancient","categories":["physicians-medicine","scientists-mathematicians"],"knownFor":"Greek physician and botanist of the first century whose De Materia Medica was the standard guide to medicinal plants for over 1,500 years.","bio":"Pedanius Dioscorides was a Greek physician who lived in the first century AD. He came from Anazarbus, a town in Cilicia, in what is now southern Turkey, then part of the Roman Empire. Little is known of his life beyond what he says in his own book. He traveled widely, and it is often said that he served as a physician with the Roman army, though scholars debate this. Around the years 50 to 70 he wrote De Materia Medica ('On Medical Material'), a work in five books describing about six hundred plants, along with animal products and minerals, used to make medicines, with notes on how to prepare them and what illnesses they were thought to treat. He organized his entries by their effects on the body rather than alphabetically. The book was copied, translated into Latin, Arabic and other languages, and illustrated for centuries; a famous illustrated copy, the Vienna Dioscorides, was made around 512. It remained a central reference for herbal medicine into the early modern period.","keyDates":[{"date":"1st century AD","event":"Lifetime; from Anazarbus in Cilicia"},{"date":"c. 50–70","event":"Writes De Materia Medica"},{"date":"c. 512","event":"The Vienna Dioscorides manuscript made"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Dioscorides","relatedWorks":["de-materia-medica"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"de-materia-medica","url":"/works/de-materia-medica/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"The yam plant's genus, Dioscorea, is named after him, and so is a butterfly, the bush hopper Ampittia dioscorides.","source":{"title":"Dioscorides (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dioscorides"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dioscorides","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["His dates are approximate, and whether he served with the army is debated."]},{"slug":"walt-disney","name":"Walt Disney","url":"/great-lives/walt-disney/","dates":"1901–1966","born":1901,"died":1966,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["titans-of-industry","artists-composers-architects"],"knownFor":"Animator and entrepreneur who created Mickey Mouse, feature-length cartoons and Disneyland.","bio":"Walter Elias Disney was born in Chicago and grew up partly on a farm in Marceline, Missouri, and in Kansas City, where he delivered newspapers before dawn with his brother Roy. He loved drawing and took art classes. During the First World War he served as a Red Cross ambulance driver in France. His first animation studio in Kansas City went bankrupt, and in 1923 he moved to Hollywood, where he and Roy started what became the Walt Disney Company. After losing the rights to an earlier character, he created Mickey Mouse, who appeared in Steamboat Willie in 1928, one of the first cartoons with synchronized sound. His studio then made the first full-length animated feature in color, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, in 1937, followed by Pinocchio, Fantasia and Bambi. He later produced nature documentaries, live-action films and television programs. In 1955 he opened Disneyland in California, a new kind of theme park. He won more Academy Awards than anyone else. He died of lung cancer in 1966.","keyDates":[{"date":"1923","event":"Moves to Hollywood and starts a studio"},{"date":"1928","event":"Steamboat Willie introduces Mickey Mouse"},{"date":"1937","event":"Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs"},{"date":"1955","event":"Disneyland opens"},{"date":"1966","event":"Dies in Los Angeles"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"book","title":"Who Was Walt Disney?","author":"Whitney Stewart","isbn13":"9780448450520","publisher":"Grosset & Dunlap","year":2009,"format":""}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"He took art classes as a boy and got a job as a commercial illustrator at 18.","source":{"title":"Walt Disney (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walt_Disney"}},{"text":"Before Snow White came out, film-industry insiders nicknamed it 'Disney's Folly' and predicted it would bankrupt his company.","source":{"title":"Walt Disney (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walt_Disney"}}],"records":[{"text":"Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was the first animated feature film made in full colour and sound.","source":{"title":"Walt Disney (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walt_Disney"}},{"text":"He holds the record for the most Academy Awards won by an individual (22) and the most nominations (59).","source":{"title":"Walt Disney (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walt_Disney"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Raised in a family active in a Congregational church.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walt_Disney","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"dorothea-dix","name":"Dorothea Dix","url":"/great-lives/dorothea-dix/","dates":"1802–1887","born":1802,"died":1887,"era":"19th-century","categories":["saints-reformers","physicians-medicine"],"knownFor":"American reformer who campaigned for humane state hospitals for the mentally ill and led Union army nurses.","bio":"Dorothea Lynde Dix was born on 4 April 1802 in Hampden, Maine, then part of Massachusetts. Escaping an unhappy home, she lived with her grandmother in Boston and became a schoolteacher and writer of books for children. In 1841 she began teaching a Sunday school class for women in the jail at East Cambridge, Massachusetts, and found mentally ill prisoners kept in unheated cells. She then visited jails and almshouses across the state and in 1843 presented a Memorial to the Massachusetts legislature describing people confined 'in cages, closets, cellars, stalls, pens', which led to the enlargement of the state hospital at Worcester. Over the next decades she travelled thousands of miles, gathering evidence and persuading legislatures in many states to found or expand hospitals for the insane. A bill she championed to set aside federal land for their support passed Congress but was vetoed by President Franklin Pierce in 1854. In the Civil War she served as Superintendent of Army Nurses for the Union. She died on 17 July 1887 in the New Jersey state hospital at Trenton, which she had helped found.","keyDates":[{"date":"1802","event":"Born in Hampden, Maine, on 4 April"},{"date":"1841","event":"Visits the East Cambridge jail"},{"date":"1843","event":"Presents her Memorial to the Massachusetts legislature"},{"date":"1854","event":"President Pierce vetoes her land bill"},{"date":"1861","event":"Appointed Superintendent of Army Nurses"},{"date":"1887","event":"Dies in Trenton, New Jersey, on 17 July"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"medical-inquiries-and-observations-upon-diseases-of-the-mind","url":"/works/medical-inquiries-and-observations-upon-diseases-of-the-mind/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Raised Catholic and later in Congregationalism, she became a Unitarian.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothea_Dix","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["The quoted phrase is from her 1843 Memorial; it is not stored in the library and is given as a short attributed phrase."]},{"slug":"mary-mapes-dodge","name":"Mary Mapes Dodge","url":"/great-lives/mary-mapes-dodge/","dates":"1831–1905","born":1831,"died":1905,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American children's author and editor, author of Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates, and editor of St. Nicholas magazine.","bio":"Mary Elizabeth Mapes was born in New York City in 1831, the daughter of James Jay Mapes, a promoter of scientific farming, and was educated at home. In 1851 she married William Dodge, a lawyer, and they had two sons. After her husband's death in 1858, she began writing to earn money to educate her sons. Her first collection of sketches for children, Irvington Stories (1864), was successful, and the next year she published Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates (1865), a story of a poor Dutch boy and his sister who hope to win a skating race on the frozen canals of the Netherlands. It was translated into several languages and won a prize from the French Academy. In 1873 Dodge became the first editor of St. Nicholas, a magazine for children, and led it for more than thirty years. She persuaded leading writers such as Mark Twain, Louisa May Alcott, Robert Louis Stevenson and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow to contribute, and Rudyard Kipling's Jungle Book stories first appeared there. She died in the Catskill Mountains in 1905.","keyDates":[{"date":"1831","event":"Born in New York City"},{"date":"1851","event":"Marries William Dodge"},{"date":"1864","event":"Irvington Stories published"},{"date":"1865","event":"Hans Brinker published"},{"date":"1873","event":"First editor of St. Nicholas magazine"},{"date":"1905","event":"Dies"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Mary Mapes Dodge","relatedWorks":["hans-brinker"],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"library","work":"hans-brinker","url":"/works/hans-brinker/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Mapes_Dodge","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"john-donne","name":"John Donne","url":"/great-lives/john-donne/","dates":"1572–1631","born":1572,"died":1631,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["writers-poets","theologians-church-fathers"],"knownFor":"English poet and preacher, a leading Metaphysical poet and Dean of St Paul's Cathedral.","bio":"John Donne was born in London in 1572 into a Roman Catholic family at a time when Catholics in England faced fines and persecution. He studied at Oxford and Cambridge and then law at Lincoln's Inn. He sailed with the Earl of Essex on expeditions against Spain and became secretary to Sir Thomas Egerton, but in 1601 he secretly married Egerton's niece, Anne More, and was dismissed and briefly imprisoned. For years the couple lived in poverty with a growing family. Donne wrote love poems, satires and religious verse full of bold comparisons and arguments; he is regarded as the chief of the Metaphysical poets. Having joined the Church of England, he was ordained in 1615 at the urging of King James I and became one of the most famous preachers of his age. In 1621 he was made Dean of St Paul's Cathedral. During a serious illness in 1623 he wrote Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, which contains the line 'No man is an island'. He died in London in 1631.","keyDates":[{"date":"1572","event":"Born in London"},{"date":"1601","event":"Secretly marries Anne More"},{"date":"1615","event":"Ordained in the Church of England"},{"date":"1621","event":"Dean of St Paul's Cathedral"},{"date":"1624","event":"Devotions upon Emergent Occasions published"},{"date":"1631","event":"Dies in London"}],"quotes":[],"author":"John Donne","relatedWorks":["donne-sermons-and-devotions","death-be-not-proud"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"donne-sermons-and-devotions","url":"/works/donne-sermons-and-devotions/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"death-be-not-proud","url":"/works/death-be-not-proud/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Born to Catholic parents; his mother descended from the family of Sir Thomas More.","source":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dictionary_of_National_Biography%2C_1885-1900/Donne%2C_John_%281573-1631%29","sourceName":"Dictionary of National Biography (1885–1900) (via Wikisource)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"fyodor-dostoevsky","name":"Fyodor Dostoevsky","url":"/great-lives/fyodor-dostoevsky/","dates":"1821–1881","born":1821,"died":1881,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Russian novelist, author of Crime and Punishment, The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov.","bio":"Fyodor Dostoevsky was born in Moscow in 1821, the son of a doctor at a hospital for the poor. He trained as a military engineer in Saint Petersburg but left the service to write, and his first novel, Poor Folk (1846), was highly praised. In 1849 he was arrested for belonging to the Petrashevsky Circle, a group that discussed banned political ideas. He and others were sentenced to death and taken out for execution, but at the last moment their sentences were changed to hard labor. He spent four years in a prison camp in Siberia, followed by military service there. Returning to Saint Petersburg, he wrote Notes from Underground (1864) and then Crime and Punishment (1866), about a poor student who commits a murder. Debts and a gambling problem pressed him; he dictated The Gambler to a stenographer, Anna Snitkina, who became his wife. The Idiot, Demons and The Brothers Karamazov (1880) explore faith, doubt, freedom and suffering. He suffered from epilepsy. He died in Saint Petersburg in 1881.","keyDates":[{"date":"1821","event":"Born in Moscow"},{"date":"1846","event":"Poor Folk published"},{"date":"1849","event":"Arrested; mock execution and Siberian exile"},{"date":"1864","event":"Notes from Underground"},{"date":"1866","event":"Crime and Punishment published"},{"date":"1880","event":"The Brothers Karamazov completed"},{"date":"1881","event":"Dies in Saint Petersburg"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Fyodor Dostoevsky","relatedWorks":["dostoevsky-the-double","dostoevsky-the-gambler","notes-from-underground","crime-and-punishment","the-meek-one","white-nights","the-brothers-karamazov","the-idiot","the-house-of-the-dead","the-devils"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"dostoevsky-the-double","url":"/works/dostoevsky-the-double/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"dostoevsky-the-gambler","url":"/works/dostoevsky-the-gambler/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"notes-from-underground","url":"/works/notes-from-underground/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"crime-and-punishment","url":"/works/crime-and-punishment/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-meek-one","url":"/works/the-meek-one/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"white-nights","url":"/works/white-nights/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-brothers-karamazov","url":"/works/the-brothers-karamazov/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-idiot","url":"/works/the-idiot/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-house-of-the-dead","url":"/works/the-house-of-the-dead/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-devils","url":"/works/the-devils/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"A crater on the planet Mercury and the minor planet 3453 Dostoevsky are named after him.","source":{"title":"Fyodor Dostoevsky (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fyodor_Dostoevsky"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A Russian Orthodox Christian raised in a religious family.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fyodor_Dostoevsky","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[{"series":"Very Short Introductions","title":"Dostoevsky: A Very Short Introduction","author":"Deborah Martinsen","publisher":"Oxford University Press","year":2024,"isbn13":"9780198864332","url":"https://bookshop.org/a/130650/9780198864332"}],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"stephen-a-douglas","name":"Stephen A. Douglas","url":"/great-lives/stephen-a-douglas/","dates":"1813–1861","born":1813,"died":1861,"era":"19th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"American senator from Illinois who debated Abraham Lincoln in 1858 and ran against him for president in 1860.","bio":"Stephen Arnold Douglas was born in 1813 in Brandon, Vermont. His father died when Stephen was two months old. As a young man he moved west to Illinois, where he became a lawyer. Short and forceful, he was nicknamed the Little Giant. He rose quickly in Democratic politics, serving as a state official and judge, and was elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1843 and to the Senate in 1847. He was a leading supporter of westward expansion and of the idea of 'popular sovereignty', which would let the settlers of each territory decide whether to allow slavery. He helped pass the Compromise of 1850 and wrote the Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854, which reopened the conflict over slavery in the territories. In 1858 he defended his Senate seat against Abraham Lincoln in a famous series of debates and won re-election. In 1860 he was the presidential candidate of the northern Democrats and lost to Lincoln. When the Civil War began, he urged support for the Union. He died in June 1861.","keyDates":[{"date":"1813","event":"Born in Brandon, Vermont"},{"date":"1847","event":"Elected to the U.S. Senate"},{"date":"1854","event":"Kansas–Nebraska Act"},{"date":"1858","event":"Lincoln–Douglas debates"},{"date":"1860","event":"Loses the presidential election to Lincoln"},{"date":"1861","event":"Dies"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas","relatedWorks":["lincoln-douglas-debates"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"lincoln-douglas-debates","url":"/works/lincoln-douglas-debates/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"Only 5 feet 4 inches tall, he was nicknamed the 'Little Giant' because he was such a forceful figure in politics.","source":{"title":"Stephen A. Douglas (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_A._Douglas"}},{"text":"Counties in twelve states are named after him.","source":{"title":"Stephen A. Douglas (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_A._Douglas"}}],"records":[{"text":"When appointed Illinois Secretary of State, he became the youngest person ever to hold the post.","source":{"title":"Stephen A. Douglas (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_A._Douglas"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented; he approved his Catholic wife raising his sons as Catholics.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_A._Douglas","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"frederick-douglass","name":"Frederick Douglass","url":"/great-lives/frederick-douglass/","dates":"c. 1818–1895","born":1818,"died":1895,"era":"19th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders","saints-reformers"],"knownFor":"Escaped from slavery to become a great orator, writer and leader of the abolition movement.","bio":"Frederick Douglass was born into slavery on Maryland's Eastern Shore and never knew his exact birthday. As a boy in Baltimore he secretly learned to read, partly by trading bread to white children for lessons. At about sixteen he was sent to a man known for breaking the spirit of enslaved workers, and he fought back. In 1838 he escaped to the North disguised as a sailor, settled in Massachusetts with his wife Anna, and soon became a powerful speaker for the American Anti-Slavery Society. His Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, published in 1845, became a bestseller; to avoid capture he spent nearly two years lecturing in Britain, where supporters bought his freedom. Back in America he published his own newspaper, The North Star, and supported women's rights. During the Civil War he urged Lincoln to let Black men fight and recruited soldiers, including two of his sons. Later he served as U.S. Marshal for Washington, D.C., and as minister to Haiti. He died in 1895.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 1818","event":"Born enslaved in Talbot County, Maryland"},{"date":"1838","event":"Escapes to freedom"},{"date":"1845","event":"Publishes his Narrative"},{"date":"1852","event":"Delivers What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?"},{"date":"1889","event":"Named U.S. minister to Haiti"},{"date":"1895","event":"Dies in Washington, D.C."}],"quotes":[{"text":"You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man.","work":"narrative-and-fourth-of-july","location":"","verified":true}],"author":"Frederick Douglass","relatedWorks":["narrative-and-fourth-of-july"],"reading":[{"band":"K-2","kind":"book","title":"A Picture Book of Frederick Douglass","author":"David A. Adler","isbn13":"9780823412051","publisher":"Holiday House","year":1993,"format":""},{"band":"3-5","kind":"book","title":"Who Was Frederick Douglass?","author":"April Jones Prince","isbn13":"9780448479118","publisher":"Grosset & Dunlap","year":2014,"format":""},{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"narrative-and-fourth-of-july","url":"/works/narrative-and-fourth-of-july/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"During a lecture tour abroad he took up the violin, which he played for pleasure for the rest of his life.","source":{"title":"Frederick Douglass (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Douglass"}}],"records":[{"text":"In 1872 he became the first African American nominated for vice president of the United States, without his knowledge.","source":{"title":"Frederick Douglass (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Douglass"}}],"livedPlaces":[{"name":"Frederick Douglass National Historic Site","note":"Cedar Hill in Washington, D.C. was Frederick Douglass’s home for his last 17 years. The National Park Service offers classroom resources and a virtual tour of the house.","url":"https://www.nps.gov/frdo/index.htm","urlLabel":"Frederick Douglass National Historic Site — house and virtual tour"}],"faith":{"note":"A Christian abolitionist and preacher who joined the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, while condemning slaveholding religion.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Douglass","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"arthur-conan-doyle","name":"Arthur Conan Doyle","url":"/great-lives/arthur-conan-doyle/","dates":"1859–1930","born":1859,"died":1930,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Scottish physician and writer, creator of the detective Sherlock Holmes.","bio":"Arthur Conan Doyle was born in Edinburgh in 1859. He was educated by the Jesuits and then studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh, where one of his teachers, Dr. Joseph Bell, impressed him with his skill at drawing conclusions from small details. Doyle served as a ship's doctor and set up a medical practice in Southsea, near Portsmouth, where he began writing in his spare time. A Study in Scarlet (1887) introduced the detective Sherlock Holmes and his friend Dr. Watson, and short stories in The Strand Magazine made them enormously popular. Doyle tried to end the series by having Holmes die in 1893, but public demand brought the detective back, first in The Hound of the Baskervilles. Doyle also wrote historical novels and the adventure The Lost World, served as a volunteer doctor in the Boer War, and was knighted in 1902. In later life he devoted himself to spiritualism. He died in 1930.","keyDates":[{"date":"1859","event":"Born in Edinburgh"},{"date":"1887","event":"A Study in Scarlet introduces Sherlock Holmes"},{"date":"1892","event":"The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes collected"},{"date":"1902","event":"Knighted; The Hound of the Baskervilles in book form"},{"date":"1930","event":"Dies in Sussex"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Arthur Conan Doyle","relatedWorks":["the-adventures-of-sherlock-holmes","the-hound-of-the-baskervilles","a-study-in-scarlet","the-sign-of-the-four","the-memoirs-of-sherlock-holmes","the-return-of-sherlock-holmes","the-valley-of-fear","his-last-bow","the-case-book-of-sherlock-holmes"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-adventures-of-sherlock-holmes","url":"/works/the-adventures-of-sherlock-holmes/"},{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-hound-of-the-baskervilles","url":"/works/the-hound-of-the-baskervilles/"},{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"a-study-in-scarlet","url":"/works/a-study-in-scarlet/"},{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-sign-of-the-four","url":"/works/the-sign-of-the-four/"},{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-memoirs-of-sherlock-holmes","url":"/works/the-memoirs-of-sherlock-holmes/"},{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-return-of-sherlock-holmes","url":"/works/the-return-of-sherlock-holmes/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-valley-of-fear","url":"/works/the-valley-of-fear/"},{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"his-last-bow","url":"/works/his-last-bow/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-case-book-of-sherlock-holmes","url":"/works/the-case-book-of-sherlock-holmes/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Regarded his campaign for spiritualism as his most important work.","source":"https://www.britannica.com/biography/Arthur-Conan-Doyle","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"pierre-duhem","name":"Pierre Duhem","url":"/great-lives/pierre-duhem/","dates":"1861–1916","born":1861,"died":1916,"era":"19th-century","categories":["scientists-mathematicians","philosophers"],"knownFor":"French physicist, historian and philosopher of science, author of The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory.","bio":"Pierre Duhem was born in Paris in 1861, the son of a textile salesman, into a devoutly Catholic family. He studied at the Collège Stanislas, where a teacher encouraged his love of physics, and then at the École Normale Supérieure. His first doctoral thesis, on thermodynamic potentials, was rejected, reportedly because it criticized the work of a powerful chemist, Marcellin Berthelot. Partly because of this conflict and his conservative views, he spent his career outside Paris, teaching at Lille and Rennes and from 1894 at the University of Bordeaux. He made important contributions to thermodynamics, hydrodynamics and the theory of elasticity. In The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory (1906) he argued that a scientific hypothesis can never be tested on its own, only together with other assumptions, an idea later called the Duhem–Quine thesis. As a historian he showed that medieval scholars had made important contributions to physics, challenging the view that the Middle Ages were scientifically barren; his findings appeared in The System of the World. He died in 1916.","keyDates":[{"date":"1861","event":"Born in Paris"},{"date":"1884","event":"First doctoral thesis rejected"},{"date":"1894","event":"Professor at Bordeaux"},{"date":"1906","event":"The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory"},{"date":"1913","event":"First volume of The System of the World"},{"date":"1916","event":"Dies"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Pierre Duhem","relatedWorks":["duhem-the-aim-and-structure-of-physical-theory"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"duhem-the-aim-and-structure-of-physical-theory","url":"/works/duhem-the-aim-and-structure-of-physical-theory/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A Catholic who expected the endpoint of science to harmonize with the teachings of the Catholic Church.","source":"https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/duhem/","sourceName":"Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"alexandre-dumas","name":"Alexandre Dumas","url":"/great-lives/alexandre-dumas/","dates":"1802–1870","born":1802,"died":1870,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"French novelist and playwright, author of The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo.","bio":"Alexandre Dumas was born in 1802 in Villers-Cotterêts, France. His father, Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, was a general in the French Revolutionary army, the son of a French nobleman and an enslaved woman in Saint-Domingue (now Haiti); he died when Alexandre was a small child. Dumas went to Paris as a young man, worked as a clerk for the future King Louis-Philippe, and made his name with historical plays such as Henri III and His Court (1829). He then turned to adventure novels, often written with collaborators, especially Auguste Maquet, and published in newspapers as serials. The Three Musketeers (1844) and The Count of Monte Cristo (1844–1846) were enormously popular, and the musketeers' adventures continued in Twenty Years After and The Vicomte de Bragelonne, which includes the story of the Man in the Iron Mask. Dumas earned and spent large sums, built a château near Paris, and traveled widely. He died in 1870; his son, also named Alexandre Dumas, was a playwright.","keyDates":[{"date":"1802","event":"Born in Villers-Cotterêts"},{"date":"1829","event":"Henri III and His Court staged"},{"date":"1844","event":"The Three Musketeers published"},{"date":"1844–1846","event":"The Count of Monte Cristo serialized"},{"date":"1870","event":"Dies"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Alexandre Dumas","relatedWorks":["the-count-of-monte-cristo","the-three-musketeers","the-man-in-the-iron-mask","dumas-twenty-years-after","dumas-vicomte-de-bragelonne","dumas-ten-years-later","dumas-louise-de-la-valliere","dumas-the-black-tulip"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-three-musketeers","url":"/works/the-three-musketeers/"},{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-man-in-the-iron-mask","url":"/works/the-man-in-the-iron-mask/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-count-of-monte-cristo","url":"/works/the-count-of-monte-cristo/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"dumas-twenty-years-after","url":"/works/dumas-twenty-years-after/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"dumas-vicomte-de-bragelonne","url":"/works/dumas-vicomte-de-bragelonne/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"dumas-ten-years-later","url":"/works/dumas-ten-years-later/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"dumas-louise-de-la-valliere","url":"/works/dumas-louise-de-la-valliere/"},{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"dumas-the-black-tulip","url":"/works/dumas-the-black-tulip/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandre_Dumas","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"ariel-durant","name":"Ariel Durant","url":"/great-lives/ariel-durant/","dates":"1898–1981","born":1898,"died":1981,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets","philosophers"],"knownFor":"Co-author with Will Durant of later volumes of The Story of Civilization; Pulitzer Prize (1968) and Presidential Medal of Freedom (1977).","bio":"Ariel Durant was born Chaya Kaufman in 1898 in Ukraine and grew up in New York. She studied at the Ferrer Modern School, where she met Will Durant; they married in 1913. She collaborated on the research and writing of The Story of Civilization and was credited as co-author beginning with the later volumes. Rousseau and Revolution won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction in 1968. In 1977 she and Will received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. She died in October 1981; Will died two weeks later. This library lists the Civilization volumes under both names where she is credited, and keeps The Story of Philosophy under Will alone. Her collaboration made the later Civilization volumes a joint public voice for popular history aimed at general readers who wanted narrative breadth rather than specialist monographs alone.","keyDates":[{"date":"1898","event":"Born in Ukraine"},{"date":"1913","event":"Marries Will Durant"},{"date":"1961","event":"Co-credited on The Age of Reason Begins"},{"date":"1968","event":"Pulitzer Prize for Rousseau and Revolution"},{"date":"1977","event":"Presidential Medal of Freedom"},{"date":"1981","event":"Dies in October; Will dies two weeks later"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Ariel Durant","relatedWorks":["durant-the-age-of-reason-begins","durant-the-age-of-louis-xiv","durant-the-age-of-voltaire","durant-rousseau-and-revolution","durant-the-age-of-napoleon","durant-the-story-of-philosophy"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"durant-the-age-of-reason-begins","url":"/works/durant-the-age-of-reason-begins/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"durant-rousseau-and-revolution","url":"/works/durant-rousseau-and-revolution/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"durant-the-age-of-napoleon","url":"/works/durant-the-age-of-napoleon/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"durant-the-story-of-philosophy","url":"/works/durant-the-story-of-philosophy/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Born to a Jewish family (Kaufman) and later associated with Will Durant's move away from preparation for Catholic priesthood toward philosophy; public record emphasizes their humanist historical project more than formal affiliation.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariel_Durant","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"will-durant","name":"Will Durant","url":"/great-lives/will-durant/","dates":"1885–1981","born":1885,"died":1981,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["philosophers","writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American historian and philosopher; The Story of Philosophy and, with Ariel Durant, the eleven-volume Story of Civilization.","bio":"William James Durant was born in 1885 in North Adams, Massachusetts, to French-Canadian Catholic parents. He studied in Jersey City, New Jersey, and at first prepared for the priesthood, as his mother hoped, before turning to philosophy. He taught at the Ferrer Modern School in New York City from 1911 to 1913, when he resigned and married Ariel Kaufman, later his collaborator. He earned a doctorate in philosophy from Columbia University in 1917 and lectured on philosophy and history to adult audiences. Some of his lectures appeared as Little Blue Books, educational pamphlets for working people, and they grew into The Story of Philosophy (1926), a lively introduction to the great philosophers that became a bestseller and made it possible for him to write full time. He then began The Story of Civilization, an eleven-volume history of the world published from 1935 to 1975, on which Ariel worked with him and was later credited as co-author. The tenth volume, Rousseau and Revolution, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1968. In 1977 the Durants received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Ariel died in October 1981, and Will died two weeks later.","keyDates":[{"date":"1885","event":"Born in North Adams, Massachusetts"},{"date":"1913","event":"Marries Ariel"},{"date":"1917","event":"Doctorate from Columbia University"},{"date":"1926","event":"The Story of Philosophy published"},{"date":"1935","event":"The Story of Civilization begins"},{"date":"1968","event":"Pulitzer Prize"},{"date":"1981","event":"Dies, two weeks after Ariel"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Will Durant","relatedWorks":["durant-the-story-of-philosophy","durant-our-oriental-heritage","durant-the-life-of-greece","durant-caesar-and-christ","durant-the-age-of-faith","durant-the-renaissance","durant-the-reformation","durant-the-age-of-reason-begins","durant-the-age-of-louis-xiv","durant-the-age-of-voltaire","durant-rousseau-and-revolution","durant-the-age-of-napoleon"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"durant-the-story-of-philosophy","url":"/works/durant-the-story-of-philosophy/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"durant-our-oriental-heritage","url":"/works/durant-our-oriental-heritage/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"durant-the-life-of-greece","url":"/works/durant-the-life-of-greece/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"durant-caesar-and-christ","url":"/works/durant-caesar-and-christ/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"durant-the-age-of-faith","url":"/works/durant-the-age-of-faith/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"durant-the-renaissance","url":"/works/durant-the-renaissance/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"durant-the-reformation","url":"/works/durant-the-reformation/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"durant-the-age-of-reason-begins","url":"/works/durant-the-age-of-reason-begins/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"durant-the-age-of-louis-xiv","url":"/works/durant-the-age-of-louis-xiv/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"durant-the-age-of-voltaire","url":"/works/durant-the-age-of-voltaire/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"durant-rousseau-and-revolution","url":"/works/durant-rousseau-and-revolution/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"durant-the-age-of-napoleon","url":"/works/durant-the-age-of-napoleon/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Raised by French-Canadian Catholic parents.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_Durant","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"albrecht-durer","name":"Albrecht Dürer","url":"/great-lives/albrecht-durer/","dates":"1471–1528","born":1471,"died":1528,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["artists-composers-architects"],"knownFor":"German painter and printmaker whose woodcuts and engravings spread across Europe.","bio":"Albrecht Dürer was born in Nuremberg, the son of a Hungarian-born goldsmith. He learned goldsmithing from his father, then trained with the painter Michael Wolgemut, whose workshop made woodcuts for books. At thirteen he drew a self-portrait in silverpoint, one of many he made throughout his life. He traveled to Italy twice, learning from Venetian painters and studying perspective and proportion, and he became one of the first northern artists to absorb the Renaissance. In 1498 he published a series of large woodcuts of the Apocalypse that made him famous. His engravings, such as Knight, Death and the Devil and Melencolia I, both from 1513–1514, show astonishing detail. His Rhinoceros woodcut of 1515, made from a description without seeing the animal, became the standard image of a rhinoceros for centuries. He also painted watercolors of plants and animals, including the Young Hare. He worked for Emperor Maximilian I and wrote books on geometry, fortification and human proportion. An admirer of Martin Luther, he died in Nuremberg in 1528.","keyDates":[{"date":"1484","event":"Draws his first self-portrait"},{"date":"1494–1495","event":"First trip to Italy"},{"date":"1498","event":"Publishes the Apocalypse woodcuts"},{"date":"1513–1514","event":"Master engravings"},{"date":"1528","event":"Dies in Nuremberg"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Catholic; his writings suggest sympathy for Martin Luther's ideas, but it is unclear whether he ever left the Catholic Church.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albrecht_D%C3%BCrer","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"amelia-earhart","name":"Amelia Earhart","url":"/great-lives/amelia-earhart/","dates":"1897–1937","born":1897,"died":1937,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["explorers"],"knownFor":"Aviator who was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic.","bio":"Amelia Earhart was born in Atchison, Kansas. During World War I she worked as a nurse's aide in Toronto, and after seeing a flying exhibition she took her first plane ride in 1920 in California and decided she had to fly. She took lessons from the pilot Neta Snook and bought her first plane, a yellow biplane she called the Canary. In 1928 she became the first woman to cross the Atlantic by plane, though as a passenger; she said she felt like a sack of potatoes. In 1932 she flew solo across the Atlantic from Newfoundland to Northern Ireland, the first woman and second person to do so, and later flew solo from Hawaii to California. She helped found the Ninety-Nines, an organization of women pilots, and married the publisher George Putnam. In 1937 she set out with navigator Fred Noonan to fly around the world near the equator. After completing about 22,000 miles, they left New Guinea on July 2 to find tiny Howland Island in the Pacific, and vanished. A large search found no trace, and their fate remains a mystery.","keyDates":[{"date":"1920","event":"First airplane ride"},{"date":"1928","event":"First woman to cross the Atlantic by air"},{"date":"1932","event":"Solo flight across the Atlantic"},{"date":"1935","event":"Solo flight from Hawaii to California"},{"date":"1937","event":"Disappears over the Pacific"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"As a girl her nickname was 'Meeley', and she spent hours climbing trees and sledding with her sister.","source":{"title":"Amelia Earhart (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amelia_Earhart"}},{"text":"She bought a second-hand bright yellow biplane in 1921 and nicknamed it 'The Canary'.","source":{"title":"Amelia Earhart (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amelia_Earhart"}}],"records":[{"text":"In 1932 she became the first woman to fly solo nonstop across the Atlantic.","source":{"title":"Amelia Earhart (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amelia_Earhart"}},{"text":"In 1922 she flew to 14,000 feet, a world altitude record for women pilots at the time.","source":{"title":"Amelia Earhart (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amelia_Earhart"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amelia_Earhart","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"johann-eck","name":"Johann Eck","url":"/great-lives/johann-eck/","dates":"1486–1543","born":1486,"died":1543,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["theologians-church-fathers"],"knownFor":"German Catholic theologian who debated Martin Luther and Andreas Karlstadt at the Leipzig Disputation of 1519.","bio":"Johann Maier was born in 1486 in Egg an der Günz, in Swabia, Germany, and later took the name Eck from his birthplace. A brilliant student, he entered the University of Heidelberg at the age of twelve and studied at several other universities before receiving his doctorate in theology. From 1510 he was a professor of theology at the University of Ingolstadt in Bavaria, where he taught for the rest of his life. At first on friendly terms with Martin Luther, he became one of his strongest opponents after Luther published his Ninety-five Theses. In 1519, at the Leipzig Disputation, Eck debated first Andreas Karlstadt and then Luther, and he pressed Luther into saying that church councils could err and that some teachings of the condemned reformer Jan Hus were Christian. He then went to Rome and helped prepare the papal bull of 1520 that threatened Luther with excommunication. He wrote a widely used handbook against the Protestant reformers, translated the Bible into German, and represented the Catholic side at later religious debates. He died in Ingolstadt in 1543.","keyDates":[{"date":"1486","event":"Born in Egg an der Günz, Swabia"},{"date":"1510","event":"Professor at Ingolstadt"},{"date":"1519","event":"Leipzig Disputation with Karlstadt and Luther"},{"date":"1520","event":"Helps prepare the papal bull against Luther"},{"date":"1530","event":"Takes part in the Diet of Augsburg"},{"date":"1543","event":"Dies in Ingolstadt"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Martin Luther, Johann Eck, and Andreas Karlstadt","relatedWorks":["leipzig-disputation"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"leipzig-disputation","url":"/works/leipzig-disputation/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"German Catholic theologian and principal adversary of Martin Luther.","source":"https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05271b.htm","sourceName":"Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"arthur-eddington","name":"Arthur Eddington","url":"/great-lives/arthur-eddington/","dates":"1882–1944","born":1882,"died":1944,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["scientists-mathematicians"],"knownFor":"English astrophysicist who studied the interiors of stars and led the 1919 eclipse expedition that tested Einstein's theory of general relativity.","bio":"Arthur Stanley Eddington was born in Kendal, in the north of England, in 1882 and was raised by his mother as a Quaker after his father's early death. He studied at Owens College, Manchester, and at Trinity College, Cambridge, worked at the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, and in 1913 became Plumian Professor of Astronomy at Cambridge, later also directing its observatory. He was one of the first scientists in Britain to understand and explain Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity. In 1919 he led an expedition to the island of Príncipe, off West Africa, to photograph stars during a total eclipse of the Sun; the measurements of starlight bending near the Sun were taken as confirming Einstein's prediction. Eddington did pioneering work on the internal structure of stars and on the relation between a star's mass and its brightness. He was also a gifted popular writer, and The Nature of the Physical World (1928) explained modern physics to general readers. He died in Cambridge in 1944.","keyDates":[{"date":"1882","event":"Born in Kendal"},{"date":"1913","event":"Plumian Professor of Astronomy at Cambridge"},{"date":"1919","event":"Eclipse expedition to Príncipe"},{"date":"1926","event":"The Internal Constitution of the Stars"},{"date":"1928","event":"The Nature of the Physical World published"},{"date":"1944","event":"Dies in Cambridge"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Arthur Eddington","relatedWorks":["eddington-the-nature-of-the-physical-world"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"eddington-the-nature-of-the-physical-world","url":"/works/eddington-the-nature-of-the-physical-world/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[{"text":"He was the first to suggest, correctly, that stars shine by fusing hydrogen into helium.","source":{"title":"Arthur Eddington (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Eddington"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Grew up in a Quaker setting; his pacifism arose from his strongly held Quaker beliefs.","source":"https://www.britannica.com/biography/Arthur-Stanley-Eddington","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"thomas-edison","name":"Thomas Edison","url":"/great-lives/thomas-edison/","dates":"1847–1931","born":1847,"died":1931,"era":"19th-century","categories":["inventors","titans-of-industry"],"knownFor":"American inventor of the phonograph and a practical electric light, with over a thousand patents.","bio":"Thomas Alva Edison was born in Milan, Ohio, and grew up in Port Huron, Michigan. He had only a few months of school and was taught mostly by his mother. As a boy he sold newspapers on trains and became a telegraph operator; he was partly deaf from childhood. His first successful inventions improved the telegraph and stock ticker. In 1876 he opened a laboratory at Menlo Park, New Jersey, one of the first places devoted to organized invention, with a team of workers. There he invented the phonograph, the first machine to record and play back sound, in 1877, and developed a long-lasting electric light bulb in 1879 after testing thousands of materials. He then built a whole electric system, with power stations, wires and meters, opening the Pearl Street Station in New York in 1882. Later he worked on motion picture cameras, batteries and mining. He received 1,093 U.S. patents and worked long hours alongside his staff, often sleeping in the laboratory. He died in West Orange, New Jersey, in 1931.","keyDates":[{"date":"1847","event":"Born in Milan, Ohio"},{"date":"1876","event":"Opens the Menlo Park laboratory"},{"date":"1877","event":"Invents the phonograph"},{"date":"1879","event":"Demonstrates a lasting light bulb"},{"date":"1882","event":"Pearl Street power station opens"},{"date":"1931","event":"Dies in West Orange"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[{"band":"K-2","kind":"book","title":"A Picture Book of Thomas Alva Edison","author":"David A. Adler","isbn13":"9780823414147","publisher":"Holiday House","year":1999,"format":"paperback"},{"band":"3-5","kind":"book","title":"Who Was Thomas Alva Edison?","author":"Margaret Frith","isbn13":"9780448437651","publisher":"Grosset & Dunlap","year":2005,"format":""},{"band":"9-12","kind":"book","title":"Edison","author":"Edmund Morris","isbn13":"9780812983210","publisher":"Random House Trade Paperbacks","year":2020,"format":"paperback"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"As a boy he and a neighbour built a small telegraph line.","source":{"title":"Thomas Edison (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Edison"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented in detail; he defended Thomas Paine's deism.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Edison","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"jonathan-edwards","name":"Jonathan Edwards","url":"/great-lives/jonathan-edwards/","dates":"1703–1758","born":1703,"died":1758,"era":"18th-century","categories":["theologians-church-fathers","philosophers"],"knownFor":"New England pastor and theologian of the Great Awakening.","bio":"Jonathan Edwards was born in East Windsor, Connecticut, the only son among eleven children of a minister. He entered Yale at thirteen and as a young man wrote notes on spiders, light and the mind as well as theology. In 1727 he joined his grandfather Solomon Stoddard as pastor in Northampton, Massachusetts, and soon succeeded him. In 1734 and 1735 a religious revival broke out in his church, which he described in A Faithful Narrative, a book read in Britain and America. During the larger Great Awakening of the 1740s he preached Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God at Enfield, Connecticut, and wrote careful books distinguishing true religious feeling from mere excitement. A dispute over who could receive communion led his congregation to dismiss him in 1750. He moved to the frontier town of Stockbridge, where he preached to Mohican and Mohawk people and wrote major works, including Freedom of the Will. Edwards owned enslaved servants. In 1758 he became president of the College of New Jersey, now Princeton, but died weeks later after a smallpox inoculation.","keyDates":[{"date":"1703","event":"Born in East Windsor, Connecticut"},{"date":"1727","event":"Ministry in Northampton begins"},{"date":"1734–35","event":"Northampton revival"},{"date":"1741","event":"Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God"},{"date":"1750","event":"Dismissed by his congregation"},{"date":"1758","event":"President of Princeton; dies"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Jonathan Edwards","relatedWorks":["sinners-and-the-surprising-work-of-god"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"sinners-and-the-surprising-work-of-god","url":"/works/sinners-and-the-surprising-work-of-god/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"book","title":"Jonathan Edwards: A Life","author":"George M. Marsden","isbn13":"9780300105964","publisher":"Yale University Press","year":2004,"format":"paperback"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"Throughout his life he liked to go into the woods to pray.","source":{"title":"Jonathan Edwards (theologian) (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Edwards_(theologian)"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Congregational minister and theologian who defended Puritan Calvinist orthodoxy.","source":"https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/edwards/","sourceName":"Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"einhard","name":"Einhard","url":"/great-lives/einhard/","dates":"c. 775–840","born":775,"died":840,"era":"medieval","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Frankish scholar at the court of Charlemagne and author of the Life of Charlemagne.","bio":"Einhard was born around 775 in the valley of the Main River, in eastern Francia, into a landowning family. He was educated at the monastery of Fulda, and around 791 he was sent to the court of Charlemagne at Aachen, where he joined the circle of scholars led by Alcuin of York. He was small in stature but became a trusted adviser and is thought to have overseen building projects at the court. After Charlemagne's death in 814 he served his son, Louis the Pious, who gave him lands, including at Seligenstadt, where Einhard founded a monastery. Around the 820s he wrote the Life of Charlemagne (Vita Karoli Magni), a short Latin biography modeled in part on the Roman biographer Suetonius's lives of the emperors. It describes Charlemagne's wars, family, appearance, habits and interest in learning, and it is one of the most important sources for his reign. Einhard retired to Seligenstadt, where he died in 840.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 775","event":"Born in eastern Francia"},{"date":"c. 791","event":"Joins the court of Charlemagne"},{"date":"814","event":"Charlemagne dies; Einhard serves Louis the Pious"},{"date":"c. 817–830","event":"Writes the Life of Charlemagne"},{"date":"840","event":"Dies at Seligenstadt"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Einhard and Notker the Stammerer","relatedWorks":["two-lives-of-charlemagne"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"two-lives-of-charlemagne","url":"/works/two-lives-of-charlemagne/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A Christian who often called himself a sinner; he built churches on his estates.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einhard","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["The date of the Life of Charlemagne is debated."]},{"slug":"albert-einstein","name":"Albert Einstein","url":"/great-lives/albert-einstein/","dates":"1879–1955","born":1879,"died":1955,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["scientists-mathematicians"],"knownFor":"German-born physicist of the theory of relativity and E = mc².","bio":"Albert Einstein was born in Ulm, Germany, to a Jewish family and grew up in Munich. At five, he later recalled, a compass needle that always pointed north filled him with wonder about hidden forces. He disliked the rote learning of his school, left without finishing, and completed his studies in Switzerland. Unable to find a university post, he worked as a clerk in the patent office in Bern. In 1905, his miracle year, he published four papers: one explained the photoelectric effect using particles of light, one gave evidence for atoms, one set out the special theory of relativity, showing that measurements of time and space depend on motion, and one showed that energy and mass are equivalent, E = mc². In 1915 he completed the general theory of relativity, describing gravity as the curving of space and time, which was confirmed during a solar eclipse in 1919 and made him world famous. He won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921. When the Nazis came to power in 1933 he emigrated to the United States, working at Princeton until his death in 1955.","keyDates":[{"date":"1879","event":"Born in Ulm"},{"date":"1905","event":"Miracle year; special relativity"},{"date":"1915","event":"General theory of relativity"},{"date":"1919","event":"Eclipse confirms his prediction"},{"date":"1921","event":"Nobel Prize in Physics"},{"date":"1933","event":"Emigrates to the United States"},{"date":"1955","event":"Dies in Princeton"}],"quotes":[{"text":"May the book bring some one a few happy hours of suggestive thought!","work":"einstein-relativity","location":"Preface","verified":true}],"author":"Albert Einstein","relatedWorks":["einstein-relativity"],"reading":[{"band":"K-2","kind":"book","title":"Albert Einstein","author":"Maria Isabel Sanchez Vegara","isbn13":"9780711257580","publisher":"Quarto Publishing Group UK","year":2021,"format":""},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"einstein-relativity","url":"/works/einstein-relativity/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"His mother wanted him to learn the violin. At 13 he discovered Mozart's violin sonatas and after that practised much more willingly.","source":{"title":"Albert Einstein (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein"}},{"text":"The chemical element einsteinium is named after him.","source":{"title":"Albert Einstein (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Born to secular, middle-class Jewish parents.","source":"https://www.britannica.com/biography/Albert-Einstein","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"dwight-d-eisenhower","name":"Dwight D. Eisenhower","url":"/great-lives/dwight-d-eisenhower/","dates":"1890–1969","born":1890,"died":1969,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["military-leaders","statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"Supreme Allied Commander in Europe in World War II and the thirty-fourth president.","bio":"Dwight David Eisenhower was born in Denison, Texas, and grew up in Abilene, Kansas, one of six sons in a family of modest means. He graduated from West Point in 1915. He trained tank troops in World War I but did not go overseas, and in the years between the wars he served as a staff officer under Generals Pershing and MacArthur, gaining a reputation for organization. In 1942 he commanded the Allied landings in North Africa, then the invasions of Sicily and Italy. As Supreme Allied Commander, he directed the invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944, D-Day, the largest seaborne invasion in history, and led the Allied armies across France into Germany until its surrender in May 1945. After the war he served as Army chief of staff, president of Columbia University, and first commander of NATO. Elected president in 1952 and 1956, he ended the Korean War, began the Interstate Highway System, and sent troops to Little Rock to enforce school integration. In his farewell address he warned of a military-industrial complex. He died in 1969.","keyDates":[{"date":"1915","event":"Graduates from West Point"},{"date":"1942","event":"Commands Allied landings in North Africa"},{"date":"1944","event":"Directs the D-Day invasion"},{"date":"1953–1961","event":"President of the United States"},{"date":"1969","event":"Dies in Washington"}],"quotes":[{"text":"You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months.","work":"d-day-order-of-the-day","location":"Paragraph 1","verified":true},{"text":"The eyes of the world are upon you. The hope and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you.","work":"d-day-order-of-the-day","location":"Paragraph 1","verified":true}],"author":"Dwight D. Eisenhower","relatedWorks":["d-day-order-of-the-day","eisenhower-first-inaugural-address"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"d-day-order-of-the-day","url":"/works/d-day-order-of-the-day/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"All the Eisenhower brothers were nicknamed 'Ike', short for their last name: Edgar was 'Big Ike' and Dwight was 'Little Ike'. By the Second World War only Dwight was still called Ike.","source":{"title":"Dwight D. Eisenhower (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwight_D._Eisenhower"}},{"text":"He was named Dwight after the preacher Dwight L. Moody.","source":{"title":"Dwight D. Eisenhower (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwight_D._Eisenhower"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"His mother joined the Bible Students (later Jehovah's Witnesses); he called himself deeply religious and was baptized in the Presbyterian Church in 1953.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwight_D._Eisenhower","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"george-eliot","name":"George Eliot","url":"/great-lives/george-eliot/","dates":"1819–1880","born":1819,"died":1880,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"English Victorian novelist Mary Ann Evans, author of Silas Marner and Middlemarch.","bio":"Mary Ann Evans was born in 1819 on a farm estate in Warwickshire, England, where her father was the estate manager. She was a serious and studious girl, deeply religious in her youth, but in her twenties she came to doubt Christian doctrine, which strained her relationship with her father. She translated David Friedrich Strauss's Life of Jesus from German and moved to London, where she became an editor of the Westminster Review. In 1854 she began living with the writer George Henry Lewes, who was married but separated from his wife and unable to obtain a divorce; their relationship caused a scandal, but they lived together until his death. Encouraged by Lewes, she began writing fiction under the name George Eliot. Adam Bede (1859), The Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner (1861), about a lonely weaver whose life is changed by an orphaned child, and Middlemarch (1871–1872), a broad portrait of life in a provincial town, are admired for their wisdom and psychological depth. She married John Cross in 1880 and died in London later that year.","keyDates":[{"date":"1819","event":"Born in Warwickshire"},{"date":"1846","event":"Translation of Strauss's Life of Jesus"},{"date":"1854","event":"Begins life with George Henry Lewes"},{"date":"1859","event":"Adam Bede published"},{"date":"1861","event":"Silas Marner published"},{"date":"1871–1872","event":"Middlemarch published"},{"date":"1880","event":"Dies in London"}],"quotes":[],"author":"George Eliot","relatedWorks":["silas-marner","middlemarch"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"silas-marner","url":"/works/silas-marner/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"middlemarch","url":"/works/middlemarch/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Taught by an evangelical teacher as a girl; as a young woman she questioned and gave up her religious faith, to her father's anger.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Eliot","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[{"series":"Very Short Introductions","title":"George Eliot: A Very Short Introduction","author":"Juliette Atkinson","publisher":"Oxford University Press","year":2025,"isbn13":"9780198864325","url":"https://bookshop.org/a/130650/9780198864325"}],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"t-s-eliot","name":"T. S. Eliot","url":"/great-lives/t-s-eliot/","dates":"1888–1965","born":1888,"died":1965,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American-born British poet, critic and playwright, author of The Waste Land and Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats.","bio":"Thomas Stearns Eliot was born in 1888 in St. Louis, Missouri, into a prominent family; his grandfather had moved there to found a Unitarian church. He studied at Harvard University, the University of Paris and Merton College, Oxford. In 1914 he settled in England, and the next year he married Vivienne Haigh-Wood. He taught for a time and from 1917 worked at Lloyds Bank in London while writing poetry. 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock' (1915) and The Waste Land (1922) made him one of the leading poets of the modern movement. In 1925 he became a director of the publishing firm Faber and Faber. In 1927 he joined the Church of England and became a British subject. His later poems include Four Quartets, and he wrote verse plays such as Murder in the Cathedral (1935), about the death of Thomas Becket. His light verse in Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (1939) later inspired the musical Cats. In 1948 he received the Nobel Prize in Literature. After Vivienne's death, he married Valerie Fletcher in 1957. He died in London in 1965.","keyDates":[{"date":"1888","event":"Born in St. Louis, Missouri"},{"date":"1915","event":"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock published"},{"date":"1922","event":"The Waste Land published"},{"date":"1927","event":"Becomes a British subject"},{"date":"1939","event":"Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats published"},{"date":"1948","event":"Nobel Prize in Literature"},{"date":"1965","event":"Dies in London"}],"quotes":[],"author":"T. S. Eliot","relatedWorks":["eliot-the-waste-land","journey-of-the-magi","eliot-the-sacred-wood"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"eliot-the-waste-land","url":"/works/eliot-the-waste-land/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"journey-of-the-magi","url":"/works/journey-of-the-magi/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"eliot-the-sacred-wood","url":"/works/eliot-the-sacred-wood/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"His friend Ezra Pound nicknamed him 'Old Possum', and his light-hearted Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (1939) later became the basis of the musical Cats.","source":{"title":"T. S. Eliot (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._S._Eliot"}}],"records":[{"text":"His first published poem, 'A Fable for Feasters', began as a school exercise and appeared in his school magazine in 1905.","source":{"title":"T. S. Eliot (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._S._Eliot"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Identified as Anglo-Catholic, calling himself 'anglo-catholic in religion'.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._S._Eliot","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"elizabeth-i","name":"Elizabeth I","url":"/great-lives/elizabeth-i/","dates":"1533–1603","born":1533,"died":1603,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["kings-queens-emperors"],"knownFor":"Queen of England whose long reign saw the defeat of the Spanish Armada and a golden age of literature.","bio":"Elizabeth was the daughter of King Henry VIII and his second wife, Anne Boleyn, who was executed when Elizabeth was two. She was well educated, reading Latin and Greek and speaking several modern languages. During the reign of her Catholic half-sister Mary I she was suspected of plotting and was briefly held in the Tower of London. She became queen in 1558 at twenty-five and restored the Protestant Church of England in a settlement meant to hold most of the country together. She never married, and was called the Virgin Queen. Her reign faced plots on her life, war with Spain and rebellion in Ireland. In 1587, after long hesitation, she allowed the execution of her cousin Mary, Queen of Scots. In 1588 English ships and storms scattered the Spanish Armada, and she gave a famous speech to her troops at Tilbury. Her age saw the plays of Shakespeare and Marlowe and the voyages of Drake and Raleigh. She died in 1603, the last of the Tudor monarchs.","keyDates":[{"date":"1533","event":"Born at Greenwich"},{"date":"1558","event":"Becomes queen"},{"date":"1588","event":"Defeat of the Spanish Armada; Tilbury speech"},{"date":"1603","event":"Dies at Richmond"}],"quotes":[{"text":"I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too","work":"elizabeth-speech-at-tilbury","location":"Paragraph 2","verified":true}],"author":"Elizabeth I","relatedWorks":["elizabeth-speech-at-tilbury"],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"book","title":"Good Queen Bess","author":"Diane Stanley","isbn13":"9780688179618","publisher":"HarperCollins","year":2001,"format":"hardcover"},{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"elizabeth-speech-at-tilbury","url":"/works/elizabeth-speech-at-tilbury/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"book","title":"The Life of Elizabeth I","author":"Alison Weir","isbn13":"9780345425508","publisher":"Ballentine Books","year":2003,"format":""}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"She was named after her two grandmothers, Elizabeth of York and Lady Elizabeth Howard.","source":{"title":"Elizabeth I (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_I"}}],"records":[{"text":"She was the last and longest-reigning monarch of the Tudor family.","source":{"title":"Elizabeth I (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_I"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A Protestant who established the Church of England as Supreme Governor, though she kept some Catholic symbols.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_I","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"william-ellery","name":"William Ellery","url":"/great-lives/william-ellery/","dates":"1727–1820","born":1727,"died":1820,"era":"18th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"Rhode Island lawyer and merchant who signed the Declaration and later served as a customs collector in Newport.","bio":"William Ellery was born in 1727 in Newport, Rhode Island, graduated from Harvard, and worked as a merchant and then as a lawyer. He entered the Continental Congress in 1776, in time to sign the Declaration of Independence, and remained a steady member through much of the war, also signing the Articles of Confederation. The British occupation of Newport cost him property, and he had to begin again when the enemy left. After the war he became customs collector for the port of Newport, a post he held for many years. Ellery lived to the age of ninety-two, one of the last surviving signers, and in later life supported the cause of ending slavery in Rhode Island. He died in Newport in 1820.","keyDates":[{"date":"1727","event":"Born in Newport, Rhode Island"},{"date":"1776","event":"Enters Congress and signs the Declaration"},{"date":"1780","event":"Signs the Articles of Confederation"},{"date":"1790","event":"Serves as customs collector at Newport"},{"date":"1820","event":"Dies in Newport"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["the-founding-documents"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-founding-documents","url":"/works/the-founding-documents/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":null,"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"elisabeth-elliot","name":"Elisabeth Elliot","url":"/great-lives/elisabeth-elliot/","dates":"1926–2015","born":1926,"died":2015,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["saints-reformers","writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American Christian missionary and author of Through Gates of Splendor, about the deaths of five missionaries in Ecuador.","bio":"Elisabeth Howard was born in 1926 in Brussels, Belgium, where her parents were missionaries, and grew up in the United States. She studied classical Greek at Wheaton College, hoping to translate the Bible. She went to Ecuador as a missionary, and in 1953 she married Jim Elliot, whom she had met at Wheaton, in Quito. In January 1956 Jim and four other missionaries were killed while trying to make contact with the Waorani, an isolated Indigenous people of eastern Ecuador. Elisabeth wrote Through Gates of Splendor (1957), an account of the men and their mission, which became widely read. In 1958 she, her young daughter Valerie and Rachel Saint, the sister of one of the missionaries, went to live among the Waorani, staying for about two years. She later returned to the United States, where she wrote many books, taught, and spoke widely, hosting a radio program, Gateway to Joy, for many years. She died in Magnolia, Massachusetts, in 2015.","keyDates":[{"date":"1926","event":"Born in Brussels"},{"date":"1953","event":"Marries Jim Elliot in Ecuador"},{"date":"1956","event":"Jim Elliot and four others killed"},{"date":"1957","event":"Through Gates of Splendor published"},{"date":"1958","event":"Goes to live among the Waorani"},{"date":"2015","event":"Dies in Massachusetts"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Elisabeth Elliot","relatedWorks":["through-gates-of-splendor"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"through-gates-of-splendor","url":"/works/through-gates-of-splendor/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"American Christian missionary and author; she became a member of the Episcopal Church with her second husband.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elisabeth_Elliot","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"ralph-ellison","name":"Ralph Ellison","url":"/great-lives/ralph-ellison/","dates":"1913–1994","born":1913,"died":1994,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American novelist, author of Invisible Man, winner of the National Book Award.","bio":"Ralph Waldo Ellison was born in 1913 in Oklahoma City and named after the writer Ralph Waldo Emerson. His father died when Ralph was three, and his mother worked to support the family. He loved music, played the trumpet, and in 1933 went to the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama to study music. In 1936 he moved to New York, intending to study sculpture, and there he met the writers Langston Hughes and Richard Wright, who encouraged him to write. He worked for the Federal Writers' Project, collecting folklore, and wrote reviews and stories. Toward the end of the Second World War he served in the Merchant Marine. His only novel published in his lifetime, Invisible Man (1952), tells of a young Black man who moves from the South to Harlem and feels that society refuses to see him as he really is. It won the National Book Award in 1953. Ellison later taught at several universities, published essays such as Shadow and Act, and worked for decades on a second novel, which was published in part after his death. He died in New York in 1994.","keyDates":[{"date":"1913","event":"Born in Oklahoma City"},{"date":"1933","event":"Enters Tuskegee Institute"},{"date":"1936","event":"Moves to New York"},{"date":"1952","event":"Invisible Man published"},{"date":"1953","event":"National Book Award"},{"date":"1964","event":"Shadow and Act published"},{"date":"1994","event":"Dies in New York"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Ralph Ellison","relatedWorks":["invisible-man"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"invisible-man","url":"/works/invisible-man/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"As a child he loved taking apart and rebuilding radios, the start of a lifelong interest in sound equipment.","source":{"title":"Ralph Ellison (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Ellison"}}],"records":[{"text":"He was the first African American admitted to the Century Association.","source":{"title":"Ralph Ellison (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Ellison"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Ellison","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["Birth year: Wikipedia gives 1913, Wikidata 1914."]},{"slug":"ralph-waldo-emerson","name":"Ralph Waldo Emerson","url":"/great-lives/ralph-waldo-emerson/","dates":"1803–1882","born":1803,"died":1882,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets","philosophers"],"knownFor":"American essayist, lecturer and poet, leader of the Transcendentalist movement, author of Nature and Self-Reliance.","bio":"Ralph Waldo Emerson was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1803. His father, a Unitarian minister, died when Ralph was seven. He entered Harvard College at fourteen and, after teaching school for a time, studied at Harvard Divinity School and became a Unitarian minister. His first wife, Ellen Tucker, died of tuberculosis in 1831, and the next year he resigned from the ministry. He travelled to Europe, where he met the writers Thomas Carlyle, William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Settling in Concord, Massachusetts, he published Nature (1836), which set out the ideas of Transcendentalism, a movement that held that people could find truth through intuition and the natural world. His lecture 'The American Scholar' (1837) urged Americans to develop their own intellectual life. His Essays (1841), including 'Self-Reliance', made him one of the best-known American writers, and for decades he travelled the country as a lecturer. He was a friend and mentor to Henry David Thoreau, and he opposed slavery. He died in Concord in 1882.","keyDates":[{"date":"1803","event":"Born in Boston"},{"date":"1832","event":"Resigns from the ministry"},{"date":"1836","event":"Nature published"},{"date":"1837","event":"Delivers The American Scholar"},{"date":"1841","event":"Essays published"},{"date":"1882","event":"Dies in Concord"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Ralph Waldo Emerson","relatedWorks":["emerson-essays","emerson-conduct-of-life"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"emerson-essays","url":"/works/emerson-essays/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"emerson-conduct-of-life","url":"/works/emerson-conduct-of-life/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"He was nicknamed 'the Sage of Concord'.","source":{"title":"Ralph Waldo Emerson (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Waldo_Emerson"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[{"name":"The Old Manse","note":"Ralph Waldo Emerson lived for a time at the Old Manse in Concord, Massachusetts and drafted Nature in an upstairs study. The Trustees offers house tours and educational visits for schools.","url":"https://thetrustees.org/place/the-old-manse/","urlLabel":"The Old Manse — house and school visits"}],"faith":{"note":"Son of a Unitarian minister; he began his career as a Unitarian minister in Boston before turning to Transcendentalism.","source":"https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/emerson/","sourceName":"Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"friedrich-engels","name":"Friedrich Engels","url":"/great-lives/friedrich-engels/","dates":"1820–1895","born":1820,"died":1895,"era":"19th-century","categories":["philosophers"],"knownFor":"German social theorist and businessman, coauthor with Karl Marx of The Communist Manifesto.","bio":"Friedrich Engels was born in 1820 in Barmen, Prussia (now part of Wuppertal), into a wealthy family of textile manufacturers. His father sent him to work in business, and while doing military service in Berlin he joined the Young Hegelians, a group of radical philosophers. In 1842 he was sent to Manchester, England, to work at a cotton mill partly owned by his father, and his observations there led to The Condition of the Working Class in England (1845). In 1844 he met Karl Marx in Paris, and the two began a lifelong partnership. Together they wrote The Communist Manifesto (1848), published on the eve of revolutions across Europe, which called on workers to unite and overthrow capitalism. Engels took part in the 1849 uprisings in Germany, then returned to the family firm in Manchester, where he worked for about twenty years and supported Marx and his family financially. After Marx's death in 1883, Engels edited and published the second and third volumes of Das Kapital. He died in London in 1895.","keyDates":[{"date":"1820","event":"Born in Barmen, Prussia"},{"date":"1842","event":"Goes to work in Manchester"},{"date":"1844","event":"Meets Karl Marx in Paris"},{"date":"1845","event":"The Condition of the Working Class in England"},{"date":"1848","event":"The Communist Manifesto published"},{"date":"1883","event":"Marx dies; Engels edits his work"},{"date":"1895","event":"Dies in London"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels","relatedWorks":["the-communist-manifesto","marx-capital-volume-i"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-communist-manifesto","url":"/works/the-communist-manifesto/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"marx-capital-volume-i","url":"/works/marx-capital-volume-i/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"bohm-bawerk-karl-marx-and-the-close-of-his-system","url":"/works/bohm-bawerk-karl-marx-and-the-close-of-his-system/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"He wrote so much about wars that Karl Marx's family nicknamed him 'The General'.","source":{"title":"Friedrich Engels (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Engels"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Raised in a devout Pietist Lutheran family; he became an atheist as a young man.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Engels","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[{"series":"Very Short Introductions","title":"Engels: A Very Short Introduction","author":"Terrell Carver","publisher":"Oxford University Press","year":2003,"isbn13":"9780192804662","url":"https://bookshop.org/a/130650/9780192804662"}],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"epictetus","name":"Epictetus","url":"/great-lives/epictetus/","dates":"c. 50–c. 135","born":50,"died":138,"era":"ancient","categories":["philosophers"],"knownFor":"Greek Stoic philosopher, born enslaved, whose teachings were recorded in the Discourses and the Enchiridion.","bio":"Epictetus was born around AD 50 in Hierapolis, in Phrygia (in present-day Turkey). He was enslaved as a young man in Rome, where his owner, Epaphroditus, was a wealthy freedman who served the emperor Nero. He was allowed to study Stoic philosophy with the teacher Musonius Rufus, and he later gained his freedom. Ancient sources say he was lame, perhaps from mistreatment or illness. Around 93 the emperor Domitian expelled philosophers from Rome, and Epictetus moved to Nicopolis in western Greece, where he founded a school and taught for the rest of his life. He wrote nothing himself, but his student Arrian recorded his lectures in the Discourses and summarized them in a short handbook, the Enchiridion. Epictetus taught that some things are within our control, such as our judgments and choices, and others are not, such as health, wealth and reputation, and that peace of mind comes from focusing on the first. The emperor Marcus Aurelius admired him. He died around 135.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 50","event":"Born in Hierapolis, Phrygia"},{"date":"c. 93","event":"Philosophers expelled from Rome; moves to Nicopolis"},{"date":"c. 135","event":"Dies at Nicopolis"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Epictetus","relatedWorks":["epictetus-discourses-and-encheiridion","epictetus-discourses"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"epictetus-discourses-and-encheiridion","url":"/works/epictetus-discourses-and-encheiridion/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"epictetus-discourses","url":"/works/epictetus-discourses/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented; a Stoic philosopher.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epictetus","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["His dates are approximate."]},{"slug":"epicurus","name":"Epicurus","url":"/great-lives/epicurus/","dates":"341–270 BC","born":-341,"died":-270,"era":"ancient","categories":["philosophers"],"knownFor":"Greek philosopher who taught that happiness is freedom from pain and fear, founder of the Garden school in Athens.","bio":"Epicurus was born in 341 BC on the island of Samos to Athenian parents. He studied philosophy as a young man, came under the influence of the atomist teaching of Democritus, and taught at Mytilene and Lampsacus before settling in Athens around 306 BC. There he bought a house and garden where he lived with friends, including women and slaves, in a simple community known as the Garden. He taught that everything is made of atoms moving in the void, that the gods live in bliss and do not concern themselves with human affairs, and that the soul dies with the body. The goal of life, he argued, is pleasure understood as the absence of bodily pain and mental disturbance, reached by moderating desires, cultivating friendship and studying nature. He wrote hundreds of works, but only three letters and a set of maxims survive, preserved by Diogenes Laertius. Epicureanism spread across the Roman world and was strongly opposed by Christian writers. He died in Athens in 270 BC.","keyDates":[{"date":"341 BC","event":"Born on Samos"},{"date":"c. 306 BC","event":"Founds the Garden school in Athens"},{"date":"270 BC","event":"Dies in Athens"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Epicurus","relatedWorks":["epicurus-on-happiness"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"epicurus-on-happiness","url":"/works/epicurus-on-happiness/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Taught that the gods exist but take no part in human affairs and that the soul does not survive death.","source":"https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epicurus/","sourceName":"Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"desiderius-erasmus","name":"Desiderius Erasmus","url":"/great-lives/desiderius-erasmus/","dates":"c. 1466–1536","born":1466,"died":1536,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["theologians-church-fathers","philosophers"],"knownFor":"Dutch scholar who edited the Greek New Testament and wrote The Praise of Folly.","bio":"Desiderius Erasmus was born in Rotterdam, the son of a priest, and was orphaned young. He was educated at schools of the Brethren of the Common Life and entered a monastery of Augustinian canons, where he was ordained a priest, but he found monastic life confining and left to study in Paris. He became the most famous scholar in Europe, writing in elegant Latin and traveling among England, France, Italy, Switzerland and the Low Countries. A friend of Thomas More, he wrote The Praise of Folly in More's house in 1509, a satire in which Folly mocks the vanity of scholars, monks and princes. In 1516 he published the first printed Greek New Testament, with a fresh Latin translation, urging that the Scriptures be read by ordinary people in their own languages. He called for reform of the church through learning and simple piety. Many said that Erasmus laid the egg that Luther hatched, but he would not break with Rome, and in 1524 he debated Luther in his book On Free Will. He died in Basel in 1536.","keyDates":[{"date":"1509","event":"Writes The Praise of Folly"},{"date":"1516","event":"Publishes the Greek New Testament"},{"date":"1524","event":"Publishes On Free Will"},{"date":"1536","event":"Dies in Basel"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Desiderius Erasmus","relatedWorks":["erasmus-on-free-will","erasmus-praise-of-folly"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"erasmus-on-free-will","url":"/works/erasmus-on-free-will/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"erasmus-praise-of-folly","url":"/works/erasmus-praise-of-folly/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"The Erasmus Programme, which lets university students study in other European countries, is named after him.","source":{"title":"Erasmus (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erasmus"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Catholic humanist whose works the Catholic Church placed on the Index of Forbidden Books.","source":"https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/erasmus/","sourceName":"Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"leif-erikson","name":"Leif Erikson","url":"/great-lives/leif-erikson/","dates":"c. 970–1020","born":970,"died":1020,"era":"medieval","categories":["explorers"],"knownFor":"Norse explorer who reached North America about five hundred years before Columbus.","bio":"Leif Erikson was the son of Erik the Red, a Norse chieftain who had been outlawed from Iceland and founded the first European settlements in Greenland around 985. According to the Icelandic sagas written down two centuries later, Leif sailed to Norway around 999, where King Olaf Tryggvason persuaded him to become a Christian and to bring the faith to Greenland. Around the year 1000, having heard of land seen to the west by another sailor, Bjarni Herjólfsson, Leif sailed west with about thirty-five men. He passed a rocky land he called Helluland and a wooded land he called Markland, and spent the winter in a place where grapes or berries grew, which he named Vinland. Other Norse voyages followed, but the settlers fought with the native people, whom they called Skraelings, and did not stay. For centuries these stories were thought by many to be legends, but in 1960 the explorers Helge and Anne Stine Ingstad found the remains of a Norse settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland, proving that the Norse had reached North America.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 985","event":"Erik the Red founds settlements in Greenland"},{"date":"c. 999","event":"Leif becomes a Christian in Norway"},{"date":"c. 1000","event":"Sails to Vinland"},{"date":"1960","event":"Norse site found at L'Anse aux Meadows"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"book","title":"Leif the Lucky","author":"Ingri d'Aulaire","isbn13":"9780816695454","publisher":"Univ Of Minnesota Press","year":2014,"format":""}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"He earned the nickname 'Leif the Lucky' after rescuing a shipwrecked Icelandic crew on his voyage home.","source":{"title":"Leif Erikson (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leif_Erikson"}}],"records":[{"text":"He is thought to have been the first European to set foot on mainland North America, about 500 years before Christopher Columbus.","source":{"title":"Leif Erikson (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leif_Erikson"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Commissioned by King Olaf of Norway in 1000 to proclaim Christianity in Greenland.","source":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Leif_Ericsson","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica (1911) (via Wikisource)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["His voyages are known from sagas written about two centuries later."]},{"slug":"jean-etienne-dominique-esquirol","name":"Jean-Étienne Esquirol","url":"/great-lives/jean-etienne-dominique-esquirol/","dates":"1772–1840","born":1772,"died":1840,"era":"19th-century","categories":["physicians-medicine"],"knownFor":"French psychiatrist, student of Philippe Pinel, who reformed asylums and wrote Mental Maladies.","bio":"Jean-Étienne Dominique Esquirol was born in Toulouse, France, in 1772 and completed his medical studies at Montpellier. In 1799 he came to Paris to work at the Salpêtrière hospital, where he became a favorite student of Philippe Pinel, who had campaigned for more humane treatment of people with mental illness. Around 1801 Esquirol opened a small private asylum in Paris, which became one of the best regarded in the city. His thesis of 1805 examined the passions as causes, symptoms and means of curing insanity. He believed, like Pinel, that mental illness rarely destroys a person's reason entirely. In 1810 he toured the asylums of France and reported on the bad conditions he found, and his reports contributed to a French law of 1838 that required each department to establish an asylum. He became chief physician at the Salpêtrière and later at the Charenton asylum, and he taught one of the first courses on mental illness. His book Mental Maladies (1838) gathered his clinical observations and classifications. He died in Paris in 1840.","keyDates":[{"date":"1772","event":"Born in Toulouse"},{"date":"1799","event":"Comes to Paris to work with Pinel"},{"date":"1805","event":"Thesis on the passions and insanity"},{"date":"1825","event":"Chief physician at Charenton"},{"date":"1838","event":"Mental Maladies published; French asylum law"},{"date":"1840","event":"Dies in Paris"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Jean-Etienne Dominique Esquirol","relatedWorks":["mental-maladies"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"mental-maladies","url":"/works/mental-maladies/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-%C3%89tienne_Dominique_Esquirol","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"eleanor-estes","name":"Eleanor Estes","url":"/great-lives/eleanor-estes/","dates":"1906–1988","born":1906,"died":1988,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American children's author and librarian, author of The Moffats, The Hundred Dresses and the Newbery-winning Ginger Pye.","bio":"Eleanor Ruth Rosenfeld was born in 1906 in West Haven, Connecticut, and grew up in a family that loved books and stories. After high school she worked in the children's department of the New Haven Free Public Library, then studied library science and worked as a children's librarian at the New York Public Library. In 1932 she married Rice Estes, who also became a librarian. Her first book, The Moffats (1941), drew on her own childhood in a small Connecticut town, following a family of four children and their widowed mother, and it was followed by more books about the family. The Hundred Dresses (1944), about a poor Polish-American girl who is teased by classmates for wearing the same dress every day, was a Newbery Honor Book and is widely read for its gentle treatment of kindness and regret. Ginger Pye, about a family's lost dog, won the Newbery Medal in 1952. She also wrote and illustrated books for adults and children. She died in Connecticut in 1988.","keyDates":[{"date":"1906","event":"Born in West Haven, Connecticut"},{"date":"1932","event":"Marries Rice Estes"},{"date":"1941","event":"The Moffats published"},{"date":"1944","event":"The Hundred Dresses published"},{"date":"1952","event":"Newbery Medal for Ginger Pye"},{"date":"1988","event":"Dies in Connecticut"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Eleanor Estes","relatedWorks":["the-hundred-dresses","the-moffats"],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"library","work":"the-hundred-dresses","url":"/works/the-hundred-dresses/"},{"band":"3-5","kind":"library","work":"the-moffats","url":"/works/the-moffats/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleanor_Estes","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"euclid","name":"Euclid","url":"/great-lives/euclid/","dates":"fl. c. 300 BC","born":-325,"died":-270,"era":"ancient","categories":["scientists-mathematicians"],"knownFor":"Greek mathematician of Alexandria whose Elements taught geometry for over two thousand years.","bio":"Euclid taught mathematics in Alexandria, Egypt, around 300 BC, during the reign of Ptolemy I. Almost nothing is known about his life; even his dates are estimates. A later story says that when King Ptolemy asked for an easier way to learn geometry, Euclid replied that there is no royal road to geometry. His fame rests on the Elements, thirteen books that gather the mathematics known in his time into a single order. The Elements begins with definitions, a few postulates and common notions, such as that things equal to the same thing are equal to each other, and from them proves, step by step, hundreds of propositions about triangles, circles, parallel lines, proportions, numbers and solid figures. Among its results are the Pythagorean theorem and the proof that there are infinitely many prime numbers. The book was copied and translated into Arabic and Latin and printed in 1482, and it remained the standard way of teaching geometry and logical proof into the twentieth century. Euclid also wrote on optics and other subjects.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 300 BC","event":"Teaches in Alexandria and writes the Elements"},{"date":"1482","event":"First printed edition of the Elements"}],"quotes":[{"text":"A line is length without breadth.","work":"euclid-elements-book-i","location":"Book I, Definition ii","verified":true},{"text":"The whole is greater than its part.","work":"euclid-elements-book-i","location":"Book I, Axiom ix","verified":true}],"author":"Euclid","relatedWorks":["euclid-elements-book-i","euclid-elements-books-i-vi"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"euclid-elements-book-i","url":"/works/euclid-elements-book-i/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"euclid-elements-books-i-vi","url":"/works/euclid-elements-books-i-vi/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"The European Space Agency's Euclid space telescope, a crater on the Moon and a minor planet are named after him.","source":{"title":"Euclid (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euclid"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euclid","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["Birth and death years are estimates; only his active period (about 300 BC) is known."]},{"slug":"leonhard-euler","name":"Leonhard Euler","url":"/great-lives/leonhard-euler/","dates":"1707–1783","born":1707,"died":1783,"era":"18th-century","categories":["scientists-mathematicians"],"knownFor":"Swiss mathematician, one of the most productive in history, who kept working after going blind.","bio":"Leonhard Euler was born in Basel, Switzerland, the son of a pastor who hoped he would become a minister. At the University of Basel, the mathematician Johann Bernoulli recognized his talent and gave him private lessons on Saturdays. In 1727 he went to the new Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg, Russia, and later spent twenty-five years at the Berlin Academy under Frederick the Great before returning to St. Petersburg. He wrote more mathematics than perhaps anyone in history, on calculus, number theory, geometry, mechanics, optics, astronomy and music. He introduced much of the notation used today, including f(x) for functions, e for the base of natural logarithms, i for the square root of minus one, and the Greek letter pi. He solved the puzzle of the seven bridges of Königsberg, founding graph theory, and found the formula linking e, i and pi. He lost the sight of one eye in his thirties and became almost totally blind in 1771, but with a remarkable memory and the help of his sons he kept producing papers. He died in St. Petersburg in 1783.","keyDates":[{"date":"1707","event":"Born in Basel"},{"date":"1727","event":"Moves to St. Petersburg"},{"date":"1736","event":"Solves the Königsberg bridge problem"},{"date":"1741–1766","event":"At the Berlin Academy"},{"date":"1771","event":"Becomes almost totally blind"},{"date":"1783","event":"Dies in St. Petersburg"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["euclid-elements-book-i"],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"He memorised Virgil's long poem the Aeneid early in life, and even in old age could recite it and give the first and last sentence of every page of his copy.","source":{"title":"Leonhard Euler (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonhard_Euler"}},{"text":"The asteroid 2002 Euler and a crater on the Moon are named after him.","source":{"title":"Leonhard Euler (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonhard_Euler"}}],"records":[{"text":"He was the first to write f(x) for a function, the notation still used in maths classes today, and he is credited with founding graph theory through the puzzle of the Seven Bridges of Königsberg.","source":{"title":"Leonhard Euler (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonhard_Euler"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Son of a Calvinist pastor.","source":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Euler%2C_Leonhard","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica (1911) (via Wikisource)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"euripides","name":"Euripides","url":"/great-lives/euripides/","dates":"c. 480–406 BC","born":-480,"died":-406,"era":"ancient","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Athenian tragedian, author of Medea, The Trojan Women and The Bacchae.","bio":"Euripides was born around 480 BC, according to tradition on the island of Salamis, near Athens. He was the youngest of the three great Athenian tragic playwrights, after Aeschylus and Sophocles. He first competed at the festival of Dionysus in 455 BC and wrote about ninety plays, of which eighteen or nineteen survive, more than for either of the other two. He won first prize only a few times during his life, but his plays became very popular after his death. Euripides was known for portraying gods and heroes in a more human and questioning way, for strong and complex female characters such as Medea, Phaedra and Electra, and for clever debate between characters. Several of his plays, such as The Trojan Women (415 BC), show the suffering caused by war, written during the long conflict between Athens and Sparta. Late in life he left Athens for the court of King Archelaus of Macedon, where he died in 406 BC. The Bacchae and Iphigenia in Aulis were staged after his death.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 480 BC","event":"Born, by tradition on Salamis"},{"date":"455 BC","event":"First competes at the Dionysia"},{"date":"431 BC","event":"Medea staged"},{"date":"415 BC","event":"The Trojan Women staged"},{"date":"406 BC","event":"Dies in Macedon"},{"date":"405 BC","event":"The Bacchae staged after his death"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Euripides","relatedWorks":["medea-and-other-plays","the-bacchae-and-other-plays","euripides-trojan-women-and-other-plays","euripides-iphigenia-in-aulis-and-other-plays"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"medea-and-other-plays","url":"/works/medea-and-other-plays/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-bacchae-and-other-plays","url":"/works/the-bacchae-and-other-plays/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"euripides-trojan-women-and-other-plays","url":"/works/euripides-trojan-women-and-other-plays/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"euripides-iphigenia-in-aulis-and-other-plays","url":"/works/euripides-iphigenia-in-aulis-and-other-plays/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[{"text":"He was the youngest of the three great writers of Greek tragedy, after Aeschylus and Sophocles.","source":{"title":"Euripides (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euripides"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented; scholars disagree about whether his plays show religious skepticism or belief.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euripides","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"eusebius","name":"Eusebius of Caesarea","url":"/great-lives/eusebius/","dates":"c. 260–339","born":260,"died":339,"era":"ancient","categories":["theologians-church-fathers"],"knownFor":"Bishop of Caesarea and historian, author of the Ecclesiastical History, the first full history of the early Christian church.","bio":"Eusebius was born around 260, probably in Caesarea Maritima, a port city in the Roman province of Palestine. He studied under the scholar Pamphilus, who had built up a great library based on the works of Origen, and he took the name 'Eusebius of Pamphilus' in his honor. During the persecution of Christians under the emperor Diocletian, Pamphilus was imprisoned and executed in 310, and Eusebius himself was imprisoned for a time. Around 313 he became bishop of Caesarea. He attended the Council of Nicaea in 325, and he became an admirer and adviser of the emperor Constantine, whose biography he later wrote. His most famous work, the Ecclesiastical History, traces the history of the church from the time of the apostles to his own day, quoting many earlier documents that would otherwise be lost. He also wrote a Chronicle of world history, a guide to the places named in the Bible, and works defending Christianity. He died in Caesarea around 339.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 260","event":"Born, probably in Caesarea"},{"date":"310","event":"His teacher Pamphilus executed"},{"date":"c. 313","event":"Becomes bishop of Caesarea"},{"date":"325","event":"Attends the Council of Nicaea"},{"date":"c. 339","event":"Dies in Caesarea"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Eusebius","relatedWorks":["the-history-of-the-church"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-history-of-the-church","url":"/works/the-history-of-the-church/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Bishop of Caesarea in Palestine, called the 'Father of Church History'.","source":"https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05617b.htm","sourceName":"Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"hans-fallada","name":"Hans Fallada","url":"/great-lives/hans-fallada/","dates":"1893–1947","born":1893,"died":1947,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"German novelist, author of Little Man, What Now? and Every Man Dies Alone, also published as Alone in Berlin.","bio":"Hans Fallada was the pen name of Rudolf Ditzen, born in 1893 in Greifswald, Germany, the son of a magistrate who later became a supreme court judge; in 1899 the family moved to Berlin. He took his pen name from two stories by the Brothers Grimm. As a young man he had serious troubles, including injuries in an accident, mental illness and, for much of his life, addiction, and he spent periods in clinics and prison. He worked on farms and estates, which gave him material for his books. His novel Little Man, What Now? (1932), about a young couple struggling during the economic crisis, was an international success. He remained in Germany under the Nazis, writing books that avoided politics, and he was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1936 and 1939. After the war he wrote Every Man Dies Alone, published in English as Alone in Berlin, based on the true story of a working-class couple who left anonymous postcards around Berlin protesting against Hitler. He died in Berlin in 1947, just before it was published.","keyDates":[{"date":"1893","event":"Born in Greifswald"},{"date":"1932","event":"Little Man, What Now? published"},{"date":"1947","event":"Dies in Berlin; Every Man Dies Alone published"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Hans Fallada","relatedWorks":["alone-in-berlin"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"alone-in-berlin","url":"/works/alone-in-berlin/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Fallada","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"michael-faraday","name":"Michael Faraday","url":"/great-lives/michael-faraday/","dates":"1791–1867","born":1791,"died":1867,"era":"19th-century","categories":["scientists-mathematicians","inventors"],"knownFor":"English experimenter who discovered electromagnetic induction.","bio":"Michael Faraday was born near London, the son of a poor blacksmith, and had little schooling. At fourteen he was apprenticed to a bookbinder and read the science books he bound. In 1812 he attended lectures by the chemist Humphry Davy, wrote them up carefully and sent them to Davy, who hired him as a laboratory assistant at the Royal Institution. Faraday became one of the greatest experimental scientists in history. In 1821 he built the first device to turn electricity into continuous motion, an early electric motor. In 1831 he discovered electromagnetic induction, showing that moving a magnet near a coil of wire produces an electric current, the principle behind generators and transformers. He discovered benzene, the laws of electrolysis, and the effect of magnetism on light, and he imagined invisible lines of force around magnets that later inspired James Clerk Maxwell. He began the Royal Institution's Christmas Lectures for young people, including The Chemical History of a Candle. A devout member of a small Christian sect, the Sandemanians, he refused a knighthood. He died in 1867.","keyDates":[{"date":"1812","event":"Attends Davy's lectures"},{"date":"1813","event":"Becomes Davy's assistant"},{"date":"1821","event":"Builds an electric motor"},{"date":"1831","event":"Discovers electromagnetic induction"},{"date":"1860","event":"The Chemical History of a Candle lectures"},{"date":"1867","event":"Dies at Hampton Court"}],"quotes":[{"text":"What diamond can shine like flame?","work":"faraday-chemical-history-of-a-candle","location":"Lecture I","verified":true},{"text":"Here therefore was demonstrated the production of a permanent current of electricity by ordinary magnets","work":"faraday-experimental-researches-in-electricity","location":"First Series, paragraph 90","verified":true}],"author":"Michael Faraday","relatedWorks":["faraday-chemical-history-of-a-candle","faraday-experimental-researches-in-electricity"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"faraday-chemical-history-of-a-candle","url":"/works/faraday-chemical-history-of-a-candle/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"faraday-experimental-researches-in-electricity","url":"/works/faraday-experimental-researches-in-electricity/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"The farad, a unit used to measure electrical capacitance, is named after him.","source":{"title":"Michael Faraday (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Faraday"}}],"records":[{"text":"His first recorded experiment was building an electric battery, a voltaic pile, out of seven halfpenny coins and seven discs of zinc.","source":{"title":"Michael Faraday (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Faraday"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A lifelong member of a small Christian sect, the Sandemanians, which he joined by a profession of faith in 1821.","source":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dictionary_of_National_Biography%2C_1885-1900/Faraday%2C_Michael","sourceName":"Dictionary of National Biography (1885–1900) (via Wikisource)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[{"series":"Very Short Introductions","title":"Michael Faraday: A Very Short Introduction","author":"Frank A.J.L. James","publisher":"Oxford University Press","year":2010,"isbn13":"9780199574315","url":"https://bookshop.org/a/130650/9780199574315"}],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"william-faulkner","name":"William Faulkner","url":"/great-lives/william-faulkner/","dates":"1897–1962","born":1897,"died":1962,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American novelist of the South, author of The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying, and Nobel laureate.","bio":"William Faulkner was born in 1897 in New Albany, Mississippi, and grew up in Oxford, Mississippi, where he lived for most of his life. Stories of his great-grandfather, William Clark Falkner, a near-legendary local figure, influenced his fiction. He left high school without graduating. During the First World War he joined the Royal Air Force in Canada but did not serve in combat. He briefly attended the University of Mississippi and worked at odd jobs, including as the university's postmaster. In New Orleans he met the writer Sherwood Anderson, who encouraged him, and he wrote his first novel, Soldiers' Pay (1925). Most of his novels are set in Yoknapatawpha County, an imaginary Mississippi county based on his home region. They include The Sound and the Fury (1929), told partly through the thoughts of different members of one family, As I Lay Dying (1930), Light in August and Absalom, Absalom! He also worked as a screenwriter in Hollywood. He won the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature and later two Pulitzer Prizes, for A Fable and The Reivers. He died in Mississippi in 1962.","keyDates":[{"date":"1897","event":"Born in New Albany, Mississippi"},{"date":"1925","event":"Soldiers' Pay"},{"date":"1929","event":"The Sound and the Fury published"},{"date":"1930","event":"As I Lay Dying published"},{"date":"1949","event":"Nobel Prize in Literature"},{"date":"1962","event":"Dies in Mississippi"}],"quotes":[],"author":"William Faulkner","relatedWorks":["the-portable-faulkner","faulkner-the-sound-and-the-fury"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-portable-faulkner","url":"/works/the-portable-faulkner/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"faulkner-the-sound-and-the-fury","url":"/works/faulkner-the-sound-and-the-fury/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Faulkner","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"robert-fergusson","name":"Robert Fergusson","url":"/great-lives/robert-fergusson/","dates":"1750–1774","born":1750,"died":1774,"era":"18th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Edinburgh poet in Scots whose Auld Reekie and The Farmer's Ingle inspired Robert Burns; he died at twenty-four.","bio":"Robert Fergusson was born in Edinburgh on 5 September 1750, the son of a clerk from Aberdeenshire. He was educated at the High School of Edinburgh, Dundee Grammar School and the University of St Andrews, but his father's death forced him to leave without a degree and take work copying legal documents in the Commissary Clerk's office in Edinburgh. From 1772 his poems appeared in Walter Ruddiman's Weekly Magazine, and a collected volume was published in 1773. Writing in the Scots of Edinburgh's streets, he pictured the city's taverns, festivals and characters in The Daft Days, Leith Races and Auld Reekie, and country piety in The Farmer's Ingle. In 1774 he fell into a religious melancholy, suffered a head injury in a fall, and was confined in the city's public asylum, where he died on 16 October 1774. In 1787 Robert Burns, who revered him, placed a headstone over his unmarked grave in the Canongate Kirkyard.","keyDates":[{"date":"1750","event":"Born in Edinburgh, 5 September"},{"date":"1765","event":"Enters the University of St Andrews"},{"date":"1772","event":"Poems begin appearing in Ruddiman's Weekly Magazine"},{"date":"1773","event":"Poems published"},{"date":"1774","event":"Dies in the Edinburgh asylum, 16 October"},{"date":"1787","event":"Burns erects his headstone in the Canongate Kirkyard"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Robert Fergusson","relatedWorks":["the-cotters-saturday-night","poems-and-songs-of-robert-burns"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-cotters-saturday-night","url":"/works/the-cotters-saturday-night/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Raised in the Church of Scotland; in his last year a religious crisis led him to renounce his convivial life and, by some accounts, burn some of his manuscripts before his final illness.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Fergusson","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"paul-feyerabend","name":"Paul Feyerabend","url":"/great-lives/paul-feyerabend/","dates":"1924–1994","born":1924,"died":1994,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["philosophers"],"knownFor":"Austrian philosopher of science, author of Against Method, who argued that science has no single method.","bio":"Paul Feyerabend was born in Vienna in 1924, the only child of a civil servant and a seamstress. In 1942 he was drafted into the German army. Near the end of the war he was shot in the spine while directing traffic, which left him in a wheelchair for a year and partly paralyzed for life. After the war he studied singing and theater, then history, physics and philosophy at the University of Vienna, where he earned a doctorate. He studied with Karl Popper at the London School of Economics and later taught at the University of California, Berkeley, for about thirty years, as well as in London, Berlin, Auckland and Zurich. In Against Method (1975) he argued, using examples such as Galileo, that great scientists had advanced by breaking the accepted rules of method, and that the only principle that does not hold back progress is 'anything goes'. His views made him one of the most controversial philosophers of science. His autobiography, Killing Time, was published after his death. He died in Switzerland in 1994.","keyDates":[{"date":"1924","event":"Born in Vienna"},{"date":"1945","event":"Seriously wounded"},{"date":"1951","event":"Doctorate from the University of Vienna"},{"date":"1958","event":"Begins teaching at Berkeley"},{"date":"1975","event":"Against Method published"},{"date":"1994","event":"Dies in Switzerland"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Paul Feyerabend","relatedWorks":["feyerabend-against-method"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"feyerabend-against-method","url":"/works/feyerabend-against-method/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"The asteroid 22356 Feyerabend is named after him.","source":{"title":"Paul Feyerabend (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Feyerabend"}},{"text":"As a young man he studied singing and piano at the music academy in Weimar.","source":{"title":"Paul Feyerabend (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Feyerabend"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Raised Catholic; his adult beliefs are not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Feyerabend","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"henry-fielding","name":"Henry Fielding","url":"/great-lives/henry-fielding/","dates":"1707–1754","born":1707,"died":1754,"era":"18th-century","categories":["writers-poets","legal-scholars-lawgivers"],"knownFor":"English novelist, playwright and magistrate; author of Joseph Andrews, Tom Jones, Amelia and Jonathan Wild; cofounder of the Bow Street Runners.","bio":"Henry Fielding was born in 1707 at Sharpham Park, Somerset, England, into a family of the gentry; his father was an army officer. He was educated at Eton and studied briefly at the University of Leiden. In London he became a successful playwright, writing comedies and political satires, until the Licensing Act of 1737, passed partly because of his attacks on the prime minister, Robert Walpole, ended his stage career. He then studied law and became a barrister, and he edited newspapers. His comic novels Joseph Andrews (1742), which began as a parody of Samuel Richardson's Pamela, and The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (1749), about the adventures of a lively young man raised by a country squire, are among the founding works of the English novel. In 1748 he became a magistrate at Bow Street in London, where with his half-brother John Fielding he organized the Bow Street Runners, an early London police force. In poor health, he sailed to Portugal in 1754 and died in Lisbon that year.","keyDates":[{"date":"1707","event":"Born in Somerset"},{"date":"1737","event":"Licensing Act ends his stage career"},{"date":"1741","event":"Shamela published"},{"date":"1742","event":"Joseph Andrews published"},{"date":"1743","event":"Jonathan Wild in the Miscellanies"},{"date":"1748","event":"Becomes a magistrate at Bow Street"},{"date":"1749","event":"Tom Jones published"},{"date":"1751","event":"Amelia published"},{"date":"1754","event":"Dies in Lisbon"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Henry Fielding","relatedWorks":["fielding-shamela","fielding-joseph-andrews","fielding-jonathan-wild","fielding-tom-jones","fielding-amelia","fielding-journal-of-a-voyage-to-lisbon"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"fielding-joseph-andrews","url":"/works/fielding-joseph-andrews/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"fielding-tom-jones","url":"/works/fielding-tom-jones/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"fielding-amelia","url":"/works/fielding-amelia/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"fielding-jonathan-wild","url":"/works/fielding-jonathan-wild/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"fielding-journal-of-a-voyage-to-lisbon","url":"/works/fielding-journal-of-a-voyage-to-lisbon/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"fielding-shamela","url":"/works/fielding-shamela/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented in detail; he wrote a treatise against deistic and materialist views.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Fielding","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"robert-filmer","name":"Robert Filmer","url":"/great-lives/robert-filmer/","dates":"1588–1653","born":1588,"died":1653,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["philosophers"],"knownFor":"English political theorist, author of Patriarcha, a defense of the divine right of kings.","bio":"Robert Filmer was born in 1588 at East Sutton, in Kent, England, the eldest son of a landowning family. He studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, without taking a degree, and at Lincoln's Inn in London, and he was knighted by King James I in 1619. He spent most of his life managing his estate at East Sutton. Filmer was a firm royalist, and during the English Civil War he was imprisoned for some years in Leeds Castle, and his estates were seized. In Patriarcha, written probably in the 1620s or 1630s but not published until 1680, long after his death, he argued that kings rule by divine right, inheriting their authority from the first father, Adam, to whom God gave power over the world, and that subjects therefore owe them obedience as children owe obedience to fathers. When Patriarcha was published, it was used to support the royal cause, and John Locke wrote the first of his Two Treatises of Government to refute it. Filmer died at East Sutton in 1653.","keyDates":[{"date":"1588","event":"Born at East Sutton, Kent"},{"date":"1619","event":"Knighted by James I"},{"date":"1640s","event":"Imprisoned in Leeds Castle during the Civil War"},{"date":"1653","event":"Dies at East Sutton"},{"date":"1680","event":"Patriarcha published"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Robert Filmer","relatedWorks":["patriarcha"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"patriarcha","url":"/works/patriarcha/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented; he wrote against Calvinist teaching on blasphemy.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Filmer","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"charles-finney","name":"Charles Finney","url":"/great-lives/charles-finney/","dates":"1792–1875","born":1792,"died":1875,"era":"19th-century","categories":["theologians-church-fathers","saints-reformers"],"knownFor":"American revivalist preacher of the Second Great Awakening and president of Oberlin College.","bio":"Charles Grandison Finney was born in 1792 in Warren, Connecticut, and grew up in upstate New York. He trained as a lawyer, but after a religious conversion in 1821 he left the law to become a Presbyterian preacher. In the 1820s and 1830s he led revivals in the towns of upstate New York, an area later called the 'burned-over district' because of its many revivals, and then in cities such as Philadelphia, Boston, New York and Rochester. He used 'new measures', such as the 'anxious bench' for those concerned about their souls and allowing women to pray aloud in mixed meetings, and his Lectures on Revivals of Religion (1835) argued that revivals could be promoted by the right means. Finney opposed slavery and supported reform movements. In 1835 he became a professor of theology at the new Oberlin College in Ohio, which admitted both Black and women students, and he served as its president from 1851 to 1866. He died in Oberlin in 1875.","keyDates":[{"date":"1792","event":"Born in Warren, Connecticut"},{"date":"1821","event":"Religious conversion"},{"date":"1835","event":"Lectures on Revivals of Religion; joins Oberlin College"},{"date":"1851–1866","event":"President of Oberlin College"},{"date":"1875","event":"Dies in Oberlin, Ohio"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Charles Finney","relatedWorks":["lectures-on-revivals-of-religion"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"lectures-on-revivals-of-religion","url":"/works/lectures-on-revivals-of-religion/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Evangelist licensed as a preacher by the Presbyterians.","source":"https://www.britannica.com/biography/Charles-Grandison-Finney","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"dorothy-canfield-fisher","name":"Dorothy Canfield Fisher","url":"/great-lives/dorothy-canfield-fisher/","dates":"1879–1958","born":1879,"died":1958,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American author, educator and reformer whose children's novel Understood Betsy promoted Montessori-style learning.","bio":"Dorothy Canfield was born in 1879 in Lawrence, Kansas, where her father was a university professor; he later became president of Ohio State University. She studied at Ohio State, the Sorbonne in Paris and Columbia University, where she earned a doctorate in French in 1904. In 1907 she married John Redwood Fisher and moved to the family farm in Arlington, Vermont. In 1911 she visited Maria Montessori in Rome and wrote books introducing Montessori's methods of education to Americans. Her children's novel Understood Betsy (1916) tells of a timid orphan girl who learns independence after she is sent to live with relatives on a Vermont farm. During the First World War she did relief work in France, including running a braille press for blinded soldiers. She wrote many novels and short stories, served for many years on the selection board of the Book-of-the-Month Club, and promoted adult education. Eleanor Roosevelt named her one of the most influential women in the country. She died in Arlington in 1958.","keyDates":[{"date":"1879","event":"Born in Lawrence, Kansas"},{"date":"1904","event":"Doctorate from Columbia University"},{"date":"1911","event":"Visits Maria Montessori in Rome"},{"date":"1916","event":"Understood Betsy published"},{"date":"1958","event":"Dies in Arlington, Vermont"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Dorothy Canfield Fisher","relatedWorks":["understood-betsy"],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"library","work":"understood-betsy","url":"/works/understood-betsy/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[{"text":"She was the first woman to receive an honorary degree from Dartmouth College.","source":{"title":"Dorothy Canfield Fisher (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Canfield_Fisher"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Canfield_Fisher","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"f-scott-fitzgerald","name":"F. Scott Fitzgerald","url":"/great-lives/f-scott-fitzgerald/","dates":"1896–1940","born":1896,"died":1940,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American novelist of the Jazz Age, author of The Great Gatsby and This Side of Paradise.","bio":"Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born in 1896 in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and was named after a distant relative, the author of The Star-Spangled Banner. He attended Princeton University, where he wrote for student theatrical and literary magazines, but left to join the army in 1917. While stationed in Alabama he met Zelda Sayre. His first novel, This Side of Paradise (1920), about a young man at Princeton, was a great success, and he and Zelda married that year. They became celebrities of what he called the Jazz Age, living in New York and on the French Riviera, and he wrote many short stories for magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post. The Great Gatsby (1925), about the mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby and his longing for Daisy Buchanan, sold modestly at first but is now considered one of the great American novels. Zelda's mental illness, his own drinking and money troubles marked his later years. Tender Is the Night appeared in 1934. He worked as a screenwriter in Hollywood, where he died in 1940.","keyDates":[{"date":"1896","event":"Born in Saint Paul, Minnesota"},{"date":"1917","event":"Leaves Princeton for the army"},{"date":"1920","event":"This Side of Paradise published; marries Zelda Sayre"},{"date":"1925","event":"The Great Gatsby published"},{"date":"1934","event":"Tender Is the Night published"},{"date":"1940","event":"Dies in Hollywood"}],"quotes":[],"author":"F. Scott Fitzgerald","relatedWorks":["the-great-gatsby","this-side-of-paradise"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-great-gatsby","url":"/works/the-great-gatsby/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"this-side-of-paradise","url":"/works/this-side-of-paradise/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Raised Catholic; he was a non-practicing Catholic in adulthood.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F._Scott_Fitzgerald","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"alexander-fleming","name":"Alexander Fleming","url":"/great-lives/alexander-fleming/","dates":"1881–1955","born":1881,"died":1955,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["physicians-medicine","scientists-mathematicians"],"knownFor":"Scottish bacteriologist who discovered penicillin.","bio":"Alexander Fleming was born on a farm in Ayrshire, Scotland. He moved to London at fourteen and worked as a shipping clerk until a legacy from an uncle allowed him to study medicine at St. Mary's Hospital, where he stayed for the rest of his career. During the First World War he served in battlefield hospitals in France and saw many soldiers die from infected wounds, and he showed that the antiseptics then used often did more harm than good in deep wounds. In September 1928, returning from holiday, he noticed that a mold had grown on one of his dishes of staphylococcus bacteria and that the bacteria around it had died. He identified the mold as Penicillium and named the bacteria-killing substance penicillin. He could not purify it in large amounts, and for years little came of it. In 1940 Howard Florey and Ernst Chain at Oxford developed it into a drug, and it was mass-produced during the Second World War, saving countless lives. The three shared the Nobel Prize in 1945. Fleming died in 1955.","keyDates":[{"date":"1881","event":"Born in Ayrshire"},{"date":"1922","event":"Discovers lysozyme"},{"date":"1928","event":"Discovers penicillin"},{"date":"1940","event":"Florey and Chain develop penicillin as a drug"},{"date":"1945","event":"Nobel Prize"},{"date":"1955","event":"Dies in London"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Came from a Presbyterian background; he was said not to be particularly religious.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Fleming","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"william-floyd","name":"William Floyd","url":"/great-lives/william-floyd/","dates":"1734–1821","born":1734,"died":1821,"era":"18th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"Long Island landowner who signed the Declaration; his family fled when the British occupied his estate.","bio":"William Floyd was born in 1734 in Brookhaven, on Long Island, and inherited a large estate there. He represented New York in the Continental Congress and signed the Declaration of Independence after the New York convention, which had abstained from the July vote, authorized its delegates to join the other colonies. When British forces occupied Long Island, Floyd's family fled to Connecticut and his house and lands were used by the enemy for years. He returned after the war to a damaged property and later served in the first federal Congress. In old age he moved to western New York, then a frontier, and died there in 1821. Floyd was a large landowner in a slaveholding society; enslaved labor was part of the estate economy on Long Island in his time.","keyDates":[{"date":"1734","event":"Born in Brookhaven, Long Island"},{"date":"1776","event":"Signs the Declaration after New York authorizes its delegates"},{"date":"1776–1783","event":"Family is driven from the Long Island estate during the British occupation"},{"date":"1789","event":"Serves in the First Congress"},{"date":"1821","event":"Dies in western New York"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["the-founding-documents"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-founding-documents","url":"/works/the-founding-documents/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":null,"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"theodor-fontane","name":"Theodor Fontane","url":"/great-lives/theodor-fontane/","dates":"1819–1898","born":1819,"died":1898,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"German novelist and poet of the realist era, author of Effi Briest.","bio":"Theodor Fontane was born in 1819 in Neuruppin, a town northwest of Berlin, into a family descended from French Huguenots. Like his father, he trained as an apothecary, starting at sixteen. In 1843 he joined a Berlin literary club, the Tunnel über der Spree, where he met many leading German writers. Travels to Britain gave him a lifelong love of English ballads, which he imitated. In 1849 he left pharmacy to become a full-time journalist and writer, and in 1850 he married Emilie Rouanet-Kummer. For several years he lived in London as a correspondent. His Walks through the Province of Brandenburg (1862–1882) described the countryside and history of the region around Berlin. In 1870 he became the drama critic of a Berlin newspaper. He published his first novel, Before the Storm, in 1878, when he was 58, and then wrote a series of novels about modern German society, including Trials and Tribulations, Frau Jenny Treibel and Effi Briest (1894–95). His novels are known for their lively conversations and strong female characters. He died in Berlin in 1898.","keyDates":[{"date":"1819","event":"Born in Neuruppin, Prussia"},{"date":"1849","event":"Becomes a full-time writer"},{"date":"1862","event":"Walks through Brandenburg begins"},{"date":"1878","event":"Before the Storm published"},{"date":"1894","event":"Effi Briest begins publication"},{"date":"1898","event":"Dies in Berlin"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Theodor Fontane","relatedWorks":["effi-briest"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"effi-briest","url":"/works/effi-briest/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A member of the French Protestant Church of Berlin.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodor_Fontane","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"esther-forbes","name":"Esther Forbes","url":"/great-lives/esther-forbes/","dates":"1891–1967","born":1891,"died":1967,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American novelist and historian who won the Pulitzer Prize for a biography of Paul Revere and the Newbery Medal for Johnny Tremain.","bio":"Esther Forbes was born in 1891 in Westborough, Massachusetts, the daughter of a judge and the historian Harriette Merrifield Forbes, and grew up in Worcester. She attended Bradford Academy and took classes at the University of Wisconsin. Back in Massachusetts she worked as an editor at the publisher Houghton Mifflin and began writing historical novels, beginning with O Genteel Lady! (1926). Her research for a novel led her to write Paul Revere and the World He Lived In (1942), a biography that won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1943. Her research on Revere's Boston also inspired Johnny Tremain (1943), a novel for young readers about a silversmith's apprentice who injures his hand and becomes caught up in the events leading to the American Revolution. It won the Newbery Medal in 1944 and was made into a Disney film. Forbes continued to write novels for adults. She was the first woman elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society. She died in Worcester in 1967.","keyDates":[{"date":"1891","event":"Born in Westborough, Massachusetts"},{"date":"1942","event":"Paul Revere and the World He Lived In"},{"date":"1943","event":"Pulitzer Prize for History; Johnny Tremain published"},{"date":"1944","event":"Newbery Medal for Johnny Tremain"},{"date":"1967","event":"Dies in Worcester"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Esther Forbes","relatedWorks":["johnny-tremain"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"johnny-tremain","url":"/works/johnny-tremain/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[{"text":"In 1960 she became the first woman elected to the American Antiquarian Society.","source":{"title":"Esther Forbes (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esther_Forbes"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esther_Forbes","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"henry-ford","name":"Henry Ford","url":"/great-lives/henry-ford/","dates":"1863–1947","born":1863,"died":1947,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["titans-of-industry","inventors"],"knownFor":"Automaker whose Model T and moving assembly line put America on wheels.","bio":"Henry Ford grew up on a farm near Dearborn, Michigan, and loved taking apart watches and machines. At sixteen he went to Detroit to work as a machinist, and later became chief engineer at an Edison electric company. In 1896 he built his first car, the Quadricycle. In 1903 he founded the Ford Motor Company, and in 1908 he introduced the Model T, a simple, sturdy car that ordinary families could afford. In 1913 his Highland Park plant began using a moving assembly line, where the car moved past workers who each did one task; the time to build a car fell from about twelve hours to about ninety minutes, and the price kept dropping. In 1914 he doubled most workers' pay to five dollars a day. More than fifteen million Model Ts were sold. Ford fought hard against labor unions, and in the 1920s his newspaper published antisemitic articles, for which he later issued an apology. He also founded Greenfield Village, a museum of American life. He died in 1947.","keyDates":[{"date":"1896","event":"Builds the Quadricycle"},{"date":"1903","event":"Founds the Ford Motor Company"},{"date":"1908","event":"Model T introduced"},{"date":"1913","event":"Moving assembly line"},{"date":"1914","event":"Five-dollar day"},{"date":"1947","event":"Dies in Dearborn"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Henry Ford","relatedWorks":["ford-my-life-and-work"],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"book","title":"Who Was Henry Ford?","author":"Michael Burgan","isbn13":"9780448479576","publisher":"Grosset & Dunlap","year":2014,"format":""},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"ford-my-life-and-work","url":"/works/ford-my-life-and-work/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[{"text":"Driving a car of his own design on the frozen Lake St. Clair, he set a new land speed record of 91.3 miles per hour, covering a mile in 39.4 seconds.","source":{"title":"Henry Ford (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Ford"}},{"text":"From May 22, 1920, Ford's weekly newspaper, The Dearborn Independent, ran an antisemitic front-page series, \"The International Jew,\" based on the forged Protocols of the Elders of Zion. After Aaron Sapiro sued Ford for libel, Ford ordered the paper closed; it ceased publication at the end of 1927.","source":{"title":"Henry Ford's Anti-Semitism History (The Henry Ford)","url":"https://www.thehenryford.org/collections/explore/popular-research-topics/henry-ford-and-anti-semitism"}},{"text":"Ford signed a public apology, drafted by the attorney Louis Marshall, expressing his \"great regret\" at being seen as an enemy of Jewish people; it was published in newspapers on July 8, 1927.","source":{"title":"Antisemitism and Henry Ford's \"The International Jew\" (US Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia)","url":"https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/antisemitism-and-henry-fords-international-jew"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Raised Episcopalian and attended church as a young man; his newspaper spread religious prejudice against Jews.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Ford","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"e-m-forster","name":"E. M. Forster","url":"/great-lives/e-m-forster/","dates":"1879–1970","born":1879,"died":1970,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"English novelist and critic, author of A Room with a View, Howards End, A Passage to India and the lectures Aspects of the Novel.","bio":"Edward Morgan Forster was born in London on 1 January 1879. His father, an architect, died before Forster was two, and he was raised by his mother. After Tonbridge School he studied history and classics at King's College, Cambridge, where he met future writers such as Lytton Strachey and Leonard Woolf. After travelling in Europe he published his first novel, Where Angels Fear to Tread, in 1905, followed by The Longest Journey (1907), A Room with a View (1908) and Howards End (1910). During the First World War he served with the British Red Cross in Alexandria, Egypt, searching for missing servicemen, and in the early 1920s he worked in India as private secretary to the Maharajah of Dewas. A Passage to India (1924) was the last novel published in his lifetime. In 1927 he gave the Clark Lectures at Trinity College, Cambridge, published as Aspects of the Novel. He later lived at King's College as an honorary fellow and died in Coventry in 1970.","keyDates":[{"date":"1879","event":"Born in London"},{"date":"1905","event":"Where Angels Fear to Tread published"},{"date":"1910","event":"Howards End published"},{"date":"1924","event":"A Passage to India published"},{"date":"1927","event":"Gives the Clark Lectures, published as Aspects of the Novel"},{"date":"1970","event":"Dies in Coventry"}],"quotes":[],"author":"E. M. Forster","relatedWorks":["forster-aspects-of-the-novel"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"forster-aspects-of-the-novel","url":"/works/forster-aspects-of-the-novel/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Brought up partly by his father's strongly evangelical family; as an adult he was a humanist, publicly associated with the British Humanist Association, and set out his outlook in the essay What I Believe (1938).","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._M._Forster","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"george-fox","name":"George Fox","url":"/great-lives/george-fox/","dates":"1624–1691","born":1624,"died":1691,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["saints-reformers"],"knownFor":"English preacher who founded the Religious Society of Friends, or Quakers, teaching that the inner light of Christ is in every person.","bio":"George Fox was born in 1624 at Drayton-in-the-Clay, Leicestershire, the son of a weaver, and was apprenticed to a shoemaker. Troubled in spirit, he left home in 1643 and wandered for several years seeking counsel from clergy, finding none who satisfied him, until he became convinced that Christ himself could speak directly to the soul. From 1647 he preached that the light of Christ is within every person, rejected paid clergy, oaths and steeple-houses, and refused to remove his hat before social superiors. In 1652 at Pendle Hill and Firbank Fell in the north of England he gathered many followers, who came to be called Quakers and the Children of the Light. He was imprisoned eight times, including at Derby, Launceston, Lancaster and Scarborough. In 1669 he married Margaret Fell, a leading early Friend. He travelled to Ireland, the West Indies, the American colonies and the Netherlands, organized the Society's meetings, and dictated a Journal published in 1694. He died in London in 1691. He endured repeated imprisonment rather than abandon his preaching.","keyDates":[{"date":"1624","event":"Born in Leicestershire"},{"date":"1647","event":"Begins public preaching"},{"date":"1652","event":"Gathering at Pendle Hill and Firbank Fell"},{"date":"1669","event":"Marries Margaret Fell"},{"date":"1671–1673","event":"Travels in the West Indies and America"},{"date":"1691","event":"Dies in London"}],"quotes":[],"author":"George Fox","relatedWorks":["journal-of-john-woolman","journal-of-george-fox"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"journal-of-george-fox","url":"/works/journal-of-george-fox/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"journal-of-john-woolman","url":"/works/journal-of-john-woolman/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Founder of the Society of Friends, whose followers were first called Quakers in 1650.","source":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Appletons%27_Cyclop%C3%A6dia_of_American_Biography/Fox%2C_George","sourceName":"Appletons' Cyclopaedia of American Biography (via Wikisource)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"john-foxe","name":"John Foxe","url":"/great-lives/john-foxe/","dates":"1516/17–1587","born":1516,"died":1587,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["saints-reformers","writers-poets"],"knownFor":"English Protestant clergyman and historian whose Actes and Monuments, known as Foxe's Book of Martyrs, told the stories of Christian martyrs.","bio":"John Foxe was born in Boston, Lincolnshire, in 1516 or 1517,, and was a studious and devout boy. At Oxford he became a fellow of Magdalen College, read the church fathers and learned Hebrew. After he became a Protestant he resigned from his college in 1545 and worked as a tutor. In 1547 he married Agnes Randall; they had six children. When the Catholic Queen Mary I came to the throne in 1553, Protestants faced arrest and execution, and Foxe escaped with his wife to the Continent just ahead of the officers sent to arrest him. Living very poorly in Strasbourg, Frankfurt and Basel, he gathered accounts of Christians who had suffered for their faith. After Elizabeth I became queen he returned to England, and in 1563 the printer John Day published his huge Actes and Monuments, an account of martyrs from the early church to his own day. Friends found him a man of unworldly nature who would not use his powerful friendships to advance himself. He died in London in 1587.","keyDates":[{"date":"1516/17","event":"Born in Boston, Lincolnshire"},{"date":"1545","event":"Resigns his Oxford fellowship"},{"date":"1547","event":"Marries Agnes Randall"},{"date":"1554","event":"Flees to the Continent; Latin history of persecutions printed in Strasbourg"},{"date":"1563","event":"Actes and Monuments published by John Day"},{"date":"1570","event":"Enlarged second edition"},{"date":"1587","event":"Dies in London"}],"quotes":[],"author":"John Foxe","relatedWorks":["foxe-book-of-martyrs"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"foxe-book-of-martyrs","url":"/works/foxe-book-of-martyrs/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"English Protestant clergyman whose Book of Martyrs recounted the Protestant martyrs of his century.","source":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dictionary_of_National_Biography%2C_1885-1900/Foxe%2C_John","sourceName":"Dictionary of National Biography (1885–1900) (via Wikisource)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"francis-of-assisi","name":"Francis of Assisi","url":"/great-lives/francis-of-assisi/","dates":"1181/82–1226","born":1181,"died":1226,"era":"medieval","categories":["saints-reformers"],"knownFor":"Italian friar who embraced poverty, founded the Franciscans and loved all creation.","bio":"Francesco di Bernardone was the son of a rich cloth merchant in Assisi, Italy. As a young man he enjoyed fine clothes and parties and dreamed of becoming a knight, but after being held prisoner for a year in a war with nearby Perugia and suffering a long illness, he began to change. He embraced a man with leprosy, whom he had once avoided, and in the ruined church of San Damiano he heard Christ on the crucifix telling him to rebuild his church. When his angry father took him before the bishop, Francis gave back even his clothes. He began living in complete poverty, preaching and caring for the sick, and others joined him. In 1209 Pope Innocent III approved his simple rule, the start of the Order of Friars Minor. With Clare of Assisi he founded an order for women. In 1219 he crossed the lines during the Fifth Crusade to preach to the sultan of Egypt. He made the first Christmas manger scene at Greccio, wrote the Canticle of the Sun praising God for Brother Sun and Sister Moon, and died in 1226.","keyDates":[{"date":"1202","event":"Taken prisoner in war with Perugia"},{"date":"1206","event":"Renounces his inheritance"},{"date":"1209","event":"Pope approves his rule"},{"date":"1219","event":"Visits the sultan of Egypt"},{"date":"1223","event":"First Christmas crib at Greccio"},{"date":"1226","event":"Dies at Assisi"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["early-franciscan-sources","golden-legend-popular-saints"],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"book","title":"Saint Francis of Assisi","author":"Demi","isbn13":"9781937786045","publisher":"Wisdom Tales","year":2012,"format":""},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"early-franciscan-sources","url":"/works/early-franciscan-sources/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"golden-legend-popular-saints","url":"/works/golden-legend-popular-saints/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[{"text":"At Greccio around 1220 he celebrated Christmas by setting up the first known Nativity scene, or crèche.","source":{"title":"Francis of Assisi (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_of_Assisi"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Founder of the Franciscan Order; a Catholic saint.","source":"https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06221a.htm","sourceName":"Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"viktor-e-frankl","name":"Viktor E. Frankl","url":"/great-lives/viktor-e-frankl/","dates":"1905–1997","born":1905,"died":1997,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["physicians-medicine","philosophers"],"knownFor":"Austrian psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor, author of Man's Search for Meaning.","bio":"Viktor Frankl was born in Vienna in 1905 into a Jewish family. As a teenager he corresponded with Sigmund Freud, and he studied medicine at the University of Vienna, specialising in neurology and psychiatry. As a student he organised youth counselling centres to address the high number of teenage suicides. The Nazi annexation of Austria in 1938 limited his work, and from 1940 he worked at Vienna's Rothschild Hospital. In 1942, nine months after his marriage to Tilly, he and his family were sent to the Theresienstadt camp, where his father died. In 1944 they were taken to Auschwitz, where his mother and brother were murdered; Tilly later died at Bergen-Belsen. Frankl survived four camps. After the war he became head of the neurology department of the Vienna Polyclinic hospital. In 1946 he published the book known in English as Man's Search for Meaning, which describes life in the camps and argues that people can endure great suffering if they find meaning in their lives. His approach to therapy is called logotherapy. He married Eleonore Schwindt in 1947. He died in Vienna in 1997.","keyDates":[{"date":"1905","event":"Born in Vienna"},{"date":"1942","event":"Deported to Theresienstadt"},{"date":"1944","event":"Transported to Auschwitz"},{"date":"1946","event":"Man's Search for Meaning published"},{"date":"1997","event":"Dies in Vienna"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Viktor E. Frankl","relatedWorks":["mans-search-for-meaning"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"mans-search-for-meaning","url":"/works/mans-search-for-meaning/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Born into a Jewish family; his personal beliefs are not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Frankl","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"benjamin-franklin","name":"Benjamin Franklin","url":"/great-lives/benjamin-franklin/","dates":"1706–1790","born":1706,"died":1790,"era":"18th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders","inventors","scientists-mathematicians"],"knownFor":"Printer, scientist, inventor and diplomat; signer of the Declaration and the Constitution.","bio":"Benjamin Franklin was born in Boston, the fifteenth of seventeen children of a candle and soap maker. He left school at ten, was apprenticed to his brother, a printer, and at seventeen ran away to Philadelphia, where he built a successful printing business. His Poor Richard's Almanack was famous for its sayings. He helped found a lending library, a fire company, a hospital and the academy that became the University of Pennsylvania. His experiments showed that lightning is electricity, and he invented the lightning rod, bifocal glasses and an efficient stove, refusing to patent them. He spent many years in London as an agent for the colonies, then helped edit the Declaration of Independence. As ambassador to France he won the alliance that helped win the Revolution, and he helped negotiate the peace. At eighty-one he was the oldest delegate at the Constitutional Convention. Franklin owned enslaved servants for part of his life, but in old age he became president of an antislavery society. His Autobiography is a classic.","keyDates":[{"date":"1706","event":"Born in Boston"},{"date":"1732","event":"First Poor Richard's Almanack"},{"date":"1752","event":"Kite experiment on lightning"},{"date":"1778","event":"Wins the French alliance"},{"date":"1787","event":"Delegate to the Constitutional Convention"},{"date":"1790","event":"Dies in Philadelphia"}],"quotes":[{"text":"early to bed, and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise","work":"franklin-autobiography-and-poor-richard","location":"The Way to Wealth","verified":true}],"author":"Benjamin Franklin","relatedWorks":["franklin-autobiography-and-poor-richard","the-founding-documents"],"reading":[{"band":"K-2","kind":"book","title":"I am Benjamin Franklin","author":"Brad Meltzer","isbn13":"9780525555919","publisher":"Paperback","year":2020,"format":""},{"band":"3-5","kind":"book","title":"What's the Big Idea, Ben Franklin?","author":"Jean Fritz","isbn13":"9780698113725","publisher":"Putnam Juvenile","year":1996,"format":"paperback"},{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"franklin-autobiography-and-poor-richard","url":"/works/franklin-autobiography-and-poor-richard/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"book","title":"Benjamin Franklin: An American Life","author":"Walter Isaacson","isbn13":"9780743258074","publisher":"Simon & Schuster","year":2004,"format":""},{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-founding-documents","url":"/works/the-founding-documents/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"As a boy growing up beside the Charles River in Boston, he remembered being 'generally the leader among the boys'.","source":{"title":"Benjamin Franklin (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin"}},{"text":"On 27 August 1783, in Paris, he watched the world's first hydrogen balloon flight.","source":{"title":"Benjamin Franklin (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin"}}],"records":[{"text":"He was the only person to sign all three of the Declaration of Independence, the Treaty of Paris with Britain, and the Constitution.","source":{"title":"Benjamin Franklin (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Raised in a Puritan family; as a young man he adopted deism, and in his autobiography he called himself a deist while still considering himself a Christian.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"rosalind-franklin","name":"Rosalind Franklin","url":"/great-lives/rosalind-franklin/","dates":"1920–1958","born":1920,"died":1958,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["scientists-mathematicians"],"knownFor":"English chemist whose X-ray photographs of DNA, including Photo 51, were crucial evidence for the double helix.","bio":"Rosalind Elsie Franklin was born in London on 25 July 1920 into a prominent Jewish family. She studied chemistry at Cambridge and during the Second World War earned a doctorate for research on coal. From 1947 to 1950 she worked in Paris, where she mastered X-ray crystallography. In 1951 she joined King's College London to study DNA. With her student Raymond Gosling she obtained sharp X-ray diffraction images of DNA fibres, including the image known as Photo 51 (1952), and showed that DNA exists in two forms and that its phosphate backbone lies on the outside. Without her knowledge, her colleague Maurice Wilkins showed Photo 51 to James Watson, and her unpublished data reached Francis Crick through a research report. These helped Watson and Crick build their double-helix model, published in Nature on 25 April 1953, alongside papers from Wilkins's group and from Franklin and Gosling. At Birkbeck College she then led important work on the structure of viruses. She died of ovarian cancer on 16 April 1958, aged 37. The 1962 Nobel Prize went to Watson, Crick and Wilkins; the prize is not awarded posthumously.","keyDates":[{"date":"1920","event":"Born in London on 25 July"},{"date":"1947–1950","event":"Learns X-ray crystallography in Paris"},{"date":"1951","event":"Joins King's College London"},{"date":"1952","event":"Photo 51 taken with Raymond Gosling"},{"date":"1953","event":"Franklin and Gosling paper published in Nature, 25 April"},{"date":"1958","event":"Dies in London on 16 April"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["watson-crick-molecular-structure-of-nucleic-acids"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"watson-crick-molecular-structure-of-nucleic-acids","url":"/works/watson-crick-molecular-structure-of-nucleic-acids/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Born into a Jewish family; she did not hold religious faith.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosalind_Franklin","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["The exact date in May 1952 of Photo 51 is not given."]},{"slug":"james-george-frazer","name":"James George Frazer","url":"/great-lives/james-george-frazer/","dates":"1854–1941","born":1854,"died":1941,"era":"19th-century","categories":["scientists-mathematicians","writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Scottish anthropologist and classicist, author of The Golden Bough, a comparative study of myth, magic and religion.","bio":"James George Frazer was born in Glasgow in 1854 and studied at the University of Glasgow and then at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he became a fellow in 1879 and remained for most of his life. Trained in the classics, he became interested in anthropology after reading the work of Edward Burnett Tylor. He never did fieldwork himself, but he corresponded with missionaries, colonial officials and travelers around the world and read widely in their reports. His great work, The Golden Bough, first published in two volumes in 1890 and later expanded to twelve, begins with an ancient Roman custom, the priest-king of the sacred grove at Nemi, and compares myths, rituals and beliefs from many cultures. Frazer argued that human thought had developed in stages, from magic to religion to science. A shorter one-volume edition appeared in 1922. The book was widely read and influenced writers such as T. S. Eliot. Frazer also translated the Greek writer Pausanias. He was knighted in 1914 and died in Cambridge in 1941.","keyDates":[{"date":"1854","event":"Born in Glasgow"},{"date":"1879","event":"Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge"},{"date":"1890","event":"The Golden Bough first published"},{"date":"1914","event":"Knighted"},{"date":"1922","event":"One-volume edition of The Golden Bough"},{"date":"1941","event":"Dies in Cambridge"}],"quotes":[],"author":"James George Frazer","relatedWorks":["frazer-the-golden-bough"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"frazer-the-golden-bough","url":"/works/frazer-the-golden-bough/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Commonly interpreted as an atheist because of his criticism of Christianity.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_George_Frazer","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"frederick-the-great","name":"Frederick the Great","url":"/great-lives/frederick-the-great/","dates":"1712–1786","born":1712,"died":1786,"era":"18th-century","categories":["kings-queens-emperors","military-leaders"],"knownFor":"King of Prussia, a brilliant general and patron of the Enlightenment.","bio":"Frederick II of Prussia loved music, French books and philosophy as a young man, to the fury of his strict, soldierly father, Frederick William I. When eighteen-year-old Frederick tried to run away, his father imprisoned him and forced him to watch the execution of his friend and fellow runaway. Frederick became king in 1740 and almost at once invaded the rich Austrian province of Silesia, starting a long rivalry with Maria Theresa. In the Seven Years' War, from 1756 to 1763, Prussia fought Austria, France and Russia at once and came close to destruction, but Frederick's skill and stubbornness, and a lucky change of ruler in Russia, saved it. He wrote poetry and histories, played the flute and composed music, invited Voltaire to his palace of Sanssouci, ended torture in most cases, allowed religious toleration, and drained marshes for farming. He called himself the first servant of the state. He took part in the first partition of Poland in 1772 and died in 1786.","keyDates":[{"date":"1730","event":"Imprisoned after trying to flee"},{"date":"1740","event":"Becomes king; invades Silesia"},{"date":"1756–1763","event":"Seven Years' War"},{"date":"1772","event":"First partition of Poland"},{"date":"1786","event":"Dies at Potsdam"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Frederick the Great","relatedWorks":["instructions-for-his-generals"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"instructions-for-his-generals","url":"/works/instructions-for-his-generals/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"His people nicknamed him 'Old Fritz'.","source":{"title":"Frederick the Great (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_the_Great"}},{"text":"He is buried at his favourite palace, Sanssouci in Potsdam.","source":{"title":"Frederick the Great (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_the_Great"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Unlike his devoutly Calvinist father, he was a religious skeptic and has been described as a deist; as king he allowed religious freedom.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_the_Great","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"emmanuel-fremiet","name":"Emmanuel Frémiet","url":"/great-lives/emmanuel-fremiet/","dates":"1824–1910","born":1824,"died":1910,"era":"19th-century","categories":["artists-composers-architects"],"knownFor":"French sculptor of animals and of the gilded equestrian Joan of Arc at the Place des Pyramides in Paris.","bio":"Emmanuel Frémiet was born in Paris on 6 December 1824 and trained under his uncle, the sculptor François Rude. He made his name with closely observed bronzes of animals and with public monuments. His equestrian statue of Joan of Arc, in gilded bronze, was inaugurated at the Place des Pyramides in Paris in 1874; Frémiet later revised the figure, and the present statue dates from 1899. Joan is shown in armor, holding her banner, a compact image of courage and vocation that became one of the best-known modern monuments to her in France. Frémiet also taught at the Natural History Museum in Paris and produced many other public works. He died in Paris on 10 September 1910.","keyDates":[{"date":"1824","event":"Born in Paris, 6 December"},{"date":"1874","event":"Equestrian Joan of Arc inaugurated at the Place des Pyramides"},{"date":"1899","event":"Installs his revised Joan of Arc at the same site"},{"date":"1910","event":"Dies in Paris, 10 September"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["the-trial-of-joan-of-arc","shaw-saint-joan"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-trial-of-joan-of-arc","url":"/works/the-trial-of-joan-of-arc/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"shaw-saint-joan","url":"/works/shaw-saint-joan/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":null,"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"daniel-chester-french","name":"Daniel Chester French","url":"/great-lives/daniel-chester-french/","dates":"1850–1931","born":1850,"died":1931,"era":"19th-century","categories":["artists-composers-architects"],"knownFor":"American sculptor of the Minute Man at Concord and of the seated Abraham Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial.","bio":"Daniel Chester French was born in Exeter, New Hampshire, on 20 April 1850 and grew up in Massachusetts. He studied sculpture in Boston, New York, and briefly in Italy, and in 1875, still a young man, he completed the Minute Man for Concord, Massachusetts, a bronze figure of a militiaman at the outbreak of the Revolution. Over a long career he made statues and memorials for town greens, cemeteries, and public buildings across the United States. His best-known work is the 19-foot seated statue of Abraham Lincoln for the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., dedicated on 30 May 1922. The National Park Service notes that he studied photographs, eyewitness accounts, and casts of Lincoln’s hands in order to show both strength and compassion. French’s studio at Chesterwood, in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, is preserved. He died on 7 October 1931.","keyDates":[{"date":"1850","event":"Born in Exeter, New Hampshire, 20 April"},{"date":"1875","event":"Minute Man unveiled at Concord, Massachusetts"},{"date":"1922","event":"Seated Lincoln dedicated in the Lincoln Memorial, 30 May"},{"date":"1931","event":"Dies, 7 October"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["gettysburg-address","lincoln-second-inaugural-address"],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"library","work":"gettysburg-address","url":"/works/gettysburg-address/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"lincoln-second-inaugural-address","url":"/works/lincoln-second-inaugural-address/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":null,"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"sigmund-freud","name":"Sigmund Freud","url":"/great-lives/sigmund-freud/","dates":"1856–1939","born":1856,"died":1939,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["physicians-medicine"],"knownFor":"Austrian neurologist who founded psychoanalysis.","bio":"Sigmund Freud was born in Freiberg, Moravia, now Příbor in the Czech Republic, to a Jewish family that moved to Vienna when he was four. He studied medicine at the University of Vienna and did research on the nervous system. In Paris he studied with Jean-Martin Charcot, who used hypnosis to treat patients with hysteria. With his colleague Josef Breuer he developed a talking cure, in which patients spoke freely about their memories and feelings. Freud came to believe that much of the mind is unconscious, that forgotten experiences from childhood shape adult life, and that dreams and slips of the tongue reveal hidden wishes. He set these ideas out in The Interpretation of Dreams, published in 1900, and developed psychoanalysis, a method of treatment through free association and the analysis of dreams. His followers, including Carl Jung and Alfred Adler, later broke with him. His ideas were highly influential in the twentieth century and also widely criticized as unscientific. When the Nazis took over Austria in 1938, he fled to London, where he died in 1939. Four of his sisters died in Nazi camps.","keyDates":[{"date":"1856","event":"Born in Freiberg, Moravia"},{"date":"1885","event":"Studies with Charcot in Paris"},{"date":"1895","event":"Studies on Hysteria with Breuer"},{"date":"1900","event":"The Interpretation of Dreams"},{"date":"1938","event":"Flees to London"},{"date":"1939","event":"Dies in London"}],"quotes":[{"text":"The dream is the guardian of sleep, not the disturber of it","work":"the-interpretation-of-dreams","location":"Chapter V","verified":true}],"author":"Sigmund Freud","relatedWorks":["the-interpretation-of-dreams","studies-on-hysteria","civilization-and-its-discontents","freud-general-introduction-to-psychoanalysis","freud-beyond-the-pleasure-principle","freud-group-psychology","freud-the-ego-and-the-id","freud-reflections-on-war-and-death"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-interpretation-of-dreams","url":"/works/the-interpretation-of-dreams/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"studies-on-hysteria","url":"/works/studies-on-hysteria/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"civilization-and-its-discontents","url":"/works/civilization-and-its-discontents/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"freud-general-introduction-to-psychoanalysis","url":"/works/freud-general-introduction-to-psychoanalysis/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"freud-beyond-the-pleasure-principle","url":"/works/freud-beyond-the-pleasure-principle/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"freud-group-psychology","url":"/works/freud-group-psychology/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"freud-the-ego-and-the-id","url":"/works/freud-the-ego-and-the-id/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"freud-reflections-on-war-and-death","url":"/works/freud-reflections-on-war-and-death/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Born Jewish; he left Nazi-annexed Austria for England in 1938.","source":"https://iep.utm.edu/freud/","sourceName":"Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy","documented":true},"furtherReading":[{"series":"Very Short Introductions","title":"Freud: A Very Short Introduction","author":"Anthony Storr","publisher":"Oxford University Press","year":2001,"isbn13":"9780192854551","url":"https://bookshop.org/a/130650/9780192854551"}],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"milton-friedman","name":"Milton Friedman","url":"/great-lives/milton-friedman/","dates":"1912–2006","born":1912,"died":2006,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["philosophers"],"knownFor":"American economist and Nobel laureate, a leading advocate of free markets and author of Capitalism and Freedom.","bio":"Milton Friedman was born in 1912 in Brooklyn, New York, the youngest of four children and only son of Jewish immigrants who worked as dry goods merchants. He grew up in Rahway, New Jersey, and studied at Rutgers University and the University of Chicago, where he met his future wife, the economist Rose Director; they married in 1938 and later wrote books together. In the 1930s and 1940s he worked for the federal government. He then taught at the University of Chicago for thirty years, becoming the leader of the 'Chicago School' of economics. He argued that the money supply strongly influences inflation and economic cycles, and with Anna Schwartz he wrote A Monetary History of the United States (1963). In Capitalism and Freedom (1962) he argued that economic freedom is necessary for political freedom and proposed ideas such as school vouchers and a flexible exchange rate. He won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1976. With Rose he wrote Free to Choose (1980), also a television series. He died in San Francisco in 2006.","keyDates":[{"date":"1912","event":"Born in Brooklyn, New York"},{"date":"1938","event":"Marries Rose Director"},{"date":"1962","event":"Capitalism and Freedom published"},{"date":"1963","event":"A Monetary History of the United States"},{"date":"1976","event":"Nobel Prize in Economics"},{"date":"1980","event":"Free to Choose"},{"date":"2006","event":"Dies in San Francisco"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Milton Friedman","relatedWorks":["friedman-capitalism-and-freedom"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"friedman-capitalism-and-freedom","url":"/works/friedman-capitalism-and-freedom/"}],"majorWorks":[{"title":"Essays in Positive Economics","year":"1953","note":"Includes his essay on the method of economics","work":null,"url":null},{"title":"A Theory of the Consumption Function","year":"1957","note":"Introduced the permanent income hypothesis","work":null,"url":null},{"title":"Capitalism and Freedom","year":"1962","note":null,"work":"friedman-capitalism-and-freedom","url":"/works/friedman-capitalism-and-freedom/"},{"title":"A Monetary History of the United States, 1867–1960","year":"1963","note":"With Anna J. Schwartz; blamed the Federal Reserve for deepening the Great Depression","work":null,"url":null},{"title":"Free to Choose","year":"1980","note":"With Rose Friedman; companion to their television series","work":null,"url":null}],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Raised by moderately observant Jewish parents; after an intense religious period in childhood he became an agnostic.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Friedman","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"robert-frost","name":"Robert Frost","url":"/great-lives/robert-frost/","dates":"1874–1963","born":1874,"died":1963,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American poet of rural New England, author of The Road Not Taken and Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, four times winner of the Pulitzer Prize.","bio":"Robert Frost was born in San Francisco in 1874. After his father's death in 1885 the family moved to Massachusetts, near his grandfather's home in Lawrence. He studied briefly at Dartmouth College and later at Harvard, but left both without a degree. He married Elinor White, his high-school co-valedictorian, in 1895, and they had six children. For years he farmed in Derry, New Hampshire, and taught school, while writing poems that magazines rarely accepted. In 1912 the family moved to England, where his first books, A Boy's Will (1913) and North of Boston (1914), were published and praised, and he became friends with the poet Edward Thomas. He returned to America in 1915 as a well-known poet. His poems, often set in rural New England and written in plain, conversational language, include 'Mending Wall', 'Birches', 'The Road Not Taken' and 'Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening'. He taught for many years at Amherst College and won the Pulitzer Prize four times. In 1961 he recited a poem at the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy. He died in Boston in 1963.","keyDates":[{"date":"1874","event":"Born in San Francisco"},{"date":"1895","event":"Marries Elinor White"},{"date":"1912","event":"Moves to England"},{"date":"1913","event":"A Boy's Will published"},{"date":"1915","event":"Returns to America"},{"date":"1924","event":"First Pulitzer Prize"},{"date":"1961","event":"Speaks at Kennedy's inauguration"},{"date":"1963","event":"Dies in Boston"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Robert Frost","relatedWorks":["frost-early-poems","the-road-not-taken"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"frost-early-poems","url":"/works/frost-early-poems/"},{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-road-not-taken","url":"/works/the-road-not-taken/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"He never graduated from college but received more than 40 honorary degrees.","source":{"title":"Robert Frost (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Frost"}}],"records":[{"text":"He won a record four Pulitzer Prizes for poetry, though his first book did not come out until he was about 40.","source":{"title":"Robert Frost (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Frost"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Frost","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"jakob-fugger","name":"Jakob Fugger","url":"/great-lives/jakob-fugger/","dates":"1459–1525","born":1459,"died":1525,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["titans-of-industry"],"knownFor":"Augsburg merchant and banker, perhaps the richest man of his age, who financed emperors.","bio":"Jakob Fugger was born in Augsburg, Germany, into a family of weavers who had become successful cloth merchants. As a younger son he was first meant for the Church, but he joined the family business and trained in Venice, learning double-entry bookkeeping. He lent money to Archduke Sigismund of Tyrol and later to the Habsburg emperor Maximilian I, receiving in return the output of silver and copper mines in Tyrol and Hungary, and the Fuggers came to dominate the European metal trade. His firm also handled payments for the papacy, including money from the sale of indulgences, which helped spark Luther's protest. In 1519 Jakob lent most of the huge sum the young Charles of Spain used to win election as Holy Roman Emperor, and later reminded Charles in a letter that he could not have gained the crown without him. In Augsburg he founded the Fuggerei, a housing settlement for poor working families, whose rent of one Rhenish guilder a year has never changed; it is still in use today. He died in 1525.","keyDates":[{"date":"1459","event":"Born in Augsburg"},{"date":"1490s","event":"Gains control of Tyrolean silver and copper"},{"date":"1516","event":"Founds the Fuggerei"},{"date":"1519","event":"Finances the election of Charles V"},{"date":"1525","event":"Dies in Augsburg"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["luther-selected-sermons-and-treatises"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"book","title":"The Richest Man Who Ever Lived","author":"Greg Steinmetz","isbn13":"9781451688566","publisher":"Simon & Schuster","year":2016,"format":"paperback"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[{"text":"The Fuggerei, the housing he founded in Augsburg in 1521, is the world's oldest social housing complex still in use.","source":{"title":"Jakob Fugger (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jakob_Fugger"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Remained Catholic when Augsburg turned toward the Protestant Reformation.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jakob_Fugger","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"robert-fulton","name":"Robert Fulton","url":"/great-lives/robert-fulton/","dates":"1765–1815","born":1765,"died":1815,"era":"19th-century","categories":["inventors"],"knownFor":"American engineer who built the first commercially successful steamboat.","bio":"Robert Fulton was born in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. As a young man he worked in Philadelphia as a painter of miniature portraits, and in 1787 he went to London to study painting. There he became interested in canals and engineering. In France he designed one of the first working submarines, the Nautilus, which he offered to Napoleon's government and then to Britain. In Paris he met Robert Livingston, the American minister to France, who held rights to steam navigation on New York's rivers, and they became partners. Back in New York, Fulton built a steamboat using an engine from Boulton and Watt in England. In August 1807 his boat, known as the Clermont, steamed up the Hudson River from New York City to Albany, about 150 miles, in thirty-two hours, while sailing sloops took days. Regular passenger service began soon after, and steamboats spread across America's rivers. Fulton went on to design a steam warship for the defense of New York harbor during the War of 1812. He died of illness in 1815.","keyDates":[{"date":"1787","event":"Goes to London to study painting"},{"date":"1800","event":"Builds the submarine Nautilus in France"},{"date":"1807","event":"Steamboat voyage up the Hudson to Albany"},{"date":"1815","event":"Dies in New York"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented; he is buried in the cemetery of Trinity Church (Episcopal) in New York.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Fulton","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"galen","name":"Galen","url":"/great-lives/galen/","dates":"129–c. 216","born":129,"died":216,"era":"ancient","categories":["physicians-medicine"],"knownFor":"Greek physician in Rome whose writings dominated medicine for 1,400 years.","bio":"Galen was born in Pergamon, a wealthy Greek city in Asia Minor, the son of an architect. According to Galen, his father had a dream in which the god Asclepius told him his son should study medicine. He studied in Smyrna, Corinth and Alexandria, then returned home as physician to the gladiators, which taught him much about wounds. Around 162 he moved to Rome, where he won fame by public demonstrations of anatomy, and he became physician to the emperor Marcus Aurelius and his son Commodus. Because dissecting human bodies was not allowed, he dissected animals such as Barbary apes and pigs, and some of his conclusions about human anatomy were therefore wrong. Still, he showed that arteries carry blood, not air, and that the brain controls the voice and nerves. He wrote hundreds of works, in Greek, on anatomy, physiology, drugs and the practice of medicine, and argued that the best physician must also be a philosopher. His writings, built on Hippocrates and the theory of four humors, were the foundation of medicine in Europe and the Islamic world until Vesalius.","keyDates":[{"date":"129","event":"Born in Pergamon"},{"date":"157","event":"Physician to the gladiators"},{"date":"c. 162","event":"Moves to Rome"},{"date":"169","event":"Physician to the imperial family"},{"date":"c. 216","event":"Dies"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Galen","relatedWorks":["galen-selected-works","hippocratic-writings","vesalius-on-the-fabric-of-the-human-body"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"galen-selected-works","url":"/works/galen-selected-works/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"A crater on the Moon is named after him.","source":{"title":"Galen (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galen"}}],"records":[{"text":"He was the first to show that the voice is made by the larynx (voice box), and the first to recognise the difference between dark blood in veins and bright blood in arteries.","source":{"title":"Galen (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galen"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented beyond the Greek religion of his time; he said his father sent him to study medicine after a dream of the healing god Asclepius.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galen","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"galileo-galilei","name":"Galileo Galilei","url":"/great-lives/galileo-galilei/","dates":"1564–1642","born":1564,"died":1642,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["scientists-mathematicians"],"knownFor":"Italian astronomer and physicist who turned the telescope on the sky and studied motion.","bio":"Galileo Galilei was born in Pisa, the son of a musician. He studied medicine but turned to mathematics and became a professor at Pisa and then at Padua. He studied falling bodies and swinging pendulums, using careful experiments and mathematics to describe motion. In 1609, hearing of a Dutch spyglass, he built his own telescopes and turned them on the sky. He saw mountains on the Moon, countless stars in the Milky Way, four moons circling Jupiter, and the phases of Venus, which he published in The Starry Messenger in 1610. These discoveries convinced him that Copernicus was right that the Earth moves around the Sun. In 1616 Church authorities ordered him not to defend that view. His Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems of 1632 seemed to mock the pope's position, and in 1633 he was tried by the Inquisition, forced to recant, and kept under house arrest for the rest of his life. There, though going blind, he wrote Two New Sciences, his greatest work on motion. He died in 1642.","keyDates":[{"date":"1564","event":"Born in Pisa"},{"date":"1609","event":"Builds his first telescope"},{"date":"1610","event":"Publishes The Starry Messenger"},{"date":"1632","event":"Publishes the Dialogue"},{"date":"1633","event":"Tried by the Inquisition"},{"date":"1642","event":"Dies at Arcetri"}],"quotes":[{"text":"for two truths can never contradict each other.","work":"galileo-selected-writings","location":"Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina","verified":true}],"author":"Galileo Galilei","relatedWorks":["galileo-selected-writings","copernicus-on-the-revolutions","galileo-two-new-sciences"],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"book","title":"Who Was Galileo?","author":"Patricia Demuth","isbn13":"9780448479859","publisher":"Paperback","year":2015,"format":""},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"galileo-selected-writings","url":"/works/galileo-selected-writings/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"book","title":"Galileo's Daughter","author":"Dava Sobel","isbn13":"9780802779656","publisher":"Bloomsbury Publishing USA","year":2011,"format":""},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"galileo-two-new-sciences","url":"/works/galileo-two-new-sciences/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"His advocacy of Copernicanism led to his condemnation by the Catholic Inquisition.","source":"https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/galileo/","sourceName":"Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy","documented":true},"furtherReading":[{"series":"Very Short Introductions","title":"Galileo: A Very Short Introduction","author":"Stillman Drake","publisher":"Oxford University Press","year":2001,"isbn13":null,"url":null}],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"vasco-da-gama","name":"Vasco da Gama","url":"/great-lives/vasco-da-gama/","dates":"c. 1469–1524","born":1469,"died":1524,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["explorers"],"knownFor":"Portuguese navigator who opened the sea route from Europe around Africa to India.","bio":"Vasco da Gama was born in Sines, on the coast of Portugal, the son of a minor noble. For decades Portuguese sailors had been working their way down the coast of Africa, and in 1488 Bartolomeu Dias rounded its southern tip. In July 1497, King Manuel I sent da Gama with four ships to reach India by sea. He swung far out into the South Atlantic to catch favorable winds, rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and sailed up the east African coast. At Malindi he found an experienced pilot who guided the fleet across the Indian Ocean, and in May 1498 he reached Calicut on India's southwest coast. He reached Lisbon in 1499 with spices worth far more than the voyage cost. On a second voyage in 1502 he used brutal force against Arab and Indian ships and the city of Calicut. The sea route made Portugal rich and began centuries of European trade and empire in Asia. In 1524 he was sent to India as viceroy and died there that year.","keyDates":[{"date":"1497","event":"Sails from Lisbon"},{"date":"1498","event":"Reaches Calicut, India"},{"date":"1499","event":"Returns to Lisbon"},{"date":"1502","event":"Second voyage"},{"date":"1524","event":"Viceroy of India; dies at Cochin"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"A crater on the Moon, the city of Vasco da Gama in Goa, India, and several football clubs are named after him.","source":{"title":"Vasco da Gama (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasco_da_Gama"}}],"records":[{"text":"His first voyage (1497–1499) was the first to link Europe and Asia by sea around the southern tip of Africa.","source":{"title":"Vasco da Gama (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasco_da_Gama"}},{"text":"His ships sailed more than 10,000 kilometres of open ocean without sighting land, by far the longest such journey made up to that time.","source":{"title":"Vasco da Gama (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasco_da_Gama"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasco_da_Gama","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"mahatma-gandhi","name":"Mahatma Gandhi","url":"/great-lives/mahatma-gandhi/","dates":"1869–1948","born":1869,"died":1948,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders","saints-reformers"],"knownFor":"Leader of India's independence movement through nonviolent resistance.","bio":"Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born in Porbandar, western India, and studied law in London. In 1893 he went to South Africa to work on a legal case, and after being thrown off a train for sitting in a first-class carriage reserved for whites, he began organizing the Indian community against discriminatory laws. There he developed satyagraha, meaning holding firmly to truth: resisting unjust laws openly and nonviolently, and accepting the punishment. Returning to India in 1915, he became the leader of the Indian National Congress. He lived simply, spun his own cloth, and urged Indians to boycott British goods. In 1930 he led the Salt March to the sea to make salt in defiance of a British tax. He was jailed many times and fasted to call for peace between Hindus and Muslims and an end to the mistreatment of the people called untouchables. India won independence in 1947 but was divided into India and Pakistan amid terrible violence. In January 1948 a Hindu extremist shot Gandhi dead in Delhi.","keyDates":[{"date":"1869","event":"Born in Porbandar"},{"date":"1893","event":"Goes to South Africa"},{"date":"1915","event":"Returns to India"},{"date":"1930","event":"Salt March"},{"date":"1947","event":"Indian independence"},{"date":"1948","event":"Assassinated in Delhi"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["sermons-and-letter-from-birmingham-jail"],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"book","title":"Who Was Gandhi?","author":"Dana Meachen Rau","isbn13":"9780448482354","publisher":"Grosset & Dunlap","year":2014,"format":""},{"band":"3-5","kind":"book","title":"Gandhi","author":"Demi","isbn13":"9780689841491","publisher":"Margaret McElderry Books","year":2001,"format":""}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Born and raised a Hindu; his faith shaped his practice of nonviolence.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahatma_Gandhi","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[{"series":"Very Short Introductions","title":"Gandhi: A Very Short Introduction","author":"Bhikhu Parekh","publisher":"Oxford University Press","year":2001,"isbn13":"9780192854575","url":"https://bookshop.org/a/130650/9780192854575"}],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"ruth-stiles-gannett","name":"Ruth Stiles Gannett","url":"/great-lives/ruth-stiles-gannett/","dates":"1923–2024","born":1923,"died":2024,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American author of My Father's Dragon and its two sequels.","bio":"Ruth Stiles Gannett was born in 1923. She attended the City and Country School in Greenwich Village, where, she later recalled, children were encouraged to write for fun, and then the George School and Vassar College, where she earned a degree in chemistry in 1944. After college she worked in Boston at a hospital and a radiation laboratory before returning to her parents' home, where she finished her first book. My Father's Dragon (1948) tells of a boy who sets off to rescue a baby dragon held captive on an island. It was a runner-up for the Newbery Medal and was followed by Elmer and the Dragon (1950) and The Dragons of Blueland (1951). The books were illustrated by her stepmother, Ruth Chrisman Gannett, and have been translated into fourteen languages. In 1947 she married the artist and calligrapher H. Peter Kahn, who designed the books' typography, and they had seven daughters. She lived for many years in Trumansburg, New York, near Cornell University. She died in 2024, aged 100.","keyDates":[{"date":"1923","event":"Born"},{"date":"1944","event":"Graduates from Vassar College"},{"date":"1947","event":"Marries H. Peter Kahn"},{"date":"1948","event":"My Father's Dragon published"},{"date":"1950","event":"Elmer and the Dragon published"},{"date":"1951","event":"The Dragons of Blueland published"},{"date":"2024","event":"Dies, aged 100"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Ruth Stiles Gannett","relatedWorks":["my-fathers-dragon"],"reading":[{"band":"K-2","kind":"library","work":"my-fathers-dragon","url":"/works/my-fathers-dragon/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruth_Stiles_Gannett","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"giuseppe-garibaldi","name":"Giuseppe Garibaldi","url":"/great-lives/giuseppe-garibaldi/","dates":"1807–1882","born":1807,"died":1882,"era":"19th-century","categories":["military-leaders","statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"Italian patriot and guerrilla general who led the Thousand to help unify Italy.","bio":"Giuseppe Garibaldi was born in Nice, then part of the Kingdom of Sardinia, and became a merchant sailor. He joined the movement to unite Italy, which was then divided among several states, and after a failed uprising in 1834 he was sentenced to death and fled to South America. There he fought for twelve years in wars in Brazil and Uruguay, where he met his wife Anita and his men first wore their famous red shirts. Returning to Italy in 1848, he defended the short-lived Roman Republic against the French; during the retreat Anita died. In 1860, with about a thousand volunteers, he sailed to Sicily, defeated the much larger army of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, and took Naples. He then handed his conquests to King Victor Emmanuel II, and Italy was proclaimed a kingdom in 1861. He later tried to take Rome, which joined Italy in 1870. He refused rewards and lived simply on the island of Caprera, where he died in 1882.","keyDates":[{"date":"1834","event":"Sentenced to death; flees abroad"},{"date":"1849","event":"Defends the Roman Republic"},{"date":"1860","event":"Expedition of the Thousand"},{"date":"1861","event":"Kingdom of Italy proclaimed"},{"date":"1882","event":"Dies on Caprera"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"He took to wearing the red shirt, poncho and hat of the South American cowboys, the gauchos, and the Italian force he raised in Uruguay became known as the Redshirts.","source":{"title":"Giuseppe Garibaldi (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giuseppe_Garibaldi"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Raised Catholic; in later life he supported Freemasonry, rejected Christianity and expressed views close to deism.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giuseppe_Garibaldi","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"elizabeth-gaskell","name":"Elizabeth Gaskell","url":"/great-lives/elizabeth-gaskell/","dates":"1810–1865","born":1810,"died":1865,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"English Victorian novelist and biographer, author of Cranford, North and South and The Life of Charlotte Brontë.","bio":"Elizabeth Stevenson was born in London in 1810. Her mother died when she was a baby, and she was raised by an aunt in Knutsford, Cheshire, a small town that later became the model for her book Cranford. In 1832 she married William Gaskell, a Unitarian minister in Manchester, then a fast-growing industrial city. The couple had several children, and after the death of their infant son in 1845 she began writing her first novel, Mary Barton (1848), about the hardships of working families in Manchester. It was published anonymously and attracted wide attention. Charles Dickens invited her to write for his magazine Household Words, where Cranford, gentle sketches of life among the ladies of a country town, first appeared. Her other novels include Ruth, about an unmarried mother, North and South and Wives and Daughters, unfinished at her death. After the death of her friend Charlotte Brontë, she wrote The Life of Charlotte Brontë (1857). She died suddenly in Hampshire in 1865.","keyDates":[{"date":"1810","event":"Born in London"},{"date":"1832","event":"Marries William Gaskell"},{"date":"1848","event":"Mary Barton published"},{"date":"1853","event":"Cranford and Ruth published"},{"date":"1857","event":"The Life of Charlotte Brontë"},{"date":"1865","event":"Dies in Hampshire"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Elizabeth Gaskell","relatedWorks":["cranford","ruth","north-and-south"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"cranford","url":"/works/cranford/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"ruth","url":"/works/ruth/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"north-and-south","url":"/works/north-and-south/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[{"name":"Elizabeth Gaskell’s House","note":"Elizabeth Gaskell lived at 84 Plymouth Grove in Manchester from 1850 to 1865. The preserved house offers school visits with Victorian rooms, object handling, and literacy activities.","url":"https://elizabethgaskellhouse.co.uk/visit/school-visits/","urlLabel":"Elizabeth Gaskell’s House — school visits"}],"faith":{"note":"A Unitarian; her husband was minister of Cross Street Unitarian Chapel, Manchester.","source":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dictionary_of_National_Biography%2C_1885-1900/Gaskell%2C_Elizabeth_Cleghorn","sourceName":"Dictionary of National Biography (1885–1900) (via Wikisource)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"antoni-gaudi","name":"Antoni Gaudí","url":"/great-lives/antoni-gaudi/","dates":"1852–1926","born":1852,"died":1926,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["artists-composers-architects"],"knownFor":"Catalan architect of the Sagrada Família, with buildings inspired by the shapes of nature.","bio":"Antoni Gaudí was born in Catalonia, Spain, the son of a coppersmith, and as a child suffered from rheumatism that kept him from playing, so he spent long hours observing nature. The wealthy industrialist Eusebi Güell became his patron, and for him Gaudí designed a palace, a park and a church crypt. His style grew from Gothic and Moorish traditions into something entirely his own, full of curving walls, twisting columns shaped like trees, and roofs covered in broken tile mosaics. He tested his designs with hanging models made of chains and weights, turned upside down to find strong arches. In Barcelona he built Casa Batlló and Casa Milà, apartment buildings with wavy fronts, and Park Güell. In 1883 he took over the design of the Basilica of the Sagrada Família, the Holy Family church, and from 1914 he worked on nothing else, living simply on the site. In June 1926 he was struck by a tram; because he was poorly dressed, he was at first taken for a beggar, and he died three days later. The Sagrada Família is still being completed.","keyDates":[{"date":"1878","event":"Graduates as an architect"},{"date":"1883","event":"Takes over the Sagrada Família"},{"date":"1900–1914","event":"Builds Park Güell"},{"date":"1904–1910","event":"Casa Batlló and Casa Milà"},{"date":"1926","event":"Dies after being struck by a tram"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"He said he learned to picture shapes in space as a boy, by looking at his father's drawings of boilers and stills.","source":{"title":"Antoni Gaudí (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoni_Gaud%C3%AD"}},{"text":"He was nicknamed 'God's Architect'.","source":{"title":"Antoni Gaudí (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoni_Gaud%C3%AD"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Devout Catholic whose faith deepened through his life; the Catholic Church declared him Venerable in 2025.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoni_Gaud%C3%AD","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"carl-friedrich-gauss","name":"Carl Friedrich Gauss","url":"/great-lives/carl-friedrich-gauss/","dates":"1777–1855","born":1777,"died":1855,"era":"19th-century","categories":["scientists-mathematicians"],"knownFor":"German mathematician called the prince of mathematicians.","bio":"Carl Friedrich Gauss was born in Brunswick, Germany, to a poor family; his father was a laborer and his mother could not read. A famous story says that as a schoolboy he quickly added the numbers from one to a hundred by pairing them. The Duke of Brunswick paid for his education. At nineteen he showed how to construct a regular seventeen-sided polygon with only a compass and straightedge, a problem unsolved since ancient times, and he asked that the figure be carved on his tomb. In 1801, at twenty-four, he published Disquisitiones Arithmeticae, which laid the foundations of modern number theory. That same year he calculated the orbit of the newly discovered dwarf planet Ceres, allowing astronomers to find it again after it disappeared behind the Sun. He became director of the observatory at Göttingen, where he stayed for the rest of his life. He also worked on surveying, the shape of the Earth, magnetism, and with Wilhelm Weber built an early electric telegraph. He published only what he considered perfect. He died in Göttingen in 1855.","keyDates":[{"date":"1777","event":"Born in Brunswick"},{"date":"1796","event":"Constructs the seventeen-sided polygon"},{"date":"1801","event":"Disquisitiones Arithmeticae; predicts the orbit of Ceres"},{"date":"1807","event":"Director of the Göttingen observatory"},{"date":"1833","event":"Builds a telegraph with Weber"},{"date":"1855","event":"Dies in Göttingen"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"More than 100 ideas in mathematics and science are named after him.","source":{"title":"Carl Friedrich Gauss (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Friedrich_Gauss"}},{"text":"His favourite English author was Walter Scott.","source":{"title":"Carl Friedrich Gauss (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Friedrich_Gauss"}}],"records":[{"text":"He worked out a version of the fast Fourier transform, a key method in modern computing, about 160 years before it was rediscovered.","source":{"title":"Carl Friedrich Gauss (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Friedrich_Gauss"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A member of the Lutheran church who spoke of God and grace; his biographer described him as religiously tolerant.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Friedrich_Gauss","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"lou-gehrig","name":"Lou Gehrig","url":"/great-lives/lou-gehrig/","dates":"1903–1941","born":1903,"died":1941,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"New York Yankees first baseman who played 2,130 consecutive games and gave the 'Luckiest Man' farewell speech.","bio":"Henry Louis Gehrig was born in 1903 in Manhattan, New York City, the second of four children of German immigrants; his mother, a maid, was the family's main breadwinner. He starred at Commerce High School and attended Columbia University on a football scholarship, also playing baseball. He joined the New York Yankees in 1923 and became their regular first baseman in 1925. Batting behind Babe Ruth, he was one of the greatest hitters in baseball history, and his durability earned him the nickname 'The Iron Horse'. Between 1925 and 1939 he played 2,130 consecutive games, a record that stood for 56 years, and he helped the Yankees win six World Series. In 1939 his play declined sharply, and he was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a fatal nerve disease now often called Lou Gehrig's disease. On July 4, 1939, at Yankee Stadium, he told the crowd that he considered himself 'the luckiest man on the face of the earth'. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame that year and died in New York in 1941.","keyDates":[{"date":"1903","event":"Born in Manhattan"},{"date":"1923","event":"Joins the New York Yankees"},{"date":"1925","event":"Begins his consecutive-games streak"},{"date":"1939","event":"Diagnosed with ALS"},{"date":"1939","event":"Luckiest Man speech at Yankee Stadium"},{"date":"1941","event":"Dies in New York"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Lou Gehrig","relatedWorks":["luckiest-man-speech"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"luckiest-man-speech","url":"/works/luckiest-man-speech/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"Because he almost never missed a game, sportswriters nicknamed him 'the Iron Horse'.","source":{"title":"Lou Gehrig (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lou_Gehrig"}}],"records":[{"text":"He played 2,130 games in a row, a major-league record that stood for 56 years until Cal Ripken Jr. passed it in 1995.","source":{"title":"Lou Gehrig (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lou_Gehrig"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Raised by Lutheran parents; his funeral was held at an Episcopal church.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lou_Gehrig","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"genghis-khan","name":"Genghis Khan","url":"/great-lives/genghis-khan/","dates":"c. 1162–1227","born":1162,"died":1227,"era":"medieval","categories":["kings-queens-emperors","military-leaders"],"knownFor":"Founder of the Mongol Empire, the largest land empire in history.","bio":"Genghis Khan was born Temüjin on the Mongolian steppe. When he was about nine, his father was poisoned by enemies, and his family was abandoned by their clan and lived in poverty. As a young man he was captured and escaped, and he slowly built up followers through loyalty, alliances and victories. In 1206 an assembly of the Mongol tribes proclaimed him Genghis Khan, meaning universal ruler. He organized his army into units of ten, a hundred, a thousand and ten thousand, promoted men for ability, set up a written law code and a relay system of messengers, and adopted a script for the Mongol language. His mounted archers conquered northern China and then the Khwarazmian Empire in Central Asia, whose ruler had killed his envoys. Cities that resisted, such as Nishapur and Merv, were destroyed and their people massacred, and millions died in his wars. He allowed freedom of religion and protected trade. He died in 1227, and his sons and grandsons expanded the empire from Korea to eastern Europe.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 1162","event":"Born as Temüjin"},{"date":"1206","event":"Proclaimed Genghis Khan"},{"date":"1215","event":"Takes Zhongdu (Beijing)"},{"date":"1219–1221","event":"Conquers the Khwarazmian Empire"},{"date":"1227","event":"Dies on campaign"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["the-travels-of-marco-polo"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"book","title":"Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World","author":"Jack Weatherford","isbn13":"9780609809648","publisher":"Three Rivers Press","year":2005,"format":""}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Believed the Mongol sky god Tengri had destined him to rule; he was tolerant of other religions.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genghis_Khan","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"jean-craighead-george","name":"Jean Craighead George","url":"/great-lives/jean-craighead-george/","dates":"1919–2012","born":1919,"died":2012,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American author of more than one hundred nature books for young readers, including My Side of the Mountain and Julie of the Wolves.","bio":"Jean Craighead was born in 1919 in Washington, D.C., into a family of naturalists. Her parents and her twin brothers, Frank and John Craighead, who became well-known wildlife scientists, all studied nature; on weekends the family camped, climbed trees to study owls, and gathered wild plants to eat. She graduated from Pennsylvania State University in 1940 with degrees in English and science and in the 1940s was a reporter for The Washington Post and a member of the White House press corps. Her first novels were written with her husband, John George, and illustrated by her. Her novel My Side of the Mountain (1959), about a boy named Sam Gribley who runs away to live in the Catskill Mountains and trains a falcon, was a Newbery Honor Book. Julie of the Wolves (1972), inspired by a summer studying wolves in Barrow, Alaska, tells of a girl who survives on the Arctic tundra with the help of a wolf pack, and it won the Newbery Medal. In all she wrote more than one hundred books, mostly about animals and nature. She died in 2012.","keyDates":[{"date":"1919","event":"Born in Washington, D.C."},{"date":"1959","event":"My Side of the Mountain published"},{"date":"1960","event":"Newbery Honor"},{"date":"1972","event":"Julie of the Wolves published"},{"date":"1973","event":"Newbery Medal"},{"date":"2012","event":"Dies"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Jean Craighead George","relatedWorks":["my-side-of-the-mountain"],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"library","work":"my-side-of-the-mountain","url":"/works/my-side-of-the-mountain/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Craighead_George","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"elbridge-gerry","name":"Elbridge Gerry","url":"/great-lives/elbridge-gerry/","dates":"1744–1814","born":1744,"died":1814,"era":"18th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"Massachusetts signer who later refused to sign the Constitution without a bill of rights and died as vice president.","bio":"Elbridge Gerry was born in 1744 in Marblehead, Massachusetts, the son of a merchant, and graduated from Harvard. He entered the provincial congress, was sent to the Continental Congress, and signed the Declaration of Independence. At the Constitutional Convention of 1787 he took part in the debates but refused to sign the finished Constitution, arguing that it lacked a bill of rights and gave too much power to the central government. He later accepted the new system once amendments were begun, served in Congress, and was elected governor of Massachusetts. In 1812, as governor, he signed a redistricting bill that helped his party; a oddly shaped district was mocked as a 'salamander,' and the word gerrymander has been used ever since for drawing election maps to favor one side. Gerry became vice president under James Madison in 1813 and died in office in Washington in 1814.","keyDates":[{"date":"1744","event":"Born in Marblehead, Massachusetts"},{"date":"1776","event":"Signs the Declaration of Independence"},{"date":"1787","event":"Refuses to sign the Constitution, wanting a bill of rights"},{"date":"1812","event":"Signs the Massachusetts redistricting bill later called a gerrymander"},{"date":"1813","event":"Becomes vice president under James Madison"},{"date":"1814","event":"Dies in office in Washington"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["the-founding-documents"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-founding-documents","url":"/works/the-founding-documents/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":null,"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"abu-hamid-al-ghazali","name":"Abu Hamid al-Ghazali","url":"/great-lives/abu-hamid-al-ghazali/","dates":"c. 1058–1111","born":1058,"died":1111,"era":"medieval","categories":["theologians-church-fathers","philosophers"],"knownFor":"Persian Muslim theologian, jurist and philosopher whose works, including The Incoherence of the Philosophers and his autobiography, shaped Islamic thought.","bio":"Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazali was born around 1058 in Tus, in the Khorasan region of Persia. He studied law and theology, including under the scholar al-Juwayni at Nishapur, and in 1091 was appointed to teach at the Nizamiyya college in Baghdad, one of the most prestigious posts in the Islamic world. There he wrote The Incoherence of the Philosophers, a critique of philosophers who followed Aristotle and Avicenna. In 1095 he went through a personal crisis, left his post, and spent years traveling and living as a Sufi in Damascus, Jerusalem and elsewhere, including a pilgrimage to Mecca. During this period he wrote his long work The Revival of the Religious Sciences. His autobiography, Deliverance from Error, describes his search for certain knowledge. He later taught again for a time at Nishapur before returning to Tus, where he died in 1111. He is often counted among the most influential thinkers in the history of Islam.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 1058","event":"Born in Tus, Persia"},{"date":"1091","event":"Begins teaching at the Nizamiyya in Baghdad"},{"date":"1095","event":"Leaves Baghdad for a life of travel and devotion"},{"date":"1111","event":"Dies in Tus"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Abu Hamid al-Ghazali","relatedWorks":["ghazali-deliverance-from-error"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"ghazali-deliverance-from-error","url":"/works/ghazali-deliverance-from-error/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Sunni Muslim philosopher, theologian, jurist and mystic.","source":"https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/al-ghazali/","sourceName":"Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"edward-gibbon","name":"Edward Gibbon","url":"/great-lives/edward-gibbon/","dates":"1737–1794","born":1737,"died":1794,"era":"18th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"English historian, author of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.","bio":"Edward Gibbon was born in 1737 in Putney, near London, a sickly child and the only one of seven siblings to survive infancy. He went to Magdalen College, Oxford, at fifteen, but was sent away after converting to Catholicism. His father sent him to Lausanne in Switzerland, where under the guidance of a Protestant pastor he returned to Protestantism and studied widely in French and Latin. He served as an officer in the Hampshire militia during the Seven Years' War. In 1764, sitting among the ruins of the Capitol in Rome, he conceived the idea of writing the history of the city's decline. The first volume of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire appeared in 1776 and was an immediate success; the sixth and last volume came out in 1788. The work covers more than thirteen centuries, from the second century to the fall of Constantinople in 1453. Gibbon was also a member of Parliament. He settled in Lausanne in 1783 and died in London in 1794.","keyDates":[{"date":"1737","event":"Born in Putney"},{"date":"1753","event":"Studies in Lausanne"},{"date":"1764","event":"Conceives his history in Rome"},{"date":"1776","event":"First volume of Decline and Fall"},{"date":"1788","event":"Final volumes published"},{"date":"1794","event":"Dies in London"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Edward Gibbon","relatedWorks":["gibbon-decline-and-fall-selections"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"gibbon-decline-and-fall-selections","url":"/works/gibbon-decline-and-fall-selections/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Raised Protestant; he converted to Catholicism as a young man and later returned to Protestantism.","source":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Gibbon%2C_Edward","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica (1911) (via Wikisource)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"stella-gibbons","name":"Stella Gibbons","url":"/great-lives/stella-gibbons/","dates":"1902–1989","born":1902,"died":1989,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"English novelist and poet, author of the comic novel Cold Comfort Farm (1932).","bio":"Stella Gibbons was born in London in 1902, the daughter of a doctor who practised in Kentish Town, a working-class district of north London. Her childhood was often turbulent and unhappy. After school she trained as a journalist and worked as a reporter and features writer, mainly for the Evening Standard and the magazine The Lady. Her first book, a collection of poems, appeared in 1930 and was well received, and all her life she thought of herself as mainly a poet. Her first novel, Cold Comfort Farm (1932), made her famous. It is a comedy in which a sensible young woman, Flora Poste, goes to stay with her gloomy relatives on a muddy Sussex farm and sets about putting their lives in order, and it pokes fun at the gloomy rural novels popular at the time. She wrote more than twenty further novels, mostly set in the middle-class suburban world she knew, as well as stories and poems, but none matched the success of her first. In 1950 she became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She died in London in 1989.","keyDates":[{"date":"1902","event":"Born in London"},{"date":"1930","event":"First book of poems published"},{"date":"1932","event":"Cold Comfort Farm published"},{"date":"1950","event":"Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature"},{"date":"1989","event":"Dies in London"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Stella Gibbons","relatedWorks":["cold-comfort-farm"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"cold-comfort-farm","url":"/works/cold-comfort-farm/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"Her own favourite of all her novels was Ticky, though she admitted hardly anyone else liked it.","source":{"title":"Stella Gibbons (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stella_Gibbons"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stella_Gibbons","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"kahlil-gibran","name":"Kahlil Gibran","url":"/great-lives/kahlil-gibran/","dates":"1883–1931","born":1883,"died":1931,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets","artists-composers-architects"],"knownFor":"Lebanese-American poet and painter, author of The Prophet.","bio":"Kahlil Gibran was born in 1883 in Bsharri, a mountain village in Ottoman Mount Lebanon, to a Maronite Catholic family. In 1895 his mother brought him and his siblings to Boston, where they lived in poverty in the South End. A settlement-house teacher noticed his drawings and introduced him to the Boston artist Fred Holland Day. He returned to Beirut to study Arabic literature, came back to Boston after the deaths of his sister, brother and mother, and later studied art in Paris. With the support of his patron Mary Haskell, he settled in New York in 1911. He wrote first in Arabic, becoming a leading figure of the Arab émigré literary movement, and then in English. The Madman (1918) was followed by The Prophet (1923), a book of poetic counsel that became one of the best-selling books of the century. He also wrote Jesus, the Son of Man (1928). He died in New York in 1931 and was buried in Bsharri.","keyDates":[{"date":"1883","event":"Born in Bsharri, Mount Lebanon"},{"date":"1895","event":"Emigrates to Boston"},{"date":"1923","event":"The Prophet published"},{"date":"1931","event":"Dies in New York"}],"quotes":[{"text":"Work is love made visible.","work":"the-prophet"}],"author":"Kahlil Gibran","relatedWorks":["the-prophet"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-prophet","url":"/works/the-prophet/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Raised Maronite Catholic; his writings blend Christian imagery with a broad, personal spirituality.","source":"https://www.britannica.com/biography/Khalil-Gibran","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"william-gilbert","name":"William Gilbert","url":"/great-lives/william-gilbert/","dates":"1544–1603","born":1544,"died":1603,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["physicians-medicine","scientists-mathematicians"],"knownFor":"English physician to Elizabeth I whose book De Magnete (1600) showed that the Earth is a giant magnet.","bio":"William Gilbert was born in Colchester, England, probably in 1544, the son of a borough official. He studied at St John's College, Cambridge, and received his doctorate in medicine in 1569. He then moved to London to practise medicine and travelled on the continent of Europe. In 1573 he was elected a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, and in 1600 he became its president. From 1601 he was physician to Elizabeth I, and James I renewed the appointment. In 1600 he published De Magnete (On the Magnet), describing many careful experiments. Using a small magnetised sphere he called a terrella, a 'little Earth', he concluded that the Earth itself is a magnet and that this is why compass needles point north. He also studied static electricity produced by rubbing amber, and invented the versorium, a pivoted needle that was the first electroscope. He coined the Latin word electricus, meaning 'like amber', from which the English word 'electricity' comes. He rejected the Aristotelian philosophy taught in the universities of his day. He died in 1603.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 1544","event":"Born in Colchester"},{"date":"1569","event":"Doctorate in medicine from Cambridge"},{"date":"1600","event":"De Magnete published; President of the Royal College of Physicians"},{"date":"1601","event":"Physician to Elizabeth I"},{"date":"1603","event":"Dies"}],"quotes":[],"author":"William Gilbert","relatedWorks":["gilbert-de-magnete"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"gilbert-de-magnete","url":"/works/gilbert-de-magnete/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[{"text":"He was the first person to argue that the centre of the Earth is made of iron.","source":{"title":"William Gilbert (physicist) (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Gilbert_(physicist)"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Gilbert_%28physicist%29","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["Birth year 1544 is probable but not certain."]},{"slug":"charlotte-perkins-gilman","name":"Charlotte Perkins Gilman","url":"/great-lives/charlotte-perkins-gilman/","dates":"1860–1935","born":1860,"died":1935,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American writer and lecturer for women's causes, author of The Yellow Wallpaper, Women and Economics and Herland.","bio":"Charlotte Anna Perkins was born in 1860 in Hartford, Connecticut, into the Beecher family; Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom's Cabin, was her great-aunt. Her father left the family when she was a baby, and she grew up poor, attending seven different schools. In 1878 she enrolled at the Rhode Island School of Design and supported herself by designing trade cards. In 1884 she married the artist Charles Walter Stetson, and their daughter Katharine was born the next year. She then suffered a severe depression after childbirth, and the physician S. Weir Mitchell prescribed his 'rest cure', which forbade her to write or paint. Her story The Yellow Wallpaper (1892) drew on that experience. She moved to Pasadena, California, and became a popular lecturer. Women and Economics (1898) argued that women should be able to earn their own living. From 1909 to 1916 she wrote and edited her own magazine, The Forerunner, where Herland (1915) first appeared. She died in Pasadena in 1935.","keyDates":[{"date":"1860","event":"Born in Hartford, Connecticut"},{"date":"1878","event":"Enters the Rhode Island School of Design"},{"date":"1884","event":"Marries Charles Walter Stetson"},{"date":"1892","event":"The Yellow Wallpaper published"},{"date":"1898","event":"Women and Economics published"},{"date":"1900","event":"Marries Houghton Gilman"},{"date":"1909","event":"Founds The Forerunner"},{"date":"1915","event":"Herland serialized"},{"date":"1935","event":"Dies in Pasadena"}],"quotes":[{"text":"Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good.","work":"the-yellow-wallpaper","location":"The Yellow Wallpaper","verified":true},{"text":"The children in this country are the one center and focus of all our thoughts.","work":"herland","location":"Chapter 6: Comparisons Are Odious","verified":true}],"author":"Charlotte Perkins Gilman","relatedWorks":["the-yellow-wallpaper","herland"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-yellow-wallpaper","url":"/works/the-yellow-wallpaper/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"herland","url":"/works/herland/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented; she came from the religious and literary Beecher family.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlotte_Perkins_Gilman","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"giotto","name":"Giotto di Bondone","url":"/great-lives/giotto/","dates":"c. 1267–1337","born":1267,"died":1337,"era":"medieval","categories":["artists-composers-architects"],"knownFor":"Florentine painter who brought new life and solidity to figures, opening the way to the Renaissance.","bio":"Giotto di Bondone was born near Florence, probably into a farming family. A well-known story, told later by Giorgio Vasari, says the painter Cimabue found him as a shepherd boy drawing a sheep on a rock and took him as a pupil. Whatever the truth, Giotto became the most admired painter of his time. Before him, Italian painting followed the flat, formal Byzantine style. Giotto painted figures that seem to have weight and stand in real space, with faces that show grief, tenderness and surprise. His greatest surviving work is the series of frescoes in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, finished around 1305, telling the lives of the Virgin Mary and Christ. Frescoes of the life of Saint Francis in the Upper Church at Assisi are often credited to him, though scholars debate this. He also worked in Rome, Naples and Florence, where he painted chapels in the church of Santa Croce. In 1334 Florence made him chief architect of its cathedral, and he designed the bell tower, still called Giotto's Campanile. The poet Dante mentioned his fame. He died in Florence in 1337.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 1267","event":"Born near Florence"},{"date":"c. 1305","event":"Completes the Scrovegni Chapel frescoes"},{"date":"1334","event":"Named chief architect of Florence Cathedral"},{"date":"1337","event":"Dies in Florence"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["vasari-lives-of-the-artists"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"vasari-lives-of-the-artists","url":"/works/vasari-lives-of-the-artists/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented; most of his works were made for churches.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giotto","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["The shepherd-boy story comes from Vasari and may be legend."]},{"slug":"fred-gipson","name":"Fred Gipson","url":"/great-lives/fred-gipson/","dates":"1908–1973","born":1908,"died":1973,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Texas writer, author of Old Yeller.","bio":"Fred Gipson was born in 1908 on a farm near Mason, in the Texas Hill Country. He worked at farming and ranching jobs before enrolling at the University of Texas at Austin in 1933, where he wrote for the student newspaper and humor magazine. He left before graduating to become a newspaper reporter, working for papers in Corpus Christi, San Angelo and Denver. In the 1940s he began writing short stories with western themes for magazines, and his first novel, Hound-Dog Man, appeared in 1949. His best-known book, Old Yeller (1956), tells of a boy named Travis left in charge of his family's frontier farm in the Texas Hill Country in the 1860s while his father is away on a cattle drive, and of the big yellow stray dog who becomes his companion. It was a Newbery Honor Book and became a popular Walt Disney film in 1957, for which Gipson cowrote the screenplay. He wrote a sequel, Savage Sam. He died in Mason County, Texas, in 1973.","keyDates":[{"date":"1908","event":"Born near Mason, Texas"},{"date":"1933","event":"Enrolls at the University of Texas"},{"date":"1949","event":"Hound-Dog Man published"},{"date":"1956","event":"Old Yeller published"},{"date":"1957","event":"Disney film of Old Yeller"},{"date":"1973","event":"Dies in Texas"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Fred Gipson","relatedWorks":["old-yeller"],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"library","work":"old-yeller","url":"/works/old-yeller/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Gipson","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"kurt-godel","name":"Kurt Gödel","url":"/great-lives/kurt-godel/","dates":"1906–1978","born":1906,"died":1978,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["scientists-mathematicians","philosophers"],"knownFor":"Austrian-American logician whose incompleteness theorems showed the limits of formal mathematical systems.","bio":"Kurt Gödel was born in 1906 in Brünn, Austria-Hungary, now Brno in the Czech Republic, into a German-speaking family. As a child he was so curious that his family called him 'Mr. Why'. He studied at the University of Vienna, first physics and then mathematics and philosophy, and attended meetings of the philosophers known as the Vienna Circle. In 1931 he published the paper On Formally Undecidable Propositions of Principia Mathematica and Related Systems, which contains his incompleteness theorems. They show that any consistent formal system rich enough to describe basic arithmetic contains true statements that cannot be proved within the system, and that such a system cannot prove its own consistency. The result changed mathematical logic and the philosophy of mathematics. In 1940, after the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany, he and his wife Adele emigrated to the United States, where he joined the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and became a close friend of Albert Einstein. He also did important work in set theory and on Einstein's equations. He died in Princeton in 1978.","keyDates":[{"date":"1906","event":"Born in Brünn"},{"date":"1931","event":"Publishes the incompleteness theorems"},{"date":"1938","event":"Marries Adele Nimbursky"},{"date":"1940","event":"Emigrates to the United States"},{"date":"1978","event":"Dies in Princeton"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Kurt Godel","relatedWorks":["formally-undecidable-propositions"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"formally-undecidable-propositions","url":"/works/formally-undecidable-propositions/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"As a boy he was so curious that his family nicknamed him 'Herr Warum', or 'Mr. Why'.","source":{"title":"Kurt Gödel (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_G%C3%B6del"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Baptized Lutheran; he called his belief theistic but did not belong to any religious congregation.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_G%C3%B6del","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"johann-wolfgang-von-goethe","name":"Johann Wolfgang von Goethe","url":"/great-lives/johann-wolfgang-von-goethe/","dates":"1749–1832","born":1749,"died":1832,"era":"18th-century","categories":["writers-poets","statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"German poet, playwright, novelist and scientist, author of Faust and The Sorrows of Young Werther.","bio":"Johann Wolfgang Goethe was born in Frankfurt in 1749 into a prosperous family and was educated at home in languages, drawing and music before studying law at Leipzig and Strasbourg. His novel The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774), told in letters by a young man who suffers from unhappy love, made him famous across Europe. In 1775 he was invited to the small duchy of Weimar by its young duke, Karl August, and he stayed for the rest of his life, serving as a minister responsible for matters such as mines, roads and finances and directing the court theater. A journey to Italy in 1786–1788 deeply influenced his work. His close friendship with the poet Friedrich Schiller produced a great period of German literature. Goethe wrote poems, plays, the novel Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, and scientific studies of plants, the bones of the skull, and color. His greatest work, the verse drama Faust, about a scholar who makes a bargain with the devil Mephistopheles, occupied him for most of his life; Part One appeared in 1808. He died in Weimar in 1832.","keyDates":[{"date":"1749","event":"Born in Frankfurt"},{"date":"1774","event":"The Sorrows of Young Werther published"},{"date":"1775","event":"Moves to Weimar"},{"date":"1786–1788","event":"Travels in Italy"},{"date":"1808","event":"Faust, Part One published"},{"date":"1832","event":"Dies in Weimar; Faust, Part Two published"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Johann Wolfgang von Goethe","relatedWorks":["goethe-faust-part-one","goethe-faust-part-two"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"goethe-faust-part-one","url":"/works/goethe-faust-part-one/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"goethe-faust-part-two","url":"/works/goethe-faust-part-two/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"Studying an elephant's skull, he independently discovered a small bone in the human upper jaw, sometimes called 'Goethe's bone'. The skull, now nicknamed the Goethean Elephant, is on display in Kassel, Germany.","source":{"title":"Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Wolfgang_von_Goethe"}},{"text":"As a boy he was fascinated by puppet shows, which later turned up again and again in his writing.","source":{"title":"Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Wolfgang_von_Goethe"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A freethinker who believed one could be inwardly Christian without following any church; he showed interest in other religions, including Islam.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Wolfgang_von_Goethe","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[{"series":"Very Short Introductions","title":"Goethe: A Very Short Introduction","author":"Ritchie Robertson","publisher":"Oxford University Press","year":2016,"isbn13":"9780199689255","url":"https://bookshop.org/a/130650/9780199689255"}],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"vincent-van-gogh","name":"Vincent van Gogh","url":"/great-lives/vincent-van-gogh/","dates":"1853–1890","born":1853,"died":1890,"era":"19th-century","categories":["artists-composers-architects"],"knownFor":"Dutch painter of The Starry Night and Sunflowers, known for bold color and brushwork.","bio":"Vincent van Gogh was born in Groot-Zundert, the Netherlands, the son of a pastor. He worked for an art dealer, as a teacher, and as a lay preacher among poor coal miners in Belgium before deciding at twenty-seven to become an artist. His early paintings, such as The Potato Eaters, use dark earth colors to show peasant life. In 1886 he moved to Paris to live with his brother Theo, an art dealer who supported him with money and encouragement throughout his life. There he discovered Impressionism and Japanese prints, and his colors brightened. In 1888 he moved to Arles in the south of France, painting sunflowers, orchards and wheat fields in blazing yellows and blues. The painter Paul Gauguin joined him, but they quarreled, and in December 1888, during a mental crisis, Vincent cut off part of his ear. He then entered an asylum at Saint-Rémy, where he painted The Starry Night in 1889. In about ten years he made around 860 oil paintings and more than 1,200 drawings, but sold very few. He died from a gunshot wound in Auvers-sur-Oise in 1890.","keyDates":[{"date":"1880","event":"Decides to become an artist"},{"date":"1885","event":"Paints The Potato Eaters"},{"date":"1888","event":"Moves to Arles"},{"date":"1889","event":"Paints The Starry Night at Saint-Rémy"},{"date":"1890","event":"Dies at Auvers-sur-Oise"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"book","title":"Who Was Vincent van Gogh?","author":"Paula K. Manzanero","isbn13":"9798217140916","publisher":"Paperback","year":2025,"format":""}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"His mother encouraged him to draw as a child.","source":{"title":"Vincent van Gogh (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_van_Gogh"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Son of a Dutch Reformed pastor; he spent time as a Protestant missionary in Belgium.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_van_Gogh","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"nikolai-gogol","name":"Nikolai Gogol","url":"/great-lives/nikolai-gogol/","dates":"1809–1852","born":1809,"died":1852,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Ukrainian-born Russian writer, author of The Overcoat, The Government Inspector and Dead Souls.","bio":"Nikolai Gogol was born in 1809 in Sorochyntsi, in the Poltava region of Ukraine, then part of the Russian Empire, into a family of Ukrainian Cossack gentry. He attended a school in Nizhyn and in 1828 moved to St Petersburg, where he worked as a minor government clerk and briefly taught history at the university. His first success was Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka (1831–1832), lively stories of Ukrainian village life and folklore. He became friends with the poet Alexander Pushkin, who is said to have given him the ideas for his comedy The Government Inspector (1836), about a town's officials who mistake a young traveler for a government inspector, and for his novel Dead Souls (1842), about a swindler who buys the names of dead serfs. His story The Overcoat (1842), about a poor clerk who saves for a new coat, influenced generations of Russian writers. Gogol lived for many years in Rome. In his last years he became deeply religious and depressed, and he burned manuscripts containing most of the second part of Dead Souls. He died in Moscow in 1852.","keyDates":[{"date":"1809","event":"Born in Sorochyntsi"},{"date":"1828","event":"Moves to St Petersburg"},{"date":"1831–1832","event":"Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka"},{"date":"1836","event":"The Government Inspector staged"},{"date":"1842","event":"Dead Souls and The Overcoat published"},{"date":"1852","event":"Dies in Moscow"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Nikolai Gogol","relatedWorks":["gogol-the-overcoat","gogol-the-nose"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"gogol-the-overcoat","url":"/works/gogol-the-overcoat/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"gogol-the-nose","url":"/works/gogol-the-nose/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"As a child he helped put on plays in his uncle's home theatre, and he was such a good mimic that he thought about becoming an actor.","source":{"title":"Nikolai Gogol (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Gogol"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Russian Orthodox; his grave is marked with an Orthodox cross.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Gogol","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"william-golding","name":"William Golding","url":"/great-lives/william-golding/","dates":"1911–1993","born":1911,"died":1993,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"English novelist, author of Lord of the Flies, and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature.","bio":"William Golding was born in 1911 at his grandmother's house in Newquay, Cornwall, and grew up in Marlborough, Wiltshire, where his father taught science at the grammar school William attended. His mother was a campaigner for women's suffrage. In 1930 he went to Brasenose College, Oxford, where he studied natural sciences before switching to English. He became a schoolmaster, and in 1939 he married Ann Brookfield, an analytical chemist. From 1940 he taught at Bishop Wordsworth's School in Salisbury, but in December of that year he joined the Royal Navy. In the war he took part in the hunt for the battleship Bismarck and, on D-Day, commanded a landing craft that fired rockets onto the Normandy beaches. His first novel, Lord of the Flies (1954), about a group of schoolboys stranded on an island who descend into savagery, was accepted by Faber and Faber after several rejections. He went on to write The Inheritors and other novels, and Rites of Passage won the Booker Prize in 1980. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1983 and was knighted in 1988. He died in Cornwall in 1993.","keyDates":[{"date":"1911","event":"Born in Newquay, Cornwall"},{"date":"1940","event":"Joins the Royal Navy"},{"date":"1944","event":"Commands a landing craft on D-Day"},{"date":"1954","event":"Lord of the Flies published"},{"date":"1980","event":"Booker Prize"},{"date":"1983","event":"Nobel Prize in Literature"},{"date":"1993","event":"Dies in Cornwall"}],"quotes":[],"author":"William Golding","relatedWorks":["lord-of-the-flies"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"lord-of-the-flies","url":"/works/lord-of-the-flies/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Golding","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"oliver-goldsmith","name":"Oliver Goldsmith","url":"/great-lives/oliver-goldsmith/","dates":"c. 1728–1774","born":1728,"died":1774,"era":"18th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Irish-born author of The Vicar of Wakefield, The Deserted Village and She Stoops to Conquer, and friend of Samuel Johnson.","bio":"Oliver Goldsmith was born about 1728 in County Longford, Ireland, the son of an Anglican clergyman, and grew up in the village of Lissoy. He studied at Trinity College, Dublin, then medicine at Edinburgh and Leiden, and wandered through Europe on foot, reportedly paying his way with his flute. In London from 1756 he worked as an usher, a doctor and a hack writer of reviews, histories and children's books. His essays in The Citizen of the World and the poem The Traveller (1764) made his name, and he became a founding member of Samuel Johnson's Club. The Vicar of Wakefield appeared in 1766, The Deserted Village in 1770 and the comedy She Stoops to Conquer in 1773. Generous to a fault and always in debt, he died in London on 4 April 1774. Johnson wrote the Latin epitaph for his monument in Westminster Abbey.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 1728","event":"Born in County Longford, Ireland"},{"date":"1756","event":"Arrives in London"},{"date":"1764","event":"The Traveller published; founding member of the Club"},{"date":"1766","event":"The Vicar of Wakefield published"},{"date":"1770","event":"The Deserted Village published"},{"date":"1773","event":"She Stoops to Conquer first performed"},{"date":"1774","event":"Dies in London, 4 April"}],"quotes":[{"text":"Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, Where wealth accumulates, and men decay:","work":"the-deserted-village"}],"author":"Oliver Goldsmith","relatedWorks":["the-vicar-of-wakefield","she-stoops-to-conquer","the-deserted-village"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"she-stoops-to-conquer","url":"/works/she-stoops-to-conquer/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-vicar-of-wakefield","url":"/works/the-vicar-of-wakefield/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-deserted-village","url":"/works/the-deserted-village/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Son of a Church of Ireland clergyman and an Anglican all his life; the village preacher of The Deserted Village and the patient Dr Primrose of The Vicar of Wakefield are affectionate portraits of Christian pastors.","source":"https://www.britannica.com/biography/Oliver-Goldsmith","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"adrian-goldsworthy","name":"Adrian Goldsworthy","url":"/great-lives/adrian-goldsworthy/","dates":"born 1969","born":1969,"died":null,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"British historian of ancient Rome and novelist, author of studies of the Roman army, Julius Caesar and the Pax Romana.","bio":"Adrian Goldsworthy is a British historian who specializes in ancient Roman history, especially the Roman army and warfare. Born in 1969, he went to school in Penarth, Wales, and read Ancient and Modern History at St John's College, Oxford, where he completed a doctorate in ancient military history in 1994. His thesis became his first book, The Roman Army at War, 100 BC–AD 200. He taught at Cardiff University, at King's College London, and for several years on the University of Notre Dame's London program before becoming a full-time writer. His books for general readers include The Punic Wars, Caesar: Life of a Colossus, How Rome Fell, Augustus and Pax Romana, a study of how the Roman Empire was won and governed. He has also written historical novels set during the Napoleonic Wars and in Roman Britain, and he has appeared in television documentaries about the ancient world.","keyDates":[{"date":"1969","event":"Born"},{"date":"1994","event":"Completes his Oxford doctorate"},{"date":"2016","event":"Pax Romana published"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Adrian Goldsworthy","relatedWorks":["goldsworthy-pax-romana"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"goldsworthy-pax-romana","url":"/works/goldsworthy-pax-romana/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Has publicly described himself as a Christian.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_Goldsworthy","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"kenneth-grahame","name":"Kenneth Grahame","url":"/great-lives/kenneth-grahame/","dates":"1859–1932","born":1859,"died":1932,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Scottish-born writer, author of The Wind in the Willows.","bio":"Kenneth Grahame was born in Edinburgh in 1859. After his mother died when he was five, he and his siblings were sent to live with their grandmother in the village of Cookham Dean, on the River Thames in Berkshire, where he grew to love the river and the countryside. He attended St Edward's School in Oxford and hoped to go to Oxford University, but his family would not pay for it, and instead he went to work at the Bank of England in 1879. He rose to become its Secretary and retired in 1908. In his spare time he wrote essays and stories; The Golden Age (1895) and Dream Days (1898), about a group of children, were very successful. He married Elspeth Thomson in 1899, and their only child, Alastair, was born the next year. The bedtime stories and letters Grahame wrote for Alastair developed into The Wind in the Willows (1908), about Mole, Ratty, Badger and the boastful Mr. Toad, who live along a river. Alastair died in 1920 while a student at Oxford. Grahame died at Pangbourne in 1932.","keyDates":[{"date":"1859","event":"Born in Edinburgh"},{"date":"1879","event":"Joins the Bank of England"},{"date":"1895","event":"The Golden Age published"},{"date":"1899","event":"Marries Elspeth Thomson"},{"date":"1908","event":"The Wind in the Willows published"},{"date":"1932","event":"Dies at Pangbourne"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Kenneth Grahame","relatedWorks":["the-wind-in-the-willows"],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"library","work":"the-wind-in-the-willows","url":"/works/the-wind-in-the-willows/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"The Wind in the Willows grew out of bedtime stories and letters he made up for his only son, Alastair, nicknamed 'Mouse'.","source":{"title":"Kenneth Grahame (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Grahame"}}],"records":[{"text":"In the Bank of England's entrance exam he was the only candidate to score 100 per cent in the English essay, and he later became the Bank's youngest Secretary, at 39.","source":{"title":"Kenneth Grahame (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Grahame"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Grahame","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"ulysses-s-grant","name":"Ulysses S. Grant","url":"/great-lives/ulysses-s-grant/","dates":"1822–1885","born":1822,"died":1885,"era":"19th-century","categories":["military-leaders","statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"Union general who won the Civil War and served as the eighteenth president.","bio":"Hiram Ulysses Grant was born in Point Pleasant, Ohio, the son of a tanner. A clerical error at West Point registered him as Ulysses S. Grant, and he kept the name. He was a fine horseman, served in the Mexican War, and later resigned from the army and struggled in farming and business. In 1862 he captured Fort Henry and Fort Donelson in Tennessee, demanding unconditional surrender, and survived the bloody battle of Shiloh. In 1863 he took Vicksburg, giving the Union control of the Mississippi River, and then broke the siege of Chattanooga. Lincoln made him general-in-chief in 1864. He pressed Robert E. Lee's army in Virginia without letup until Lee surrendered at Appomattox in April 1865, where Grant offered generous terms. Elected president in 1868 and 1872, he enforced Reconstruction and used federal power against the Ku Klux Klan, though his administration was marked by scandals among officials. After losing his savings to a swindling partner and learning he had throat cancer, he wrote his Personal Memoirs to support his family, finishing them days before his death in 1885.","keyDates":[{"date":"1843","event":"Graduates from West Point"},{"date":"1862","event":"Captures Fort Donelson; Battle of Shiloh"},{"date":"1863","event":"Captures Vicksburg"},{"date":"1865","event":"Accepts Lee's surrender at Appomattox"},{"date":"1869–1877","event":"President of the United States"},{"date":"1885","event":"Completes his memoirs and dies"}],"quotes":[{"text":"Nations, like individuals, are punished for their transgressions","work":"personal-memoirs","location":"Vol. I, Ch. III","verified":true},{"text":"I have always regretted that the last assault at Cold Harbor was ever made","work":"personal-memoirs","location":"Vol. II, Ch. LV","verified":true}],"author":"Ulysses S. Grant","relatedWorks":["personal-memoirs","shermans-memoirs"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"personal-memoirs","url":"/works/personal-memoirs/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"book","title":"Grant","author":"Ron Chernow","isbn13":"9781594204876","publisher":"Paperback","year":2017,"format":"hardcover"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"A fine horseman, during the Mexican–American War he carried a message past snipers while hanging off the side of his horse to keep the animal between himself and the enemy.","source":{"title":"Ulysses S. Grant (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulysses_S._Grant"}}],"records":[{"text":"At 46 he was the youngest president elected up to that time.","source":{"title":"Ulysses S. Grant (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulysses_S._Grant"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented; he publicly supported keeping public schools free of sectarian religion.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulysses_S._Grant","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"gratian","name":"Gratian","url":"/great-lives/gratian/","dates":"fl. c. 1140; died c. 1145 (uncertain)","died":1145,"era":"medieval","categories":["legal-scholars-lawgivers"],"knownFor":"Twelfth-century teacher of law at Bologna whose Decretum organized church law and founded the study of canon law.","bio":"Almost nothing is known for certain about the life of Gratian. Later tradition made him a Camaldolese monk teaching in Bologna, but modern historians doubt this; one theory suggests he became bishop of Chiusi. What is certain is his book. Around 1140 a teacher in Bologna, the city that was then becoming Europe's great centre of legal study, gathered thousands of texts on church law: canons of councils, letters of popes, passages from the Church Fathers and Roman law. Many of these texts contradicted one another. Gratian's work, called the Concordance of Discordant Canons and later known simply as the Decretum, arranged them by topic and showed by argument how the contradictions could be reconciled. It became the standard textbook of canon law in the universities and the first part of the collection later called the Corpus Iuris Canonici, which remained the basic law of the Catholic Church until 1917. Scholars now think the Decretum grew in at least two stages. Gratian probably died before the middle of the twelfth century.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 1140","event":"Decretum (Concordia discordantium canonum) compiled in Bologna"},{"date":"c. 1150","event":"Expanded version of the Decretum in circulation"},{"date":"1582","event":"Decretum printed as part of the official Corpus Iuris Canonici"},{"date":"1917","event":"Replaced by the Code of Canon Law"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["gratian-decretum"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"gratian-decretum","url":"/works/gratian-decretum/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented beyond his work as a Catholic canon lawyer.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gratian","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["His birth and death years are unknown; the death year c. 1145 is an estimate used by some reference works.","The two-stage composition is the theory of Anders Winroth (2000).","The Chiusi identification is a recent, uncertain suggestion."]},{"slug":"elizabeth-janet-gray","name":"Elizabeth Janet Gray","url":"/great-lives/elizabeth-janet-gray/","dates":"1902–1999","born":1902,"died":1999,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American librarian and author of the Newbery-winning Adam of the Road, who later tutored Japan's Crown Prince Akihito.","bio":"Elizabeth Janet Gray was born in Philadelphia in 1902. She graduated from Germantown Friends School and Bryn Mawr College, earned a degree in library science from Drexel, and became a librarian at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In 1929 she married Morgan Fisher Vining, and she later wrote under both her maiden and married names. In 1933 her husband was killed in an automobile accident in New York, and she was badly injured; during her recovery she became a Quaker. She became known as an author of children's books, and Adam of the Road, about a minstrel's son traveling the roads of thirteenth-century England in search of his father and his lost dog, won the Newbery Medal in 1943. From 1946 to 1950 she lived in Japan as English tutor to Crown Prince Akihito, the future emperor, and wrote about the experience in Windows for the Crown Prince. She also wrote biographies and books for adults. She died in Pennsylvania in 1999.","keyDates":[{"date":"1902","event":"Born in Philadelphia"},{"date":"1933","event":"Widowed; becomes a Quaker"},{"date":"1943","event":"Newbery Medal for Adam of the Road"},{"date":"1946–1950","event":"Tutor to Crown Prince Akihito in Japan"},{"date":"1999","event":"Dies"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Elizabeth Janet Gray","relatedWorks":["adam-of-the-road"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"adam-of-the-road","url":"/works/adam-of-the-road/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"As tutor to Crown Prince Akihito of Japan, she gave him the nickname 'Jimmy'. She wrote that his interests were 'almost entirely confined to fish'.","source":{"title":"Elizabeth Gray Vining (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Gray_Vining"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Became a Quaker during a convalescence as a young woman.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Gray_Vining","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"thomas-gray","name":"Thomas Gray","url":"/great-lives/thomas-gray/","dates":"1716–1771","born":1716,"died":1771,"era":"18th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"English poet and scholar, author of Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.","bio":"Thomas Gray was born in London in 1716. He was the only one of twelve children in his family to survive infancy. His father was a scrivener and his mother a milliner. At Eton College he formed close friendships with Horace Walpole and Richard West. He went on to Peterhouse, Cambridge. In 1738 he joined Walpole on a Grand Tour of Europe, but the two fell out and parted in Tuscany. He spent most of the rest of his life in Cambridge as a scholar and published few poems. His most famous poem, 'Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard' (1751), reflects on the lives of the ordinary villagers buried in a country graveyard and became one of the most quoted poems in English. He also wrote odes and a comic poem about the death of Walpole's cat, drowned in a tub of goldfish. In 1757 he declined the post of Poet Laureate. In 1768 he gained the Regius chair of Modern History at Cambridge. He died in Cambridge in 1771.","keyDates":[{"date":"1716","event":"Born in London"},{"date":"1738","event":"Grand Tour with Horace Walpole"},{"date":"1751","event":"Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard published"},{"date":"1757","event":"Declines the post of Poet Laureate"},{"date":"1768","event":"Professor of Modern History at Cambridge"},{"date":"1771","event":"Dies in Cambridge"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Thomas Gray","relatedWorks":["elegy-written-in-a-country-churchyard"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"elegy-written-in-a-country-churchyard","url":"/works/elegy-written-in-a-country-churchyard/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"He wrote a funny mock-serious poem, Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes, about his friend Horace Walpole's cat.","source":{"title":"Thomas Gray (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Gray"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Gray","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"graham-greene","name":"Graham Greene","url":"/great-lives/graham-greene/","dates":"1904–1991","born":1904,"died":1991,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"English novelist, author of The Power and the Glory and The Quiet American, whose stories often explore faith and conscience in troubled places.","bio":"Graham Greene was born in 1904 in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, where his father was headmaster of the school he attended. He was unhappy at school and studied history at Balliol College, Oxford. He worked as a journalist for The Times, and in 1926 he became a Roman Catholic, the faith of his future wife, Vivien Dayrell-Browning. After the success of his first novel, The Man Within (1929), he wrote full time. He traveled widely, often to places in conflict, and his journeys in Mexico during the persecution of the church there led to The Power and the Glory (1940), about a hunted 'whisky priest'. During the Second World War he worked for the British intelligence service MI6 in Sierra Leone. His novels include Brighton Rock, The Heart of the Matter, The End of the Affair, The Quiet American (1955), set in Vietnam, A Burnt-Out Case, set in a leper colony in the Congo, and the comic Travels with My Aunt. He called some of his books 'entertainments', such as The Third Man. He died in Switzerland in 1991.","keyDates":[{"date":"1904","event":"Born in Berkhamsted"},{"date":"1926","event":"Becomes a Roman Catholic"},{"date":"1940","event":"The Power and the Glory published"},{"date":"1955","event":"The Quiet American published"},{"date":"1961","event":"A Burnt-Out Case published"},{"date":"1969","event":"Travels with My Aunt published"},{"date":"1991","event":"Dies in Switzerland"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Graham Greene","relatedWorks":["a-burnt-out-case","the-quiet-american","the-power-and-the-glory","travels-with-my-aunt"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"a-burnt-out-case","url":"/works/a-burnt-out-case/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-quiet-american","url":"/works/the-quiet-american/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-power-and-the-glory","url":"/works/the-power-and-the-glory/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"travels-with-my-aunt","url":"/works/travels-with-my-aunt/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"He suddenly found he could read as a small boy, with a book called Dixon Brett, Detective, and at first read only in secret in an attic so no one would know.","source":{"title":"Graham Greene (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_Greene"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"An agnostic who was received into the Catholic Church in 1926; Catholic themes run through his novels.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_Greene","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"gregory-the-great","name":"Gregory the Great","url":"/great-lives/gregory-the-great/","dates":"c. 540–604","born":540,"died":604,"era":"medieval","categories":["theologians-church-fathers","saints-reformers"],"knownFor":"Pope who reorganized the Church, fed Rome in hard times and sent missionaries to England.","bio":"Gregory was born into a wealthy Roman family at a time when Italy was devastated by war and plague. He became prefect of the city of Rome, its highest civil official, but around 574 he gave his family property to found monasteries and became a monk himself. The pope sent him as ambassador to the imperial court in Constantinople, and in 590, during an outbreak of plague, he was chosen pope against his wishes. With little help from the emperor, he organized food supplies for Rome from the Church's estates, negotiated with the Lombards who threatened the city, and managed the Church's lands carefully. He called himself the servant of the servants of God. His Pastoral Rule, a book on the duties of bishops, was translated into English by King Alfred. He wrote Dialogues on Italian saints, including the life of Benedict, and many sermons. Bede records that, seeing English boys for sale in Rome, he was moved to send the monk Augustine with a mission to the English in 597. The plainchant called Gregorian is named after him. He died in 604.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 574","event":"Becomes a monk"},{"date":"590","event":"Elected pope"},{"date":"c. 591","event":"Pastoral Rule"},{"date":"597","event":"Mission of Augustine reaches England"},{"date":"604","event":"Dies in Rome"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["bede-ecclesiastical-history","the-rule-of-st-benedict"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"bede-ecclesiastical-history","url":"/works/bede-ecclesiastical-history/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[{"text":"He was the first pope to make wide use of the title 'Servant of the Servants of God'.","source":{"title":"Pope Gregory I (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Gregory_I"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Pope Gregory I; honored as a saint.","source":"https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06780a.htm","sourceName":"Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"gregory-of-nyssa","name":"Gregory of Nyssa","url":"/great-lives/gregory-of-nyssa/","dates":"c. 335–c. 395","born":335,"died":395,"era":"ancient","categories":["theologians-church-fathers","saints-reformers"],"knownFor":"Bishop of Nyssa and one of the Cappadocian Fathers, theologian of the Trinity and author of On the Making of Man.","bio":"Gregory was born around 335 in Cappadocia, in what is now central Turkey, into a devout Christian family. His elder brother was Basil the Great, and his sister Macrina led a religious community; Gregory later wrote her life. Basil and their friend Gregory of Nazianzus are known with him as the Cappadocian Fathers. Gregory first worked as a teacher of rhetoric and married, but he later turned to the church. Around 372 Basil made him bishop of Nyssa, a small town in Cappadocia, and he was briefly deposed and exiled by opponents. After Basil's death in 379, Gregory became a leading defender of the teaching of the Council of Nicaea that the Son is fully God, and he played an important part at the Council of Constantinople in 381, which completed the Nicene Creed. He wrote on the Trinity, on the soul and resurrection, and on spiritual life, including The Life of Moses. On the Making of Man (379) completed Basil's sermons on the creation and discussed human nature as made in the image of God. He died around 395.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 335","event":"Born in Cappadocia"},{"date":"c. 372","event":"Becomes bishop of Nyssa"},{"date":"379","event":"On the Making of Man; death of Basil"},{"date":"381","event":"Council of Constantinople"},{"date":"c. 395","event":"Dies"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Gregory of Nyssa","relatedWorks":["on-the-making-of-man"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"on-the-making-of-man","url":"/works/on-the-making-of-man/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[{"text":"He is the first person in recorded history known to have written against slavery in all its forms.","source":{"title":"Gregory of Nyssa (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregory_of_Nyssa"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Christian bishop and theologian, called 'a father of fathers' by a later church council; brother of Basil the Great.","source":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Gregory%2C_St%2C_of_Nyssa","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica (1911) (via Wikisource)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["His dates are approximate."]},{"slug":"lady-gregory","name":"Lady Gregory","url":"/great-lives/lady-gregory/","dates":"1852–1932","born":1852,"died":1932,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Irish dramatist and folklorist, co-founder of the Abbey Theatre and reteller of Irish legends.","bio":"Isabella Augusta Persse was born in 1852 at Roxborough, County Galway, Ireland, the youngest daughter of an Anglo-Irish landowning family, and was educated at home. In 1880 she married Sir William Gregory, a former governor of Ceylon, who owned the estate of Coole Park, near Gort, and she became Lady Gregory. They traveled widely, and after his death in 1892 she began to collect folklore from the people living around Coole and to learn the Irish language. With William Butler Yeats and Edward Martyn she founded the Irish Literary Theatre in 1899 and later the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, which she helped run for many years. She wrote many plays for it, including the comedy Spreading the News (1904), performed on the theatre's opening night, and she worked with Yeats on Cathleen ni Houlihan (1902). Her retellings of Irish myths, Cuchulain of Muirthemne (1902) and Gods and Fighting Men (1904), made the old stories available to English readers. Coole Park became a meeting place for writers of the Irish Literary Revival. She died there in 1932.","keyDates":[{"date":"1852","event":"Born at Roxborough, County Galway"},{"date":"1880","event":"Marries Sir William Gregory"},{"date":"1899","event":"Co-founds the Irish Literary Theatre"},{"date":"1902","event":"Cuchulain of Muirthemne published"},{"date":"1904","event":"Abbey Theatre opens with Spreading the News"},{"date":"1932","event":"Dies at Coole Park"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Lady Gregory","relatedWorks":["cuchulain-of-muirthemne"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"cuchulain-of-muirthemne","url":"/works/cuchulain-of-muirthemne/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Gregory","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"wilhelm-griesinger","name":"Wilhelm Griesinger","url":"/great-lives/wilhelm-griesinger/","dates":"1817–1868","born":1817,"died":1868,"era":"19th-century","categories":["physicians-medicine"],"knownFor":"German psychiatrist and neurologist who argued that mental illnesses are illnesses of the brain and nerves, and reformed asylum care.","bio":"Wilhelm Griesinger was born in Stuttgart, Germany, in 1817. He studied medicine, learning from Johann Lukas Schönlein in Zurich and the physiologist François Magendie in Paris. After his doctorate he worked in several places, including Stuttgart, Tübingen and the University of Kiel. In 1845 he published an influential textbook on mental illness, Die Pathologie und Therapie der psychischen Krankheiten. In the early 1850s he went to Egypt as director of the medical school in Cairo and became personal physician to its ruler, Abbas I; his experience there led him to write on tropical and infectious diseases. Returning to Tübingen in 1854 as a professor of clinical medicine, he later helped plan the Burghölzli mental hospital in Zurich. In 1865 he moved to Berlin to lead the Charité clinic, where he founded a medical-psychological society and an important psychiatric journal. In its first issue he wrote that patients with so-called mental illnesses are really individuals with illnesses of the nerves and brain. He favoured short hospital stays combined with support from patients' families and communities. He died in Berlin in 1868.","keyDates":[{"date":"1817","event":"Born in Stuttgart"},{"date":"1845","event":"Publishes his textbook on mental illness"},{"date":"1854","event":"Professor at Tübingen"},{"date":"1865","event":"Moves to Berlin and the Charité"},{"date":"1868","event":"Dies in Berlin"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Wilhelm Griesinger","relatedWorks":["mental-pathology-and-therapeutics"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"mental-pathology-and-therapeutics","url":"/works/mental-pathology-and-therapeutics/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Griesinger","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"brothers-grimm","name":"Brothers Grimm","url":"/great-lives/brothers-grimm/","dates":"Jacob 1785–1863; Wilhelm 1786–1859","born":1785,"died":1863,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"German scholars Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, who collected folk tales such as Hansel and Gretel and Snow White in Children's and Household Tales.","bio":"Jacob Grimm, born in 1785, and his brother Wilhelm, born in 1786, grew up in Hanau and Steinau in the German state of Hesse-Kassel, two of the nine children who survived infancy in their family. Their father, a lawyer and official, died in 1796, leaving the family poor. Both brothers studied law at the University of Marburg, where they became interested in old German literature and language. Beginning around 1806 they collected folk tales from friends, family members and storytellers, and in 1812 they published the first volume of Children's and Household Tales, which grew over later editions to more than two hundred stories, including Hansel and Gretel, Rapunzel, Snow White and Rumpelstiltskin. Wilhelm in particular revised the stories for later editions. The brothers were also major scholars: Jacob wrote a German grammar and formulated rules of sound change now called Grimm's law, and together they began a great German dictionary. They taught at Göttingen and later in Berlin. Wilhelm died in 1859 and Jacob in 1863.","keyDates":[{"date":"1785–1786","event":"Jacob and Wilhelm born in Hanau"},{"date":"1812","event":"First volume of Children's and Household Tales"},{"date":"1837","event":"Dismissed from Göttingen with the Göttingen Seven"},{"date":"1841","event":"Move to Berlin"},{"date":"1859","event":"Wilhelm dies"},{"date":"1863","event":"Jacob dies"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm","relatedWorks":["grimms-fairy-tales"],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"library","work":"grimms-fairy-tales","url":"/works/grimms-fairy-tales/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"Their stories, such as 'Hansel and Gretel' and 'Little Red Riding Hood', are now told everywhere in picture books, puppet shows and cartoons.","source":{"title":"Brothers Grimm (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brothers_Grimm"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Their father and grandfather were ministers of the Calvinistic Reformed Church.","source":"https://www.britannica.com/biography/Brothers-Grimm","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"hugo-grotius","name":"Hugo Grotius","url":"/great-lives/hugo-grotius/","dates":"1583–1645","born":1583,"died":1645,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["legal-scholars-lawgivers","philosophers"],"knownFor":"Dutch jurist called a father of international law, author of The Rights of War and Peace.","bio":"Hugo de Groot, known by the Latin name Grotius, was born in Delft in the Dutch Republic and was a famous child prodigy who entered the University of Leiden at eleven. At fifteen he accompanied a Dutch embassy to the king of France, who called him the miracle of Holland. He became a lawyer and official, and in The Free Sea of 1609 argued that the oceans were open to all nations for trade. Caught up in a fierce religious and political dispute in the Netherlands, he was arrested in 1618 and sentenced to life imprisonment in Loevestein Castle. In 1621 his wife, Maria van Reigersberch, helped him escape hidden in a chest meant for carrying books. He fled to Paris, where in 1625 he published The Rights of War and Peace, which argued that natural law, grounded in human nature and reason, binds all nations, that war is just only for certain causes, and that even in war there are limits on conduct. He died in 1645 after a shipwreck.","keyDates":[{"date":"1583","event":"Born in Delft"},{"date":"1609","event":"The Free Sea"},{"date":"1618","event":"Imprisoned at Loevestein"},{"date":"1621","event":"Escapes in a book chest"},{"date":"1625","event":"The Rights of War and Peace"},{"date":"1645","event":"Dies at Rostock"}],"quotes":[{"text":"Natural right is the dictate of right reason","work":"grotius-rights-of-war-and-peace","location":"Book I, ch. I, §X","verified":true}],"author":"Hugo Grotius","relatedWorks":["grotius-rights-of-war-and-peace"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"grotius-rights-of-war-and-peace","url":"/works/grotius-rights-of-war-and-peace/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Dutch Protestant who sided with reformers against orthodox Calvinists and worked for Christian unity.","source":"https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/grotius/","sourceName":"Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"johannes-gutenberg","name":"Johannes Gutenberg","url":"/great-lives/johannes-gutenberg/","dates":"c. 1400–1468","born":1400,"died":1468,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["inventors"],"knownFor":"German goldsmith who introduced printing with movable metal type to Europe.","bio":"Johannes Gutenberg was born in Mainz, Germany, to a merchant family, and trained as a metalworker. Little is known of his early life; records show him in Strasbourg in the 1430s, involved in business ventures and a secret project. Back in Mainz around 1450, with money borrowed from the lawyer Johann Fust, he perfected a system of printing with movable type. Its key parts were a hand mold for casting many identical metal letters quickly, a metal alloy that melted and hardened well, an oil-based ink that stuck to metal, and a screw press adapted from those used for wine and paper. Around 1455 his workshop finished the famous Gutenberg Bible, printed in Latin in two columns, of which about fifty copies survive today. Fust then sued him to recover the loan and took over much of the equipment. Gutenberg continued printing on a smaller scale and in 1465 was given a pension by the archbishop of Mainz. He died in 1468. Within fifty years printing presses had spread across Europe, producing millions of books.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 1400","event":"Born in Mainz"},{"date":"c. 1450","event":"Sets up his press in Mainz"},{"date":"c. 1455","event":"Gutenberg Bible completed"},{"date":"1455","event":"Sued by Johann Fust"},{"date":"1468","event":"Dies in Mainz"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"book","title":"The Gutenberg Revolution","author":"John Man","isbn13":"9780553819663","publisher":"Transworld Publishers","year":2009,"format":"paperback"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"The asteroid 777 Gutemberga is named after him.","source":{"title":"Johannes Gutenberg (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Gutenberg"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented; a Catholic of Mainz whose most famous work is the printed Bible.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Gutenberg","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["Birth year is uncertain."]},{"slug":"button-gwinnett","name":"Button Gwinnett","url":"/great-lives/button-gwinnett/","dates":"c. 1735–1777","born":1735,"died":1777,"era":"18th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"English-born Georgia signer who died in May 1777 of wounds from a duel with Lachlan McIntosh.","bio":"Button Gwinnett was born in Gloucester, England, about 1735, came to America as a merchant, and settled in Georgia, where he bought land on St. Catherine's Island. He sat in the Continental Congress and signed the Declaration of Independence. Returning to Georgia, he became a leader of one faction in a bitter local struggle and, in 1777, serving as acting president of the state, he quarreled with the general Lachlan McIntosh over a failed expedition into East Florida. The two men fought a duel in May 1777; both were wounded, and Gwinnett died of his wound a few days later. Sources differ on the exact day of his death, some giving 15 May and others 19 May. He was a planter who held people in slavery, and his short American career ended not on a battlefield against the British but in a quarrel with a fellow patriot. He was about forty-two.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 1735","event":"Born in Gloucester, England"},{"date":"1776","event":"Signs the Declaration of Independence"},{"date":"1777","event":"Serves as acting president of Georgia"},{"date":"May 1777","event":"Dies of wounds received in a duel with Lachlan McIntosh"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["the-founding-documents"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-founding-documents","url":"/works/the-founding-documents/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":null,"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"h-rider-haggard","name":"H. Rider Haggard","url":"/great-lives/h-rider-haggard/","dates":"1856–1925","born":1856,"died":1925,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"English writer of adventure novels set in Africa, including King Solomon's Mines and She.","bio":"Henry Rider Haggard was born in 1856 in Bradenham, Norfolk, England, the eighth of ten children of a lawyer and landowner. Not considered as bright as his brothers, he was sent at nineteen to work as an unpaid assistant to the governor of Natal, in southern Africa. He served in the British administration of the Transvaal and later managed an ostrich farm. He returned to England in 1882, studied law, and was called to the bar, but he turned to writing. King Solomon's Mines (1885), the story of the hunter Allan Quatermain and his companions searching for a lost diamond mine in Africa, was written in a few weeks after a bet with his brother that he could write a better book than Treasure Island. It was a great success and began the 'lost world' adventure genre. She (1887), about an immortal queen in a hidden African city, was also hugely popular. Haggard wrote dozens of novels and books on farming and rural England, served on government commissions, and was knighted in 1912. He died in London in 1925.","keyDates":[{"date":"1856","event":"Born in Norfolk"},{"date":"1875","event":"Goes to Natal, southern Africa"},{"date":"1882","event":"Returns to England"},{"date":"1885","event":"King Solomon's Mines published"},{"date":"1887","event":"She published"},{"date":"1912","event":"Knighted"},{"date":"1925","event":"Dies in London"}],"quotes":[],"author":"H. Rider Haggard","relatedWorks":["king-solomons-mines"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"king-solomons-mines","url":"/works/king-solomons-mines/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._Rider_Haggard","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"james-norman-hall","name":"James Norman Hall","url":"/great-lives/james-norman-hall/","dates":"1887–1951","born":1887,"died":1951,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American writer who, with Charles Nordhoff, wrote Mutiny on the Bounty and its sequels.","bio":"James Norman Hall was born in 1887 in Colfax, Iowa, and graduated from Grinnell College in 1910. He worked as a social worker in Boston. In 1914, while on vacation in Britain when the First World War began, he enlisted in the British Army, passing himself off as a Canadian, and served as an infantryman; his book Kitchener's Mob described the experience. He then joined the Lafayette Escadrille, a squadron of American volunteer pilots flying for France, and later the United States Army Air Service. He was shot down and spent the last months of the war as a prisoner. He received the Croix de Guerre, the Médaille Militaire, the Légion d'Honneur and the Distinguished Service Cross. He met Charles Nordhoff in the flying corps, and after the war the two moved to Tahiti, where Hall married a local woman and lived for the rest of his life. Together they wrote Mutiny on the Bounty (1932), Men Against the Sea and Pitcairn's Island, as well as other adventure novels. He died in Tahiti in 1951.","keyDates":[{"date":"1887","event":"Born in Colfax, Iowa"},{"date":"1914","event":"Enlists in the British Army"},{"date":"1918","event":"Shot down and taken prisoner"},{"date":"1920","event":"Moves to Tahiti"},{"date":"1932","event":"Mutiny on the Bounty published"},{"date":"1951","event":"Dies in Tahiti"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall","relatedWorks":["mutiny-on-the-bounty"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"mutiny-on-the-bounty","url":"/works/mutiny-on-the-bounty/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Norman_Hall","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"lyman-hall","name":"Lyman Hall","url":"/great-lives/lyman-hall/","dates":"1724–1790","born":1724,"died":1790,"era":"18th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders","physicians-medicine"],"knownFor":"Connecticut-born physician and former Congregationalist minister who represented Georgia in Congress and later served as governor.","bio":"Lyman Hall was born in 1724 in Wallingford, Connecticut, graduated from Yale, and was first trained for the Congregational ministry before he turned to medicine. He moved south, practiced as a physician, and settled in St. John's Parish, Georgia, a community with New England roots that was earlier than much of the colony in supporting the patriot cause. He was sent to the Continental Congress, signed the Declaration of Independence, and after the British overran Georgia spent a time as a refugee in the north. He returned after the war, was elected governor of Georgia in 1783, and supported the founding of a state college, a step toward what became the University of Georgia. Hall died in 1790. His path from minister to physician to governor is unusual among the signers, and his faith and his professional skill both belonged to the way he served a new and thinly settled state.","keyDates":[{"date":"1724","event":"Born in Wallingford, Connecticut"},{"date":"1776","event":"Signs the Declaration of Independence for Georgia"},{"date":"1783","event":"Becomes governor of Georgia"},{"date":"1790","event":"Dies in Georgia"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["the-founding-documents"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-founding-documents","url":"/works/the-founding-documents/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":null,"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"alexander-hamilton","name":"Alexander Hamilton","url":"/great-lives/alexander-hamilton/","dates":"1755 or 1757–1804","born":1755,"died":1804,"era":"18th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"Washington's aide and first Secretary of the Treasury, who built the nation's financial system.","bio":"Alexander Hamilton was born on the Caribbean island of Nevis and orphaned young. Local merchants, impressed by his talent, paid for him to study in New York. When the Revolution began he joined the army, and he became George Washington's aide-de-camp, later leading an attack at Yorktown. After the war he became a lawyer in New York, attended the Constitutional Convention, and wrote most of The Federalist essays defending the new Constitution. As the first Secretary of the Treasury he had the national government take over the states' war debts, set up a national bank and a mint, and encouraged manufacturing and trade. His plans gave the young country strong credit but caused bitter fights with Jefferson and Madison, who feared too much central power. He helped found the Bank of New York and the New York Post and was a founder of a society that worked to end slavery in New York. A long political feud with Aaron Burr ended in a duel at Weehawken, New Jersey, in 1804, where Hamilton was mortally wounded.","keyDates":[{"date":"1777","event":"Becomes Washington's aide-de-camp"},{"date":"1787–88","event":"Writes most of The Federalist"},{"date":"1789","event":"First Secretary of the Treasury"},{"date":"1791","event":"First Bank of the United States chartered"},{"date":"1804","event":"Mortally wounded in a duel with Aaron Burr"}],"quotes":[{"text":"whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice","work":"the-federalist-papers","location":"Federalist No. 1","verified":true}],"author":"Alexander Hamilton","relatedWorks":["the-federalist-papers","hamiltons-reports-and-opinion-on-the-bank"],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"book","title":"Who Was Alexander Hamilton?","author":"Pamela Pollack","isbn13":"9780399544279","publisher":"","year":2017,"format":""},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-federalist-papers","url":"/works/the-federalist-papers/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"hamiltons-reports-and-opinion-on-the-bank","url":"/works/hamiltons-reports-and-opinion-on-the-bank/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"book","title":"Alexander Hamilton","author":"Ron Chernow","isbn13":"9780143034759","publisher":"Paperback","year":2005,"format":""}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Mentored as a boy by Hugh Knox, a Presbyterian clergyman of Nevis.","source":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Appletons%27_Cyclop%C3%A6dia_of_American_Biography/Hamilton%2C_Alexander","sourceName":"Appletons' Cyclopaedia of American Biography (via Wikisource)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[{"series":"Very Short Introductions","title":"Alexander Hamilton: A Very Short Introduction","author":"R. B. Bernstein","publisher":"Oxford University Press","year":2025,"isbn13":"9780190082017","url":"https://bookshop.org/a/130650/9780190082017"}],"needsVerification":["Birth year is uncertain (1755 or 1757)."]},{"slug":"hammurabi","name":"Hammurabi","url":"/great-lives/hammurabi/","dates":"c. 1810–1750 BC","born":-1810,"died":-1750,"era":"ancient","categories":["kings-queens-emperors","legal-scholars-lawgivers"],"knownFor":"King of Babylon whose law code is one of the oldest written legal collections to survive.","bio":"Hammurabi was the sixth king of the First Dynasty of Babylon, in Mesopotamia, the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in what is now Iraq. He came to the throne around 1792 BC, when Babylon was one small kingdom among several rivals. Over about forty years he built canals, repaired temples, and through war and alliance brought most of southern and central Mesopotamia under his rule. Late in his reign he had nearly three hundred laws carved on a tall black stone pillar, topped by a picture of the king standing before the sun god Shamash, the god of justice. The laws cover trade, wages, property, marriage, farming and crime, and they often set punishments according to the rank of the people involved, including the rule of an eye for an eye. Copies were set up in cities so people could know the law. The best surviving pillar was carried off as war booty to Susa in ancient times, found there by French archaeologists in 1901, and is now in the Louvre in Paris.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 1792 BC","event":"Becomes king of Babylon"},{"date":"c. 1763 BC","event":"Conquers the rival kingdom of Larsa"},{"date":"c. 1754 BC","event":"Law code set up on stone pillars"},{"date":"1901","event":"Code pillar found at Susa"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["justinian-institutes","code-of-hammurabi"],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[{"text":"His law code is one of the oldest legal texts ever discovered and the longest to survive from the ancient Near East.","source":{"title":"Hammurabi (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammurabi"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented beyond the Babylonian religion of his time; his law code presents him as chosen by the gods.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammurabi","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"john-hancock","name":"John Hancock","url":"/great-lives/john-hancock/","dates":"1737–1793","born":1737,"died":1793,"era":"18th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"President of the Continental Congress whose large signature on the Declaration became the most famous on the document.","bio":"John Hancock was born in 1737 in Braintree, Massachusetts, and raised in Boston by a wealthy uncle who left him a great mercantile fortune. He became a leading merchant and a popular patriot after British officials seized his sloop Liberty in 1768 for alleged smuggling. As president of the Continental Congress in 1776, he was the first to sign the engrossed Declaration of Independence; his large, clear signature is the one most people recognize today. Hancock spent the rest of his life in Massachusetts politics, serving many years as governor and presiding over the state convention that ratified the Constitution, which he finally supported after amendments were promised. He could be vain and fond of display, yet he gave generously to public causes and remained a symbol of the patriot cause. He died in office as governor in 1793.","keyDates":[{"date":"1737","event":"Born in Braintree (now Quincy), Massachusetts"},{"date":"1768","event":"British officials seize his sloop Liberty"},{"date":"1775","event":"Becomes president of the Continental Congress"},{"date":"1776","event":"Signs the Declaration first, as president of Congress"},{"date":"1780","event":"Elected governor of Massachusetts"},{"date":"1793","event":"Dies in office as governor"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["the-founding-documents"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-founding-documents","url":"/works/the-founding-documents/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":null,"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"george-frideric-handel","name":"George Frideric Handel","url":"/great-lives/george-frideric-handel/","dates":"1685–1759","born":1685,"died":1759,"era":"18th-century","categories":["artists-composers-architects"],"knownFor":"German-born composer of Messiah and Water Music who made his career in London.","bio":"George Frideric Handel was born in Halle, Germany, the same year as Johann Sebastian Bach. His father, a barber-surgeon, wanted him to study law, but the duke of Saxe-Weissenfels heard the boy play the organ and urged that he study music. He worked as an organist and opera musician in Halle and Hamburg, then spent four years in Italy, mastering the Italian style. In 1710 he became music director to the Elector of Hanover, but he soon moved to London, and when the elector became King George I of Britain in 1714, Handel was already famous there. His Water Music was played for the king on a barge on the Thames in 1717. When the fashion for opera faded, he turned to English oratorios, dramatic works on religious subjects for chorus and soloists. Messiah, written in about three weeks in 1741, was first performed in Dublin in 1742 and is still one of the most performed choral works. He also wrote Music for the Royal Fireworks and coronation anthems. He went blind in his last years, and died in London in 1759.","keyDates":[{"date":"1685","event":"Born in Halle"},{"date":"1712","event":"Settles in London"},{"date":"1717","event":"Water Music performed on the Thames"},{"date":"1742","event":"Messiah first performed in Dublin"},{"date":"1759","event":"Dies in London"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"As a boy he learned the harpsichord, violin and organ, but his special love was the oboe.","source":{"title":"George Frideric Handel (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Frideric_Handel"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Raised in Lutheran Halle, where he served as a church organist before his long career in England.","source":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dictionary_of_National_Biography%2C_1885-1900/Handel%2C_George_Frederick","sourceName":"Dictionary of National Biography (1885–1900) (via Wikisource)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"hannibal","name":"Hannibal","url":"/great-lives/hannibal/","dates":"247–c. 183 BC","born":-247,"died":-183,"era":"ancient","categories":["military-leaders"],"knownFor":"Carthaginian general who crossed the Alps with elephants to invade Rome.","bio":"Hannibal Barca was the son of Hamilcar Barca, a general of Carthage, the great trading city in North Africa that had lost the First Punic War to Rome. According to the historian Polybius, when Hannibal was nine his father made him swear never to be a friend of Rome. In 218 BC, starting the Second Punic War, he marched an army with war elephants from Spain over the Pyrenees and across the Alps into Italy, losing many men and animals in the snow. He defeated the Romans at the Trebia, at Lake Trasimene, and in 216 BC at Cannae, where his army surrounded and destroyed a much larger Roman force. Yet Rome refused to surrender, and under Fabius it avoided pitched battles. Hannibal stayed in Italy for fifteen years without taking Rome. Called home to defend Carthage, he was defeated by Scipio at Zama in 202 BC. He later led Carthage's government, then fled to the eastern kings when the Romans demanded his surrender. Around 183 BC, about to be handed over, he took poison.","keyDates":[{"date":"218 BC","event":"Crosses the Alps into Italy"},{"date":"216 BC","event":"Victory at Cannae"},{"date":"202 BC","event":"Defeated by Scipio at Zama"},{"date":"c. 183 BC","event":"Dies in exile"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["plutarch-lives"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"plutarch-lives","url":"/works/plutarch-lives/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"He trained a corps of war elephants and took them with his army over the Alps into Italy.","source":{"title":"Hannibal (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannibal"}}],"records":[{"text":"Before the Battle of Lake Trasimene he marched around the flank of the Roman general Flaminius and cut him off from Rome, the first recorded 'turning movement' in military history.","source":{"title":"Hannibal (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannibal"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented beyond the Carthaginian religion of his time.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannibal","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"g-h-hardy","name":"G. H. Hardy","url":"/great-lives/g-h-hardy/","dates":"1877–1947","born":1877,"died":1947,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["scientists-mathematicians"],"knownFor":"English mathematician known for number theory, his collaboration with Srinivasa Ramanujan and the essay A Mathematician's Apology.","bio":"Godfrey Harold Hardy was born in 1877 in Cranleigh, Surrey, where his father taught at a school. He showed a gift for numbers very young and won scholarships to Winchester College and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he became a fellow and spent most of his career, apart from about eleven years as a professor at Oxford. With his longtime collaborator John Edensor Littlewood he wrote many important papers on mathematical analysis and number theory, including the distribution of prime numbers. In 1913 he received a letter from Srinivasa Ramanujan, a self-taught clerk in Madras, India, containing remarkable formulas; Hardy brought him to Cambridge in 1914, and their partnership became one of the most celebrated in mathematics. Hardy also gave his name to the Hardy–Weinberg principle in population genetics. He loved cricket and disliked any practical use of mathematics in war. His essay A Mathematician's Apology (1940) describes the beauty of pure mathematics and what it is like to be a creative mathematician. He died in Cambridge in 1947.","keyDates":[{"date":"1877","event":"Born in Cranleigh, Surrey"},{"date":"1908","event":"Hardy–Weinberg principle published"},{"date":"1913","event":"Receives Ramanujan's letter"},{"date":"1919–1931","event":"Professor at Oxford"},{"date":"1940","event":"A Mathematician's Apology published"},{"date":"1947","event":"Dies in Cambridge"}],"quotes":[],"author":"G. H. Hardy","relatedWorks":["hardy-a-mathematicians-apology"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"hardy-a-mathematicians-apology","url":"/works/hardy-a-mathematicians-apology/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._H._Hardy","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"thomas-hardy","name":"Thomas Hardy","url":"/great-lives/thomas-hardy/","dates":"1840–1928","born":1840,"died":1928,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"English novelist and poet, author of Far from the Madding Crowd and Tess of the d'Urbervilles, set in his imagined Wessex.","bio":"Thomas Hardy was born in 1840 in Higher Bockhampton, a hamlet near Dorchester in Dorset, England, the son of a stonemason and builder. At sixteen he was apprenticed to a local architect; in 1862 he moved to London to work as an architect's assistant. While working on the restoration of a church in Cornwall in 1870, he met Emma Gifford, whom he married in 1874. Far from the Madding Crowd (1874) was his first great success and allowed him to give up architecture. His novels are set in 'Wessex', a fictional version of south-western England based closely on real places, and often show people struggling against fate and the rules of society. They include The Return of the Native, The Mayor of Casterbridge, Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891) and Jude the Obscure (1895). Jude, harshly criticised, was his last novel, and he devoted the rest of his life to poetry. He lived at Max Gate, a house he designed in Dorchester. After Emma's death in 1912 he married Florence Dugdale in 1914. He died in 1928.","keyDates":[{"date":"1840","event":"Born near Dorchester, Dorset"},{"date":"1862","event":"Moves to London to work as an architect"},{"date":"1874","event":"Far from the Madding Crowd published"},{"date":"1891","event":"Tess of the d'Urbervilles published"},{"date":"1895","event":"Jude the Obscure published"},{"date":"1928","event":"Dies at Max Gate, Dorchester"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Thomas Hardy","relatedWorks":["far-from-the-madding-crowd","the-mayor-of-casterbridge","tess-of-the-durbervilles","jude-the-obscure"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"far-from-the-madding-crowd","url":"/works/far-from-the-madding-crowd/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-mayor-of-casterbridge","url":"/works/the-mayor-of-casterbridge/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"tess-of-the-durbervilles","url":"/works/tess-of-the-durbervilles/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"jude-the-obscure","url":"/works/jude-the-obscure/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Raised in a not especially devout Anglican family; he came to question the traditional Christian view of God.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Hardy","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"john-marshall-harlan","name":"John Marshall Harlan","url":"/great-lives/john-marshall-harlan/","dates":"1833–1911","born":1833,"died":1911,"era":"19th-century","categories":["legal-scholars-lawgivers"],"knownFor":"Supreme Court justice known as \"the Great Dissenter\" for his lone dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) against racial segregation.","bio":"John Marshall Harlan was born on 1 June 1833 in Boyle County, Kentucky, into a slaveholding family and was named after the great Chief Justice. He became a lawyer. Though he opposed abolition before the Civil War, he fought for the Union as colonel of a Kentucky regiment. After the war his views changed: he became a Republican and came to support the amendments that ended slavery and promised equal citizenship. President Rutherford B. Hayes appointed him to the Supreme Court in 1877, and he served for almost thirty-four years. Harlan was a devout Presbyterian elder who taught Sunday school. He became famous for his dissents. In the Civil Rights Cases (1883) he alone argued that Congress could forbid racial discrimination in inns, theatres and railways. In Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) he again stood alone, warning that segregation laws would plant seeds of race hate and declaring that the Constitution does not permit classes among citizens. His dissent was vindicated when the Court rejected 'separate but equal' in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. He died in Washington on 14 October 1911.","keyDates":[{"date":"1833","event":"Born in Boyle County, Kentucky, on 1 June"},{"date":"1861","event":"Raises a Union regiment in Kentucky"},{"date":"1877","event":"Appointed to the Supreme Court"},{"date":"1883","event":"Lone dissent in the Civil Rights Cases"},{"date":"1896","event":"Lone dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson"},{"date":"1911","event":"Dies in Washington on 14 October"}],"quotes":[{"text":"Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens.","work":"plessy-v-ferguson","location":"Harlan, J., dissenting","verified":true}],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["plessy-v-ferguson"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"plessy-v-ferguson","url":"/works/plessy-v-ferguson/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"brown-v-board-of-education","url":"/works/brown-v-board-of-education/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A fervently religious, conservative Old School Presbyterian.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Marshall_Harlan","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"kyle-harper","name":"Kyle Harper","url":"/great-lives/kyle-harper/","dates":"born 1979","born":1979,"died":null,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American historian of ancient Rome, author of The Fate of Rome, on climate, disease and the end of the empire.","bio":"Kyle Harper is an American historian and classicist who studies ancient Rome. He was born in 1979 in Norman, Oklahoma, and graduated from the University of Oklahoma in 2001 with a degree in letters; in his final year he was one of Oklahoma's two finalists for a Rhodes Scholarship. He earned a master's degree and a doctorate at Harvard University, writing his thesis on slavery in the late ancient Mediterranean. He then returned to teach at the University of Oklahoma, where he became the founding director of its Institute for the American Constitutional Heritage, a full professor of classics and letters, and from 2014 to 2020 the university's provost. He is also an external faculty member of the Santa Fe Institute. His books include Slavery in the Late Roman World (2011), From Shame to Sin (2013), on the Christian transformation of sexual morality, and The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire (2017), which argues that climate change and pandemics played a major part in Rome's decline. He later wrote Plagues upon the Earth (2021).","keyDates":[{"date":"1979","event":"Born in Norman, Oklahoma"},{"date":"2007","event":"Doctorate from Harvard University"},{"date":"2011","event":"Slavery in the Late Roman World published"},{"date":"2014–2020","event":"Provost of the University of Oklahoma"},{"date":"2017","event":"The Fate of Rome published"},{"date":"2021","event":"Plagues upon the Earth published"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Kyle Harper","relatedWorks":["harper-the-fate-of-rome"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"harper-the-fate-of-rome","url":"/works/harper-the-fate-of-rome/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Confirmed with his wife as a member of the Episcopal Church in 2015.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyle_Harper","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"james-harrington","name":"James Harrington","url":"/great-lives/james-harrington/","dates":"1611–1677","born":1611,"died":1677,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["philosophers"],"knownFor":"English political theorist, author of The Commonwealth of Oceana, a model of a republic.","bio":"James Harrington was born in 1611 into a gentry family in Northamptonshire, England. He studied at Trinity College, Oxford, without taking a degree, and then traveled in the Netherlands, Germany, France and Italy, where he admired the republic of Venice. In the English Civil War he was appointed to attend King Charles I while the king was held prisoner, and he became attached to him personally, though he did not share his politics. After the king's execution and the founding of the Commonwealth, Harrington wrote The Commonwealth of Oceana (1656), which describes an imaginary republic modeled on England. He argued that political power follows the ownership of land, and he proposed limits on landholding, a written constitution, a senate that would debate laws and a larger assembly that would vote on them, election by secret ballot, and the regular rotation of office holders. He founded a discussion club, the Rota, to promote these ideas. After the restoration of the monarchy he was imprisoned in 1661, and his health declined. He died in London in 1677.","keyDates":[{"date":"1611","event":"Born in Northamptonshire"},{"date":"1647","event":"Attends the captive King Charles I"},{"date":"1656","event":"The Commonwealth of Oceana published"},{"date":"1659","event":"Founds the Rota Club"},{"date":"1661","event":"Imprisoned after the Restoration"},{"date":"1677","event":"Dies in London"}],"quotes":[],"author":"James Harrington","relatedWorks":["harrington-oceana"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"harrington-oceana","url":"/works/harrington-oceana/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Harrington_%28author%29","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"benjamin-harrison-v","name":"Benjamin Harrison V","url":"/great-lives/benjamin-harrison-v/","dates":"1726–1791","born":1726,"died":1791,"era":"18th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"Virginia planter and speaker who signed the Declaration and later served as governor; father of a future president.","bio":"Benjamin Harrison V was born in 1726 in Charles City County, Virginia, at the Berkeley plantation, and became a large planter and a longtime member of the House of Burgesses, which he also served as speaker. In the Continental Congress he chaired the committee of the whole during much of the independence debate and signed the Declaration. He later served as governor of Virginia during the last years of the war, when the state was invaded and the government was often on the move. Harrison was among the wealthiest of the Virginia signers and held many people in slavery on his James River estates. He was the father of William Henry Harrison, later the ninth president, and a great-grandfather of Benjamin Harrison, the twenty-third. He died in 1791. His public service was real; so was his dependence on enslaved labor. Both belong in a student's picture of the man.","keyDates":[{"date":"1726","event":"Born at Berkeley plantation, Charles City County, Virginia"},{"date":"1776","event":"Chairs the committee of the whole and signs the Declaration"},{"date":"1781","event":"Becomes governor of Virginia"},{"date":"1791","event":"Dies in Virginia"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["the-founding-documents"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-founding-documents","url":"/works/the-founding-documents/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":null,"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"john-hart","name":"John Hart","url":"/great-lives/john-hart/","dates":"c. 1711–1779","born":1711,"died":1779,"era":"18th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"Hunterdon County landowner and speaker of the New Jersey Assembly who signed the Declaration and was driven from his farm in 1776.","bio":"John Hart was born about 1711 in Hunterdon County, New Jersey, and became a substantial farmer and landowner near what is now Hopewell. He served for many years in the colonial assembly, opposed the Stamp Act, and in 1776 became speaker of the new state assembly and a member of the Continental Congress. He signed the Declaration of Independence. That December, as British and Hessian troops overran New Jersey, Hart had to leave his farm. His wife, Deborah, was already ill and died around that time; the house and lands were damaged, and he spent the winter moving from place to place. He returned in 1777 and tried to restore his property, but his own health failed. Hart died in 1779. Later retellings sometimes turn his flight into a year of living in caves; the documented core is simpler and hard enough: a public man driven from home in a civil war, who came back and did not long survive.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 1711","event":"Born in Hunterdon County, New Jersey"},{"date":"1776","event":"Speaker of the New Jersey Assembly; signs the Declaration"},{"date":"1776–1777","event":"Driven from his farm during the British invasion of New Jersey"},{"date":"1779","event":"Dies in Hunterdon County"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["the-founding-documents"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-founding-documents","url":"/works/the-founding-documents/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":null,"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"william-harvey","name":"William Harvey","url":"/great-lives/william-harvey/","dates":"1578–1657","born":1578,"died":1657,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["physicians-medicine"],"knownFor":"English physician who discovered the circulation of the blood.","bio":"William Harvey was born in Folkestone, Kent, the eldest of nine children of a prosperous farmer and merchant. He studied at Cambridge and then at Padua, the leading medical school in Europe, under the anatomist Fabricius, who had described the valves in the veins. Returning to London, he became a physician at St. Bartholomew's Hospital and later physician to King James I and King Charles I. Galen had taught that blood was made constantly in the liver and consumed by the body. Harvey dissected many animals and measured how much blood the heart pumps with each beat; he calculated that in an hour it pumps far more blood than the body could possibly produce or contain. He concluded that the same blood must go round and round, pumped by the heart through the arteries and returning through the veins. In 1628 he published On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals. Many physicians attacked his idea at first, and he lost patients, but it was widely accepted before his death. During the Civil War he served with the king. He died in 1657.","keyDates":[{"date":"1578","event":"Born in Folkestone"},{"date":"1602","event":"Graduates from Padua"},{"date":"1609","event":"Physician at St. Bartholomew's Hospital"},{"date":"1628","event":"On the Motion of the Heart and Blood"},{"date":"1657","event":"Dies in London"}],"quotes":[{"text":"I profess both to learn and to teach anatomy, not from books but from dissections; not from the positions of philosophers but from the fabric of nature","work":"harvey-on-the-motion-of-the-heart-and-blood","location":"Dedication to Dr. Argent","verified":true}],"author":"William Harvey","relatedWorks":["harvey-on-the-motion-of-the-heart-and-blood","galen-selected-works","harvey-works"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"harvey-on-the-motion-of-the-heart-and-blood","url":"/works/harvey-on-the-motion-of-the-heart-and-blood/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"harvey-works","url":"/works/harvey-works/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"The William Harvey Hospital in Ashford, Kent, is named after him.","source":{"title":"William Harvey (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Harvey"}}],"records":[{"text":"He was the first known physician to describe completely and in detail how the heart pumps blood around the body.","source":{"title":"William Harvey (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Harvey"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Harvey","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"hatshepsut","name":"Hatshepsut","url":"/great-lives/hatshepsut/","dates":"c. 1507–1458 BC","born":-1507,"died":-1458,"era":"ancient","categories":["kings-queens-emperors"],"knownFor":"Woman pharaoh of Egypt's New Kingdom, known for her building projects and trade expedition to Punt.","bio":"Hatshepsut was the daughter of the pharaoh Thutmose I and the wife of her half-brother Thutmose II. When he died, his son by another wife, Thutmose III, was still a small child, and Hatshepsut ruled for him as regent. Within a few years she took the full titles of pharaoh herself, and she was often shown in statues and carvings with the traditional false beard and kilt of a king. Her reign of about twenty years was largely peaceful and prosperous. She sent a famous trading expedition to the land of Punt, probably on the Red Sea coast of Africa, which brought back gold, ebony, animals and incense trees, and the voyage was carved on the walls of her magnificent terraced temple at Deir el-Bahari near Thebes. She also raised huge granite obelisks at the temple of Karnak. After her death, Thutmose III ruled on his own, and later in his reign many of her images and names were chiseled off monuments. Her mummy was identified by scholars in 2007.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 1479 BC","event":"Becomes regent for Thutmose III"},{"date":"c. 1473 BC","event":"Takes the titles of pharaoh"},{"date":"c. 1470s BC","event":"Expedition to Punt; Deir el-Bahari temple built"},{"date":"c. 1458 BC","event":"Dies"},{"date":"2007","event":"Mummy identified"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["the-histories"],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Practiced the religion of ancient Egypt; she held the title God's Wife of Amun and built temples to the gods.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatshepsut","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["Egyptian regnal dates are approximate and vary by chronology."]},{"slug":"nathaniel-hawthorne","name":"Nathaniel Hawthorne","url":"/great-lives/nathaniel-hawthorne/","dates":"1804–1864","born":1804,"died":1864,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American novelist and short-story writer, author of The Scarlet Letter and A Wonder-Book.","bio":"Nathaniel Hathorne was born in 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts; he later added a 'w' to his name. His great-great-grandfather John Hathorne had been a judge at the Salem witch trials. His father, a sea captain, died when Nathaniel was four. He studied at Bowdoin College in Maine, where his classmates included the future poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and the future president Franklin Pierce. For years afterward he lived quietly in Salem, writing stories, many of them about the Puritan past, collected in Twice-Told Tales (1837). He worked at the Boston Custom House, lived briefly at the utopian community of Brook Farm, and in 1842 married Sophia Peabody; they lived in Concord at the Old Manse. After losing his post at the Salem Custom House, he wrote The Scarlet Letter (1850), about Hester Prynne, who is forced to wear a scarlet 'A' in a Puritan town. The House of the Seven Gables followed in 1851. For children he retold Greek myths in A Wonder-Book and Tanglewood Tales. He served as American consul in Liverpool and died in 1864 in Plymouth, New Hampshire.","keyDates":[{"date":"1804","event":"Born in Salem, Massachusetts"},{"date":"1825","event":"Graduates from Bowdoin College"},{"date":"1837","event":"Twice-Told Tales published"},{"date":"1842","event":"Marries Sophia Peabody"},{"date":"1850","event":"The Scarlet Letter published"},{"date":"1853","event":"Consul in Liverpool"},{"date":"1864","event":"Dies in Plymouth, New Hampshire"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Nathaniel Hawthorne","relatedWorks":["tanglewood-tales","a-wonder-book","the-scarlet-letter","the-house-of-the-seven-gables"],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"library","work":"tanglewood-tales","url":"/works/tanglewood-tales/"},{"band":"3-5","kind":"library","work":"a-wonder-book","url":"/works/a-wonder-book/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-scarlet-letter","url":"/works/the-scarlet-letter/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-house-of-the-seven-gables","url":"/works/the-house-of-the-seven-gables/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"He wrote his early stories in what he called his 'owl's nest', a room in the family home.","source":{"title":"Nathaniel Hawthorne (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathaniel_Hawthorne"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[{"name":"The Old Manse","note":"Nathaniel and Sophia Hawthorne began married life at the Old Manse in Concord, Massachusetts. The Trustees preserves this adult home and offers family-friendly tours and school-group visits.","url":"https://thetrustees.org/place/the-old-manse/","urlLabel":"The Old Manse — house and school visits"}],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented in detail; his works often explore religion and morality in Puritan New England.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathaniel_Hawthorne","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"joseph-haydn","name":"Joseph Haydn","url":"/great-lives/joseph-haydn/","dates":"1732–1809","born":1732,"died":1809,"era":"18th-century","categories":["artists-composers-architects"],"knownFor":"Austrian composer called the father of the symphony and the string quartet.","bio":"Franz Joseph Haydn was born in the village of Rohrau, Austria, the son of a wheelwright. At eight he became a choirboy at St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna, and when his voice broke he was dismissed and earned a meager living teaching and playing, while teaching himself composition. In 1761 he entered the service of the Esterházy princes, a wealthy Hungarian noble family, and worked for them for nearly thirty years, mostly at their remote palace of Eszterháza. With his own orchestra to write for, he experimented freely, and he composed more than a hundred symphonies and dozens of string quartets, giving both forms their classic shape. He became a friend of Mozart, whom he called the greatest composer he knew, and later taught the young Beethoven. After Prince Nikolaus died in 1790, Haydn traveled twice to London, where his twelve London Symphonies, including the Surprise Symphony, were enormously popular. Back in Vienna, he wrote the oratorios The Creation and The Seasons and the Emperor's Hymn, whose melody later became the German national anthem. He died in Vienna in 1809 while the city was occupied by Napoleon's army.","keyDates":[{"date":"1740","event":"Choirboy at St. Stephen's, Vienna"},{"date":"1761","event":"Enters the service of the Esterházy family"},{"date":"1791–1795","event":"Two visits to London"},{"date":"1798","event":"The Creation first performed"},{"date":"1809","event":"Dies in Vienna"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"Neither of his parents could read music, but his father had taught himself to play the harp.","source":{"title":"Joseph Haydn (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Haydn"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A Catholic composer who was deeply religious by temperament.","source":"https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07158b.htm","sourceName":"Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"f-a-hayek","name":"Friedrich A. Hayek","url":"/great-lives/f-a-hayek/","dates":"1899–1992","born":1899,"died":1992,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["philosophers"],"knownFor":"Austrian-British economist and philosopher, author of The Road to Serfdom and winner of the 1974 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics.","bio":"Friedrich August von Hayek was born in Vienna in 1899 into a family of scholars. He served in the Austro-Hungarian army on the Italian front in the First World War, then earned doctorates in law and political science at the University of Vienna, where he came under the influence of the economist Ludwig von Mises. In 1931 he moved to the London School of Economics, where he debated John Maynard Keynes about money and business cycles, and he became a British citizen. During the Second World War he wrote The Road to Serfdom (1944), which argued that central economic planning tends to concentrate power and threatens individual freedom; it became a bestseller, especially in a condensed version in Reader's Digest. In 1947 he founded the Mont Pelerin Society. He later taught at the University of Chicago and in Freiburg and Salzburg, writing on the law, the limits of knowledge and how markets coordinate information, in books such as The Constitution of Liberty. He shared the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1974 and died in Freiburg in 1992.","keyDates":[{"date":"1899","event":"Born in Vienna"},{"date":"1931","event":"Joins the London School of Economics"},{"date":"1944","event":"The Road to Serfdom published"},{"date":"1947","event":"Founds the Mont Pelerin Society"},{"date":"1950","event":"Moves to the University of Chicago"},{"date":"1974","event":"Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics"},{"date":"1992","event":"Dies in Freiburg"}],"quotes":[],"author":"F. A. Hayek","relatedWorks":["hayek-the-road-to-serfdom"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"hayek-the-road-to-serfdom","url":"/works/hayek-the-road-to-serfdom/"}],"majorWorks":[{"title":"Prices and Production","year":"1931","note":"His London lectures on money, capital, and the trade cycle","work":null,"url":null},{"title":"The Road to Serfdom","year":"1944","note":null,"work":"hayek-the-road-to-serfdom","url":"/works/hayek-the-road-to-serfdom/"},{"title":"The Use of Knowledge in Society","year":"1945","note":"Famous essay arguing that prices carry knowledge no central planner can gather","work":null,"url":null},{"title":"Individualism and Economic Order","year":"1948","note":"Collected essays on knowledge, competition, and socialist calculation","work":null,"url":null},{"title":"The Constitution of Liberty","year":"1960","note":"His defense of freedom under the rule of law","work":null,"url":null},{"title":"Law, Legislation and Liberty","year":"1973–1979","note":"Three volumes on law, social justice, and the political order of a free people","work":null,"url":null},{"title":"The Denationalisation of Money","year":"1976","note":"Proposes competing private currencies","work":null,"url":null},{"title":"The Fatal Conceit","year":"1988","note":"His last book, on the errors of socialism","work":null,"url":null}],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Brought up in a non-religious setting; he decided at 15 that he was an agnostic.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Hayek","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"robert-y-hayne","name":"Robert Y. Hayne","url":"/great-lives/robert-y-hayne/","dates":"1791–1839","born":1791,"died":1839,"era":"19th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"South Carolina senator and governor who debated Daniel Webster over states' rights and nullification in 1830.","bio":"Robert Young Hayne was born in 1791 in the Colleton District of South Carolina, into a planter family. He studied law in Charleston under Langdon Cheves. He was admitted to the bar in 1812, served in the War of 1812, and in 1813 married Frances Henrietta Pinckney, daughter of the former governor Charles Pinckney. He served in the state House of Representatives, becoming its speaker in 1818, and then as attorney general of South Carolina. In 1823 he entered the United States Senate. Like John C. Calhoun, he defended states' rights and the doctrine of nullification, the claim that a state could refuse to enforce a federal law it judged unconstitutional, especially protective tariffs that South Carolina opposed. In 1830, in a famous Senate debate with Daniel Webster of Massachusetts, which arose over a resolution on western lands, Hayne argued that the Union was a compact among sovereign states; Webster replied with his defense of the Union. He later served as governor during the Nullification Crisis and as mayor of Charleston. He died in Asheville, North Carolina, in 1839.","keyDates":[{"date":"1791","event":"Born in Colleton District, South Carolina"},{"date":"1823","event":"Enters the United States Senate"},{"date":"1830","event":"Debate with Daniel Webster"},{"date":"1832–1834","event":"Governor of South Carolina"},{"date":"1836–1837","event":"Mayor of Charleston"},{"date":"1839","event":"Dies in Asheville, North Carolina"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Robert Y. Hayne","relatedWorks":["hayne-speech-on-foots-resolution"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"hayne-speech-on-foots-resolution","url":"/works/hayne-speech-on-foots-resolution/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Y._Hayne","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"henry-hazlitt","name":"Henry Hazlitt","url":"/great-lives/henry-hazlitt/","dates":"1894–1993","born":1894,"died":1993,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American journalist and economist, author of Economics in One Lesson.","bio":"Henry Hazlitt was born in 1894 in Philadelphia. His father died when he was a baby, and the family was poor. He briefly attended the City College of New York but left to support his mother, and he educated himself while working as a newspaper reporter, starting at The Wall Street Journal. Over a career of more than seventy years he wrote on business, economics and public policy for publications including the New York Evening Post, The Nation, where he was literary editor, The American Mercury, The New York Times, where he wrote editorials, and Newsweek, where he wrote a column for twenty years. He became a friend and supporter of the economist Ludwig von Mises and helped bring the ideas of the Austrian school to general readers. His best-known book, Economics in One Lesson (1946), argues that good economic thinking looks at the long-term effects of a policy on all groups, not just the immediate effects on one group. He helped found the Foundation for Economic Education and The Freeman. He died in Connecticut in 1993, aged 98.","keyDates":[{"date":"1894","event":"Born in Philadelphia"},{"date":"1913","event":"Begins at The Wall Street Journal"},{"date":"1934","event":"Joins The New York Times editorial staff"},{"date":"1946","event":"Economics in One Lesson published"},{"date":"1946–1966","event":"Columnist for Newsweek"},{"date":"1993","event":"Dies in Connecticut"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Henry Hazlitt","relatedWorks":["hazlitt-economics-in-one-lesson"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"hazlitt-economics-in-one-lesson","url":"/works/hazlitt-economics-in-one-lesson/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Hazlitt","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"peter-heather","name":"Peter Heather","url":"/great-lives/peter-heather/","dates":"born 1960","born":1960,"died":null,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"British historian of late antiquity, author of The Fall of the Roman Empire.","bio":"Peter Heather is a British historian of late antiquity and the early Middle Ages, born in Northern Ireland in 1960. He was educated at Maidstone Grammar School and at New College, Oxford, where he earned his doctorate. He lectured at Worcester College, Oxford, at Yale University and at University College London, and in 2008 he became professor of medieval history at King's College London. He is regarded as a leading authority on the Goths and on the end of the Western Roman Empire. His research focuses on the relationship between the Roman Empire and the peoples it called barbarians, such as the Goths, Vandals and Huns. Against historians who stressed gradual change, he argues that the arrival of the Huns in the late fourth century set off movements of peoples that, together with Rome's own weaknesses, caused the collapse of the Western Empire in the fifth century. His books for general readers include The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History (2005), Empires and Barbarians (2009) and The Restoration of Rome (2013), and with John Rapley he wrote Why Empires Fall (2023).","keyDates":[{"date":"1960","event":"Born in Northern Ireland"},{"date":"2005","event":"The Fall of the Roman Empire published"},{"date":"2008","event":"Professor at King's College London"},{"date":"2009","event":"Empires and Barbarians published"},{"date":"2013","event":"The Restoration of Rome published"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Peter Heather","relatedWorks":["heather-the-fall-of-the-roman-empire"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"heather-the-fall-of-the-roman-empire","url":"/works/heather-the-fall-of-the-roman-empire/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Heather","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"g-w-f-hegel","name":"G. W. F. Hegel","url":"/great-lives/g-w-f-hegel/","dates":"1770–1831","born":1770,"died":1831,"era":"19th-century","categories":["philosophers"],"knownFor":"German idealist philosopher, author of the Phenomenology of Spirit and lectures on the philosophy of history.","bio":"Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was born in Stuttgart in 1770, the son of a civil servant. He studied theology and philosophy at the seminary in Tübingen, where he shared a room with the future philosopher Friedrich Schelling and the poet Friedrich Hölderlin, and the three followed the French Revolution with excitement. He worked as a private tutor, then taught at the University of Jena, where he finished his Phenomenology of Spirit (1807) just as Napoleon defeated the Prussians nearby. After the university closed, he edited a newspaper and served for eight years as headmaster of a secondary school in Nuremberg, where he wrote his Science of Logic. He became professor at Heidelberg in 1816 and at Berlin in 1818, where he grew famous. His philosophy describes history and thought as the development of reason, or Spirit, toward freedom, through the conflict and resolution of opposing ideas. His Philosophy of Right appeared in 1820, and his lectures on the philosophy of history were published after his death. He died in Berlin in 1831, probably of cholera.","keyDates":[{"date":"1770","event":"Born in Stuttgart"},{"date":"1807","event":"Phenomenology of Spirit published"},{"date":"1808–1816","event":"Headmaster in Nuremberg"},{"date":"1818","event":"Professor at Berlin"},{"date":"1820","event":"Philosophy of Right published"},{"date":"1831","event":"Dies in Berlin"}],"quotes":[],"author":"G. W. F. Hegel","relatedWorks":["hegel-philosophy-of-history","hegel-philosophy-of-right"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"hegel-philosophy-of-history","url":"/works/hegel-philosophy-of-history/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"hegel-philosophy-of-right","url":"/works/hegel-philosophy-of-right/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Identified as a Lutheran all his life, though his understanding of Christianity was unconventional.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Wilhelm_Friedrich_Hegel","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[{"series":"Very Short Introductions","title":"Hegel: A Very Short Introduction","author":"Peter Singer","publisher":"Oxford University Press","year":2001,"isbn13":"9780191604416","url":"https://bookshop.org/a/130650/9780191604416"}],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"werner-heisenberg","name":"Werner Heisenberg","url":"/great-lives/werner-heisenberg/","dates":"1901–1976","born":1901,"died":1976,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["scientists-mathematicians"],"knownFor":"German physicist who helped create quantum mechanics and formulated the uncertainty principle; Nobel laureate in physics.","bio":"Werner Karl Heisenberg was born in 1901 in Würzburg, Germany, the son of a teacher of classical languages. As a teenager he read Plato's Timaeus while hiking in the Bavarian Alps. He was a Scout leader and an accomplished pianist, and he met his wife Elisabeth Schumacher at a private music recital. He studied physics in Munich under Arnold Sommerfeld, earning his doctorate in 1923, and worked with Max Born at Göttingen and Niels Bohr in Copenhagen. In 1925, suffering from hay fever, he went to the pollen-free island of Helgoland, where he worked out the ideas that became matrix mechanics. In 1927 he published the uncertainty principle and became a professor at Leipzig. He received the Nobel Prize in Physics for 1932. During the Second World War he led theoretical work in the German nuclear program, a role historians still debate. Afterward he directed the Max Planck Institute for Physics and wrote Physics and Philosophy (1958). He died in Munich in 1976.","keyDates":[{"date":"1901","event":"Born in Würzburg"},{"date":"1923","event":"Doctorate under Arnold Sommerfeld in Munich"},{"date":"1925","event":"Develops matrix mechanics on Helgoland"},{"date":"1927","event":"Publishes the uncertainty principle; professor at Leipzig"},{"date":"1933","event":"Awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for 1932"},{"date":"1958","event":"Max Planck Institute for Physics moves to Munich"},{"date":"1976","event":"Dies in Munich"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Werner Heisenberg","relatedWorks":["heisenberg-physics-and-philosophy"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"heisenberg-physics-and-philosophy","url":"/works/heisenberg-physics-and-philosophy/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Raised and lived as a Lutheran Christian.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werner_Heisenberg","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"ernest-hemingway","name":"Ernest Hemingway","url":"/great-lives/ernest-hemingway/","dates":"1899–1961","born":1899,"died":1961,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American novelist and journalist, author of A Farewell to Arms and The Old Man and the Sea, winner of the 1954 Nobel Prize in Literature.","bio":"Ernest Hemingway was born in 1899 in Oak Park, Illinois, the son of a doctor, and spent summers in northern Michigan, where he learned to hunt and fish. After high school he worked as a reporter for the Kansas City Star. In 1918 he went to Italy as a Red Cross ambulance driver and was badly wounded; he fell in love with a nurse while recovering in Milan, experiences that shaped A Farewell to Arms (1929). In the 1920s he lived in Paris as a foreign correspondent among other expatriate writers and published The Sun Also Rises (1926). His spare, direct prose style was widely imitated. He reported on the Spanish Civil War, which inspired For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940), and on the Second World War, including the Normandy landings. He lived for many years in Key West and in Cuba. The Old Man and the Sea (1952), about an aging Cuban fisherman's struggle with a great marlin, won the Pulitzer Prize, and he received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954. He died in Ketchum, Idaho, in 1961.","keyDates":[{"date":"1899","event":"Born in Oak Park, Illinois"},{"date":"1918","event":"Wounded in Italy as an ambulance driver"},{"date":"1926","event":"The Sun Also Rises published"},{"date":"1929","event":"A Farewell to Arms published"},{"date":"1952","event":"The Old Man and the Sea published"},{"date":"1954","event":"Nobel Prize in Literature"},{"date":"1961","event":"Dies in Ketchum, Idaho"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Ernest Hemingway","relatedWorks":["a-farewell-to-arms","the-old-man-and-the-sea","the-sun-also-rises","for-whom-the-bell-tolls"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"a-farewell-to-arms","url":"/works/a-farewell-to-arms/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-old-man-and-the-sea","url":"/works/the-old-man-and-the-sea/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-sun-also-rises","url":"/works/the-sun-also-rises/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"for-whom-the-bell-tolls","url":"/works/for-whom-the-bell-tolls/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[{"name":"The Hemingway Home & Museum","note":"Ernest and Pauline Hemingway made this Key West, Florida house their home in the 1930s. The museum offers tours of the house, gardens, and writing studio.","url":"https://www.hemingwayhome.com/","urlLabel":"The Hemingway Home & Museum — house museum"}],"faith":{"note":"Converted to Catholicism before his marriage to Pauline Pfeiffer; his personal beliefs are otherwise not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Hemingway","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"carl-g-hempel","name":"Carl G. Hempel","url":"/great-lives/carl-g-hempel/","dates":"1905–1997","born":1905,"died":1997,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["philosophers"],"knownFor":"German-American philosopher of science known for his account of scientific explanation and the raven paradox.","bio":"Carl Gustav Hempel was born in 1905 in Oranienburg, near Berlin. He studied mathematics, physics and philosophy at Göttingen, Heidelberg and Berlin, and was associated with the Berlin Circle, a group close to the logical empiricists of the Vienna Circle. He completed his doctorate in Berlin in 1934 and soon left Nazi Germany, first for Belgium and then in 1937 for the United States. He taught at the City College of New York, Queens College, Yale and, from 1955, Princeton University, and after retiring he taught at the University of Pittsburgh. Hempel is best known for the 'covering law' model of scientific explanation, developed with Paul Oppenheim, which describes explaining an event as showing that it follows from general laws and particular conditions. He also posed the 'raven paradox' about how evidence confirms a general statement. His short textbook Philosophy of Natural Science (1966) became a standard introduction. He died in Princeton in 1997.","keyDates":[{"date":"1905","event":"Born in Oranienburg, Germany"},{"date":"1934","event":"Doctorate in Berlin; leaves Germany"},{"date":"1937","event":"Moves to the United States"},{"date":"1948","event":"Covering-law model with Paul Oppenheim"},{"date":"1955","event":"Joins Princeton University"},{"date":"1966","event":"Philosophy of Natural Science published"},{"date":"1997","event":"Dies in Princeton"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Carl G. Hempel","relatedWorks":["hempel-philosophy-of-natural-science"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"hempel-philosophy-of-natural-science","url":"/works/hempel-philosophy-of-natural-science/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Gustav_Hempel","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"henry-ii-of-england","name":"Henry II of England","url":"/great-lives/henry-ii-of-england/","dates":"1133–1189","born":1133,"died":1189,"era":"medieval","categories":["kings-queens-emperors","legal-scholars-lawgivers"],"knownFor":"King of England whose royal courts, travelling judges and juries laid the foundations of the English common law.","bio":"Henry Plantagenet was born at Le Mans in France on 5 March 1133, the son of Geoffrey, Count of Anjou, and the Empress Matilda, daughter of Henry I of England. In 1152 he married Eleanor of Aquitaine, and in 1154, after years of civil war, he became king of England, ruling lands from Scotland's border to the Pyrenees. Determined to restore order, Henry expanded the king's justice. Royal judges travelled the country on regular circuits, and new legal procedures, the assizes, let people bring disputes over land to the king's court, where a jury of local men answered questions about the facts. The Assize of Clarendon (1166) required juries in each district to report suspected criminals. Because the royal judges applied the same rules everywhere, their decisions grew into a law common to the whole realm. Henry's attempt to bring clergy accused of crimes under royal courts led to a bitter quarrel with Archbishop Thomas Becket, who was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral in 1170 by four of Henry's knights. Henry did public penance at Becket's tomb in 1174. He died at Chinon on 6 July 1189.","keyDates":[{"date":"1133","event":"Born at Le Mans on 5 March"},{"date":"1154","event":"Becomes king of England"},{"date":"1164","event":"Constitutions of Clarendon"},{"date":"1166","event":"Assize of Clarendon"},{"date":"1170","event":"Murder of Thomas Becket"},{"date":"1189","event":"Dies at Chinon on 6 July"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"commentaries-on-the-laws-of-england","url":"/works/commentaries-on-the-laws-of-england/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"holmes-the-common-law","url":"/works/holmes-the-common-law/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A king whose six-year conflict with Archbishop Thomas Becket ended in the archbishop's murder.","source":"https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07220b.htm","sourceName":"Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"henry-viii","name":"Henry VIII","url":"/great-lives/henry-viii/","dates":"1491–1547","born":1491,"died":1547,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["kings-queens-emperors"],"knownFor":"King of England who broke with the pope and married six times.","bio":"Henry VIII was the second son of Henry VII, the first Tudor king, and became heir when his elder brother Arthur died. He became king in 1509 at seventeen, handsome, athletic and well educated, and married Arthur's widow, Catherine of Aragon. Desperate for a male heir, he asked the pope to annul the marriage, and when the pope refused, he had Parliament declare him Supreme Head of the Church of England in 1534. He dissolved the monasteries and took their lands and wealth. Thomas More and Bishop John Fisher were executed for refusing to accept his authority over the Church. Henry married six times: he divorced Catherine of Aragon and Anne of Cleves, had Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard beheaded, lost Jane Seymour, who died after giving birth to his son Edward, and was survived by Catherine Parr. He built up the navy and spent heavily on wars with France. Grown very heavy and ill, he died in 1547. Each of his three children became monarch in turn.","keyDates":[{"date":"1509","event":"Becomes king; marries Catherine of Aragon"},{"date":"1534","event":"Act of Supremacy"},{"date":"1535","event":"Execution of Thomas More"},{"date":"1536–1541","event":"Dissolution of the monasteries"},{"date":"1547","event":"Dies at Whitehall"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["utopia"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"book","title":"The Six Wives of Henry VIII","author":"Alison Weir","isbn13":"9780802136831","publisher":"Grove Press","year":2000,"format":"paperback"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Threw off papal supremacy and made himself Supreme Head of the Church of England.","source":"https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07222a.htm","sourceName":"Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"patrick-henry","name":"Patrick Henry","url":"/great-lives/patrick-henry/","dates":"1736–1799","born":1736,"died":1799,"era":"18th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"Virginia lawyer, orator and Founding Father, remembered for 'Give me liberty, or give me death!'","bio":"Patrick Henry was born in 1736 in Hanover County, Virginia, the son of a Scottish-born planter and county official, and was educated mostly by his father. He failed at storekeeping and farming before teaching himself law, and he was admitted to the bar in 1760. He became famous in 1763 in the Parson's Cause, a case in which he argued that the king had no right to overrule a law passed by Virginia's legislature. Elected to the House of Burgesses, he introduced resolutions against the Stamp Act in 1765. He served in the First Continental Congress, and in March 1775, at a convention in St. John's Church in Richmond, he urged Virginia to raise a militia, ending his speech, according to later accounts, with the words 'Give me liberty, or give me death!' In 1776 he became the first governor of independent Virginia, serving five one-year terms in all. He opposed ratification of the United States Constitution, fearing a strong central government, and pressed for the amendments that became the Bill of Rights. He died at his plantation, Red Hill, in 1799.","keyDates":[{"date":"1736","event":"Born in Hanover County, Virginia"},{"date":"1763","event":"Argues the Parson's Cause"},{"date":"1765","event":"Stamp Act resolutions"},{"date":"1775","event":"Give me liberty speech"},{"date":"1776","event":"First governor of Virginia"},{"date":"1788","event":"Opposes ratification of the Constitution"},{"date":"1799","event":"Dies at Red Hill"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Patrick Henry","relatedWorks":["give-me-liberty-or-give-me-death"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"give-me-liberty-or-give-me-death","url":"/works/give-me-liberty-or-give-me-death/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"An Anglican with deep religious beliefs who fought for religious liberty in Virginia.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Henry","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"matthew-henson","name":"Matthew Henson","url":"/great-lives/matthew-henson/","dates":"1866–1955","born":1866,"died":1955,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["explorers"],"knownFor":"Arctic explorer who was part of the 1909 expedition that claimed the North Pole.","bio":"Matthew Henson was born in Charles County, Maryland, to free Black parents who were sharecroppers. Orphaned young, he went to sea at about twelve as a cabin boy, and the ship's captain taught him to read and write and the skills of navigation. Working in a Washington hat shop, he met the naval officer Robert Peary, who hired him as a valet in 1887. Henson soon became Peary's most valuable companion on seven Arctic expeditions over more than twenty years. He learned to speak the Inuit language, built sledges, drove dog teams, and was skilled at hunting and surviving in the cold. On April 6, 1909, Peary, Henson and four Inuit men, Ootah, Egingwah, Seegloo and Ooqueah, reached what they believed was the North Pole; whether they reached the exact spot is still debated. Peary received most of the honor, while Henson worked for years as a clerk in the New York customs house. Late in life he received recognition, including membership in the Explorers Club in 1937. He died in 1955, and in 1988 he was reburied beside Peary at Arlington National Cemetery.","keyDates":[{"date":"1887","event":"Begins working with Robert Peary"},{"date":"1909","event":"Reaches the vicinity of the North Pole"},{"date":"1912","event":"Publishes A Negro Explorer at the North Pole"},{"date":"1937","event":"Admitted to the Explorers Club"},{"date":"1955","event":"Dies in New York"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"In 2021 a crater on the Moon was named after him, and the Henson Glacier in Greenland also bears his name.","source":{"title":"Matthew Henson (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Henson"}}],"records":[{"text":"On the 1908–09 expedition he was one of six men, with Robert Peary and four Inuit assistants, who claimed to be the first to reach the North Pole.","source":{"title":"Matthew Henson (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Henson"}},{"text":"In 1937 he became the first African American made a life member of The Explorers Club.","source":{"title":"Matthew Henson (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Henson"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Henson","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["Whether the 1909 party reached the exact Pole is disputed."]},{"slug":"heraclitus","name":"Heraclitus","url":"/great-lives/heraclitus/","dates":"fl. c. 500 BC","born":-535,"died":-475,"era":"ancient","categories":["philosophers"],"knownFor":"Greek philosopher of Ephesus who taught that everything is in constant change, known from surviving fragments.","bio":"Heraclitus lived in the Greek city of Ephesus, on the coast of Asia Minor (now western Turkey), around 500 BC. Ancient writers say he came from an aristocratic family and gave up a hereditary position to his brother, but most stories about his life were written much later and are not reliable. He wrote a single book, which has been lost; what survives are about a hundred short sayings, or fragments, quoted by later authors. They are often puzzling and paradoxical, which earned him the nickname 'the Obscure'. Heraclitus taught that the world is always changing, an idea later summed up in the saying that you cannot step into the same river twice, and that opposites such as day and night, or war and peace, are bound together. He described fire as the basic element of the world and spoke of a Logos, an underlying order or reason that governs all things, which most people fail to understand. His ideas influenced Plato, the Stoics and many later philosophers.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 500 BC","event":"Active in Ephesus"},{"date":"5th century BC","event":"His book circulates among Greek thinkers"},{"date":"Later antiquity","event":"Fragments quoted by authors such as Plato and Clement"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Heraclitus","relatedWorks":["fragments"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"fragments","url":"/works/fragments/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented beyond the Greek religion of his time; he wrote of the logos ordering the world.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heraclitus","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["His dates are approximate; little is reliably known of his life."]},{"slug":"george-herbert","name":"George Herbert","url":"/great-lives/george-herbert/","dates":"1593–1633","born":1593,"died":1633,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["writers-poets","theologians-church-fathers"],"knownFor":"Welsh-born English poet and country parson, author of The Temple, a collection of devotional poems.","bio":"George Herbert was born in 1593 in Montgomery, Wales, into an aristocratic family; his elder brother Edward became a philosopher and diplomat. His father died when George was three, and his mother, Magdalen Herbert, a friend of the poet John Donne, raised the family. He studied at Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he became a fellow and in 1620 was elected public orator of the university, a post that brought him into contact with the court of King James I. He served briefly as a member of Parliament. In his thirties he turned away from a career at court, and in 1630 he was ordained a priest and became rector of the small parish of Bemerton, near Salisbury. There he served his parishioners, played music, and wrote a guide for country clergy, A Priest to the Temple. He died of tuberculosis in 1633, at the age of 39. Shortly before his death he sent his poems to his friend Nicholas Ferrar, who published them as The Temple (1633). They include The Collar, Love (III) and Easter Wings.","keyDates":[{"date":"1593","event":"Born in Montgomery, Wales"},{"date":"1620","event":"Public orator of Cambridge University"},{"date":"1630","event":"Becomes rector of Bemerton"},{"date":"1633","event":"Dies at Bemerton; The Temple published"}],"quotes":[],"author":"George Herbert","relatedWorks":["the-collar"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-collar","url":"/works/the-collar/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Anglican priest and poet; he is commemorated in the calendars of the Church of England and the Episcopal Church.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Herbert","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"herodotus","name":"Herodotus","url":"/great-lives/herodotus/","dates":"c. 484–c. 425 BC","born":-484,"died":-425,"era":"ancient","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Greek historian from Halicarnassus whose Histories of the Persian Wars earned him the title father of history.","bio":"Herodotus was born around 484 BC in Halicarnassus (now Bodrum, Turkey), a Greek city then under Persian rule. Ancient sources say that his family took part in opposing the city's ruler and that he lived for a time on the island of Samos. He traveled widely, visiting Egypt, Phoenicia, Babylon, the Black Sea region and many parts of Greece, and he spent time in Athens. He later joined the Greek colony of Thurii in southern Italy. His Histories, the first great prose history in Greek, set out to explain the causes and events of the wars between the Greeks and the Persian Empire, including the battles of Marathon, Thermopylae and Salamis, so that great deeds would not be forgotten. Along the way he describes the customs, geography and stories of many peoples, often reporting what he was told even when he doubted it. The Roman writer Cicero called him the 'father of history', though some ancient critics also accused him of telling tales. He died around 425 BC.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 484 BC","event":"Born in Halicarnassus"},{"date":"c. 444 BC","event":"Joins the colony of Thurii, according to tradition"},{"date":"c. 430 BC","event":"The Histories circulating"},{"date":"c. 425 BC","event":"Dies"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Herodotus","relatedWorks":["the-histories"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-histories","url":"/works/the-histories/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented beyond the Greek religion of his time.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herodotus","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[{"series":"Very Short Introductions","title":"Herodotus: A Very Short Introduction","author":"Jennifer T. Roberts","publisher":"Oxford University Press","year":2011,"isbn13":"9780199575992","url":"https://bookshop.org/a/130650/9780199575992"}],"needsVerification":["His dates and travels are known only approximately."]},{"slug":"herophilus","name":"Herophilus","url":"/great-lives/herophilus/","dates":"c. 335–c. 280 BC","born":-335,"died":-280,"era":"ancient","categories":["physicians-medicine","scientists-mathematicians"],"knownFor":"Greek physician at Alexandria, the first known to dissect human bodies systematically and to describe the brain, nerves and pulse.","bio":"Herophilus was born at Chalcedon, on the Bosporus opposite Byzantium, around 335 BC, and studied medicine under Praxagoras of Cos. He settled in Alexandria, the new Greek capital of Egypt under the Ptolemies, where for a short time the dissection of human bodies was permitted. Herophilus became the first physician known to dissect human corpses in a systematic way. He described the brain and its ventricles, distinguished nerves from tendons, separated the sensory from the motor nerves, and traced the eye, the liver, the reproductive organs and the first part of the small intestine, which he named for its length of twelve finger-breadths (the duodenum). He also studied the pulse and is said to have timed it with a water clock. None of his books survives; his work is known through later writers such as Galen and Celsus. Celsus and the Christian writer Tertullian reported that he and Erasistratus also cut open living condemned criminals, a charge that historians still debate. He died around 280 BC.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 335 BC","event":"Born at Chalcedon"},{"date":"c. 300 BC","event":"Working in Alexandria under the early Ptolemies"},{"date":"c. 280 BC","event":"Dies, probably in Alexandria"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"on-medicine","url":"/works/on-medicine/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"galen-selected-works","url":"/works/galen-selected-works/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herophilos","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["Birth and death years are approximate (c. 335 and c. 280 BC are the usual estimates).","The vivisection charge rests on Celsus (On Medicine, Prooemium) and Tertullian (De Anima 10); its truth is debated."]},{"slug":"judith-herrin","name":"Judith Herrin","url":"/great-lives/judith-herrin/","dates":"born 1942","born":1942,"died":null,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"English archaeologist and historian of Byzantium and Late Antiquity.","bio":"Judith Herrin, an English historian and archaeologist, was born in 1942. She attended Bedales School, studied history at Newnham College, Cambridge, and received her doctorate from the University of Birmingham in 1972; she also trained in Paris, Athens and Munich. She worked as an archaeologist with the British School at Athens and, as a Dumbarton Oaks fellow, at the site of the Kalenderhane Mosque in Istanbul. From 1991 to 1995 she was Stanley J. Seeger Professor of Byzantine History at Princeton University, and in 1995 she became professor of Late Antique and Byzantine studies at King's College London, where she headed the Centre for Hellenic Studies until retiring in 2008. In 2011 she was president of the International Congress of Byzantine Studies. Her books include The Formation of Christendom (1987), Women in Purple, Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire (2007), written for general readers, and Ravenna: Capital of Empire, Crucible of Europe, which won the Duff Cooper Prize for 2020. In 2016 she received the Heineken Prize for History.","keyDates":[{"date":"1942","event":"Born"},{"date":"1972","event":"Doctorate from the University of Birmingham"},{"date":"1987","event":"The Formation of Christendom published"},{"date":"1995","event":"Professor at King's College London"},{"date":"2007","event":"Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire"},{"date":"2016","event":"Heineken Prize for History"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Judith Herrin","relatedWorks":["herrin-byzantium"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"herrin-byzantium","url":"/works/herrin-byzantium/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Herrin","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"milton-hershey","name":"Milton Hershey","url":"/great-lives/milton-hershey/","dates":"1857–1945","born":1857,"died":1945,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["titans-of-industry"],"knownFor":"Candy maker who mass-produced milk chocolate and built the town of Hershey, Pennsylvania.","bio":"Milton Snavely Hershey was born on a farm in Pennsylvania to a Mennonite family and left school after the fourth grade. He was apprenticed to a printer but disliked it, and then to a candy maker in Lancaster. His first candy businesses, in Philadelphia, Chicago and New York, failed. Back in Lancaster he succeeded with caramels, and after seeing German chocolate-making machines at the Chicago World's Fair in 1893, he decided to make chocolate. He sold his caramel company for a million dollars in 1900 and set out to make milk chocolate cheaply enough for ordinary people, a process the Swiss had kept secret. After much experiment he succeeded, and the Hershey bar and, later, Hershey's Kisses became famous across America. He built a model town around his factory in Derry Township, with houses, schools, parks, a trolley and a zoo, which became Hershey, Pennsylvania. He and his wife Catherine had no children, and in 1909 they founded a school for orphaned boys, to which he later gave most of his fortune. He died in 1945.","keyDates":[{"date":"1886","event":"Founds the Lancaster Caramel Company"},{"date":"1900","event":"Sells it and turns to chocolate"},{"date":"1903","event":"Begins building his chocolate factory and town"},{"date":"1909","event":"Founds the Hershey Industrial School"},{"date":"1945","event":"Dies in Hershey"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"He sold his Lancaster Caramel Company for $1 million to start the Hershey Chocolate Company, after becoming interested in chocolate at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago.","source":{"title":"Milton S. Hershey (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_S._Hershey"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Raised in a Pennsylvania Mennonite family.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_S._Hershey","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"hesiod","name":"Hesiod","url":"/great-lives/hesiod/","dates":"fl. c. 700 BC","born":-750,"died":-650,"era":"ancient","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Early Greek poet of Boeotia, author of the Theogony and Works and Days.","bio":"Hesiod was a Greek poet who lived around 700 BC, roughly in the same period as Homer, and is one of the earliest Greek poets whose works survive. What little is known of his life comes from his own poems. He says that his father had left the city of Cyme, in Asia Minor, because of poverty and settled at Ascra, a village in Boeotia in central Greece, near Mount Helicon. Hesiod tended sheep there, and he describes how the Muses appeared to him on the mountain and gave him the gift of song. He also mentions winning a prize, a tripod, at a poetry contest at Chalcis. His Theogony tells of the origins of the world and the gods, from Chaos and Earth to the rise of Zeus. Works and Days, addressed to his brother Perses, with whom he had a dispute over their inheritance, gives practical advice on farming, the seasons and honest work, and includes the myths of Prometheus, Pandora and the ages of mankind. Ancient tradition said he died at Locris.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 700 BC","event":"Active as a poet at Ascra in Boeotia"},{"date":"c. 700 BC","event":"Wins a tripod at a contest in Chalcis"},{"date":"Ancient tradition","event":"Dies at Locris"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Hesiod","relatedWorks":["hesiod-theogony-and-works-and-days"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"hesiod-theogony-and-works-and-days","url":"/works/hesiod-theogony-and-works-and-days/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented beyond the Greek religion his poems describe.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hesiod","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["His dates are approximate and come from his own poems and later tradition."]},{"slug":"hermann-hesse","name":"Hermann Hesse","url":"/great-lives/hermann-hesse/","dates":"1877–1962","born":1877,"died":1962,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"German-born Swiss novelist, author of Siddhartha, Steppenwolf and The Glass Bead Game, winner of the 1946 Nobel Prize in Literature.","bio":"Hermann Hesse was born in 1877 in Calw, in the Black Forest of Germany, into a family of Protestant missionaries; his mother had been born in India. He was sent to a seminary but ran away and struggled through his school years. He then worked as a mechanic's apprentice in a clock factory and as a bookseller in Tübingen and Basel while writing poetry. His first successful novel, Peter Camenzind (1904), allowed him to write full time. In 1911 he traveled to Southeast Asia. During the First World War he lived in Switzerland and opposed nationalist propaganda, and he worked to help German prisoners of war. A personal crisis led him to psychoanalysis with a student of Carl Jung. His novels Demian (1919), Siddhartha (1922), about a young man in ancient India searching for enlightenment in the time of the Buddha, and Steppenwolf (1927) explore the search for self-knowledge. He became a Swiss citizen in 1924 and lived in Montagnola, in southern Switzerland. The Glass Bead Game appeared in 1943, and he won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1946. He died in Montagnola in 1962.","keyDates":[{"date":"1877","event":"Born in Calw, Germany"},{"date":"1904","event":"Peter Camenzind published"},{"date":"1919","event":"Demian published"},{"date":"1922","event":"Siddhartha published"},{"date":"1927","event":"Steppenwolf published"},{"date":"1946","event":"Nobel Prize in Literature"},{"date":"1962","event":"Dies in Montagnola, Switzerland"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Hermann Hesse","relatedWorks":["siddhartha"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"siddhartha","url":"/works/siddhartha/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Grandson of Protestant missionaries in India; he drew on Hindu and Buddhist thought but called his parents' lived Christianity the strongest influence on him.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Hesse","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"joseph-hewes","name":"Joseph Hewes","url":"/great-lives/joseph-hewes/","dates":"1730–1779","born":1730,"died":1779,"era":"18th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"North Carolina merchant who signed the Declaration, helped fit out the early Continental navy, and died while still in Congress.","bio":"Joseph Hewes was born in 1730 near Kingston, New Jersey, and became a successful merchant in Edenton, North Carolina. He sat in the colonial assembly and in the Continental Congress, where he signed the Declaration of Independence. In Congress he did important work on the marine committee, helping to fit out the first ships of the Continental navy and supporting the appointment of officers, including John Paul Jones. He never married. Hewes's health failed under the labor of Congress, and he died in Philadelphia in October 1779, still a sitting member, one of the signers who did not live to see the victory. His papers and the record of the marine committee, rather than later legend, are the measure of his service: a merchant who turned his knowledge of ships to the use of a country that did not yet have a navy.","keyDates":[{"date":"1730","event":"Born near Kingston, New Jersey"},{"date":"1774","event":"Sits in the First Continental Congress"},{"date":"1776","event":"Signs the Declaration of Independence"},{"date":"1779","event":"Dies in Philadelphia while serving in Congress"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["the-founding-documents"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-founding-documents","url":"/works/the-founding-documents/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":null,"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"thomas-heyward-jr","name":"Thomas Heyward Jr.","url":"/great-lives/thomas-heyward-jr/","dates":"1746–1809","born":1746,"died":1809,"era":"18th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"South Carolina lawyer who signed the Declaration, was captured at Charleston, and later sat as a judge in his state.","bio":"Thomas Heyward Jr. was born in 1746 in St. Helena Parish, South Carolina, studied law in England, and returned to practice in Charleston. He sat in the provincial congress and in the Continental Congress, where he signed the Declaration of Independence and later the Articles of Confederation. In 1780 he was taken prisoner at the surrender of Charleston and was held at St. Augustine with Edward Rutledge and Arthur Middleton. During the war his plantation was raided and property was lost. After his release he became an associate justice of the South Carolina courts and eventually retired to his plantation. Heyward was a planter who held people in slavery. He died in 1809. Together with Rutledge and Middleton, he is a reminder that for some Southern signers the cost of independence was not only political opposition but capture, imprisonment, and damage to their homes.","keyDates":[{"date":"1746","event":"Born in St. Helena Parish, South Carolina"},{"date":"1776","event":"Signs the Declaration of Independence"},{"date":"1780","event":"Is captured at Charleston and imprisoned at St. Augustine"},{"date":"1809","event":"Dies in South Carolina"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["the-founding-documents"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-founding-documents","url":"/works/the-founding-documents/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":null,"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"hildegard-of-bingen","name":"Hildegard of Bingen","url":"/great-lives/hildegard-of-bingen/","dates":"1098–1179","born":1098,"died":1179,"era":"medieval","categories":["saints-reformers","artists-composers-architects"],"knownFor":"German abbess, visionary writer, composer and naturalist; a Doctor of the Church.","bio":"Hildegard was born in the Rhineland of Germany, the tenth child of a noble family. As a young girl she was placed in the care of Jutta, a holy woman living enclosed beside the monastery of Disibodenberg, and she later took vows as a Benedictine nun. From childhood she experienced visions of light. In 1141 she began writing down her visions in a book called Scivias, Know the Ways, and Pope Eugene III approved her work. Around 1150 she founded her own convent at Rupertsberg near Bingen. She wrote books on theology, on medicine and the healing properties of plants and stones, and a play set to music. She composed some seventy chants, with soaring melodies, and invented a secret language. She corresponded with popes, emperors and Bernard of Clairvaux, and in her sixties she made preaching tours through Germany, unusual for a woman of her time. In her eighties she refused to let her convent dig up a man buried there whom church officials considered excommunicated. She died in 1179. In 2012 she was canonized and named a Doctor of the Church.","keyDates":[{"date":"1136","event":"Becomes leader of her community"},{"date":"1141","event":"Begins writing Scivias"},{"date":"c. 1150","event":"Founds the convent at Rupertsberg"},{"date":"1179","event":"Dies at Rupertsberg"},{"date":"2012","event":"Named a Doctor of the Church"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"The plant genus Hildegardia is named after her because of her work on herbal medicine.","source":{"title":"Hildegard of Bingen (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hildegard_of_Bingen"}}],"records":[{"text":"Her Ordo Virtutum is arguably the oldest surviving morality play.","source":{"title":"Hildegard of Bingen (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hildegard_of_Bingen"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"German mystic of the Rupertsberg near Bingen, honored as Saint Hildegard with a feast day on 17 September.","source":"https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07351a.htm","sourceName":"Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"laura-hillenbrand","name":"Laura Hillenbrand","url":"/great-lives/laura-hillenbrand/","dates":"born 1967","born":1967,"died":null,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American author of the nonfiction bestsellers Seabiscuit and Unbroken.","bio":"Laura Hillenbrand is an American author, born in 1967. While a student at Kenyon College in Ohio she fell seriously ill with myalgic encephalomyelitis, also called chronic fatigue syndrome, and had to leave before completing her degree. She began as a freelance magazine writer, especially for the horse magazine Equus, where she became a contributing editor. Her first book, Seabiscuit: An American Legend (2001), tells the story of an undersized racehorse who became a champion during the Great Depression, and of his owner, trainer and jockey. It won the William Hill Sports Book of the Year award and was adapted into a film. Her second book, Unbroken (2010), tells the life of Louis Zamperini, an Olympic runner whose bomber crashed in the Pacific during the Second World War, leaving him adrift for weeks before he was captured. It was also adapted for film. The two books have sold more than thirteen million copies. In 2003 she wrote about her illness in an essay, A Sudden Illness, in The New Yorker.","keyDates":[{"date":"1967","event":"Born"},{"date":"1990","event":"First article for Equus magazine"},{"date":"2001","event":"Seabiscuit published"},{"date":"2003","event":"A Sudden Illness published in The New Yorker"},{"date":"2010","event":"Unbroken published"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Laura Hillenbrand","relatedWorks":["unbroken"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"unbroken","url":"/works/unbroken/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"One of her favourite books as a child was Come On Seabiscuit (1963), and she later wrote the bestseller Seabiscuit.","source":{"title":"Laura Hillenbrand (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Hillenbrand"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Hillenbrand","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"hippocrates","name":"Hippocrates","url":"/great-lives/hippocrates/","dates":"c. 460–370 BC","born":-460,"died":-370,"era":"ancient","categories":["physicians-medicine"],"knownFor":"Greek physician of Kos, called the father of medicine.","bio":"Hippocrates was born on the Greek island of Kos and belonged to a family of physicians who claimed descent from Asclepius, the god of healing. He taught medicine on Kos and traveled through Greece practicing it. Plato and Aristotle mention him as a famous physician, but little else is known of his life. About sixty medical writings, called the Hippocratic Corpus, were later gathered under his name, though they were written by many authors over many years. These works taught that diseases have natural causes, not punishments sent by the gods, and that physicians should observe patients carefully, record symptoms, and predict the course of an illness. They explained health as a balance of four bodily fluids, or humors, an idea that lasted for two thousand years. They stressed diet, exercise, rest and fresh air, and the famous rule to help, or at least to do no harm. The Hippocratic Oath, in which doctors swore to act for the good of their patients, keep their secrets, and not give deadly drugs, was taken in various forms by physicians for centuries.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 460 BC","event":"Born on Kos"},{"date":"late 5th century BC","event":"Teaches and practices medicine"},{"date":"c. 370 BC","event":"Dies, by tradition at Larissa"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Hippocrates","relatedWorks":["hippocratic-writings","galen-selected-works"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"hippocratic-writings","url":"/works/hippocratic-writings/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"A crater on the Moon is named after him.","source":{"title":"Hippocrates (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippocrates"}}],"records":[{"text":"He is credited as the first person to believe that diseases have natural causes rather than being sent by gods.","source":{"title":"Hippocrates (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippocrates"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented; he taught that disease had natural causes rather than being a punishment from the gods.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippocrates","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["Which Hippocratic writings are by Hippocrates himself is unknown."]},{"slug":"russell-hoban","name":"Russell Hoban","url":"/great-lives/russell-hoban/","dates":"1925–2011","born":1925,"died":2011,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["writers-poets","artists-composers-architects"],"knownFor":"American writer and illustrator of the Frances books for children and of novels for adults.","bio":"Russell Hoban was born in 1925 in Lansdale, Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia, to Jewish immigrants from Ostrog, in what is now Ukraine. His father died when Russell was eleven. After briefly attending Temple University, he joined the army at eighteen and served as a radio operator in Italy and the Philippines during the Second World War, earning a Bronze Star. During his service he married Lillian Aberman, who became an illustrator, and they had four children. After the war he worked as an illustrator, painting covers for Time and other magazines, and as an advertising copywriter. His paintings of heavy machinery led to his first children's book, What Does It Do and How Does It Work? (1959). Bedtime for Frances (1960), about a little badger who finds many reasons not to go to sleep, was the first of several books about Frances, most illustrated by Lillian. He also wrote The Mouse and His Child. In 1969 he moved to London, where he lived for the rest of his life and wrote novels for adults, including Riddley Walker (1980). He died in London in 2011.","keyDates":[{"date":"1925","event":"Born in Lansdale, Pennsylvania"},{"date":"1959","event":"First children's book published"},{"date":"1960","event":"Bedtime for Frances published"},{"date":"1967","event":"The Mouse and His Child published"},{"date":"1969","event":"Moves to London"},{"date":"1980","event":"Riddley Walker published"},{"date":"2011","event":"Dies in London"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Russell Hoban","relatedWorks":["bedtime-for-frances"],"reading":[{"band":"K-2","kind":"library","work":"bedtime-for-frances","url":"/works/bedtime-for-frances/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Born to Jewish immigrant parents; his personal beliefs are not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_Hoban","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"thomas-hobbes","name":"Thomas Hobbes","url":"/great-lives/thomas-hobbes/","dates":"1588–1679","born":1588,"died":1679,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["philosophers"],"knownFor":"English philosopher whose Leviathan argued for a strong sovereign to prevent civil war.","bio":"Thomas Hobbes was born at Westport, near Malmesbury, in England; he later said that his mother gave birth to twins, himself and fear, because news of the Spanish Armada caused her to go into labor early. His father, a quarrelsome vicar, abandoned the family, and an uncle paid for his education at Oxford. He spent most of his life as tutor and secretary to the Cavendish family, the Earls of Devonshire, traveling in Europe, where he met Galileo and discussed philosophy with French thinkers. At forty he discovered Euclid's geometry and was charmed by its method of proof. Fearing the coming civil war, he fled to Paris in 1640. In Leviathan, published in 1651, he argued that without government, life would be a war of all against all, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short, and that people therefore agree to give power to a sovereign strong enough to keep the peace. His views on religion made him many enemies on all sides. He translated Homer into English in his eighties and died in 1679, aged ninety-one.","keyDates":[{"date":"1588","event":"Born near Malmesbury"},{"date":"1640","event":"Flees to Paris"},{"date":"1651","event":"Leviathan published"},{"date":"1660","event":"Returns to favor under Charles II"},{"date":"1679","event":"Dies at Hardwick Hall"}],"quotes":[{"text":"the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short","work":"leviathan","location":"Part I, Ch. XIII","verified":true}],"author":"Thomas Hobbes","relatedWorks":["leviathan","second-treatise-of-government"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"leviathan","url":"/works/leviathan/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"His religious views remain disputed; positions attributed to him range from atheism to orthodox Christianity.","source":"https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hobbes/","sourceName":"Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy","documented":true},"furtherReading":[{"series":"Very Short Introductions","title":"Hobbes: A Very Short Introduction","author":"Richard Tuck","publisher":"Oxford University Press","year":2002,"isbn13":"9780192802552","url":"https://bookshop.org/a/130650/9780192802552"}],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"e-t-a-hoffmann","name":"E. T. A. Hoffmann","url":"/great-lives/e-t-a-hoffmann/","dates":"1776–1822","born":1776,"died":1822,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets","artists-composers-architects"],"knownFor":"German writer, composer and judge of the Romantic era, author of The Nutcracker and the Mouse King.","bio":"Ernst Theodor Wilhelm Hoffmann was born in 1776 in Königsberg, Prussia. His parents separated when he was young, and he was raised by his mother's family. He studied law at the University of Königsberg and worked as a Prussian government lawyer in several towns, including in Poland. He loved music above all, and later changed one of his names to Amadeus in honor of Mozart. When the Napoleonic Wars cost him his post, he worked as a music director, composer, critic and stage designer in Bamberg, Dresden and Leipzig; he composed an opera, Undine. He wrote famous essays on Beethoven's music. From 1814 he returned to work as a judge in Berlin and became known for his fantastic tales, which mix everyday life with the strange and supernatural, such as The Golden Pot and The Sandman. The Nutcracker and the Mouse King (1816) inspired the ballet The Nutcracker by Tchaikovsky. His stories also inspired Offenbach's opera The Tales of Hoffmann. He died in Berlin in 1822.","keyDates":[{"date":"1776","event":"Born in Königsberg"},{"date":"1808","event":"Music director in Bamberg"},{"date":"1814","event":"Returns to the law in Berlin"},{"date":"1816","event":"The Nutcracker and the Mouse King published"},{"date":"1822","event":"Dies in Berlin"}],"quotes":[],"author":"E. T. A. Hoffmann","relatedWorks":["hoffmann-nutcracker-and-mouse-king"],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"library","work":"hoffmann-nutcracker-and-mouse-king","url":"/works/hoffmann-nutcracker-and-mouse-king/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"As a boy he nicknamed his strict uncle 'O Weh' ('Oh dear!'), a joke on his initials O. W.","source":{"title":"E. T. A. Hoffmann (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._T._A._Hoffmann"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented; he attended a Lutheran school and was buried in a Protestant cemetery.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._T._A._Hoffmann","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"james-hogg","name":"James Hogg","url":"/great-lives/james-hogg/","dates":"1770–1835","born":1770,"died":1835,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"The Ettrick Shepherd: self-taught Scottish poet and novelist of The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner.","bio":"James Hogg was born in Ettrick, Selkirkshire, and baptised on 9 December 1770. His father was a tenant farmer who was ruined, and the boy had only a few months of school before he was sent to herd cattle and sheep. He taught himself to read and write, while his mother passed on a rich store of Border ballads. Walter Scott met him while collecting songs for the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, and the two became lifelong friends. Hogg moved to Edinburgh, failed at farming and journalism, and then won fame with The Queen's Wake in 1813. He wrote for Blackwood's Magazine, where he was caricatured as the Ettrick Shepherd, and produced poems, songs and tales. In 1824 he published anonymously his masterpiece, the Confessions of a Justified Sinner. He married Margaret Phillips in 1820, farmed at Altrive in Yarrow, and died there on 21 November 1835.","keyDates":[{"date":"1770","event":"Baptised at Ettrick, Selkirkshire, 9 December"},{"date":"1802","event":"Meets Walter Scott, who is collecting ballads for the Minstrelsy"},{"date":"1813","event":"The Queen's Wake brings him fame"},{"date":"1824","event":"Confessions of a Justified Sinner published anonymously"},{"date":"1835","event":"Dies at Altrive, 21 November"}],"quotes":[{"text":"How delightful to think that a justified person can do no wrong!","work":"confessions-of-a-justified-sinner"}],"author":"James Hogg","relatedWorks":["confessions-of-a-justified-sinner"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"confessions-of-a-justified-sinner","url":"/works/confessions-of-a-justified-sinner/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Raised in the Church of Scotland on the Bible and the Shorter Catechism, Hogg satirised the antinomian abuse of Calvinist doctrine in his Confessions while writing sympathetically of the Covenanters in his tales.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Hogg","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"oliver-wendell-holmes-jr","name":"Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.","url":"/great-lives/oliver-wendell-holmes-jr/","dates":"1841–1935","born":1841,"died":1935,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["legal-scholars-lawgivers"],"knownFor":"Civil War veteran and Supreme Court justice famed for his dissents and the clear and present danger test.","bio":"Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. was the son of the famous Boston doctor and poet of the same name. He left Harvard to fight in the Civil War and was seriously wounded three times, at Ball's Bluff, Antietam and Chancellorsville. After the war he studied law, practiced in Boston, and in 1881 published The Common Law, which opens by saying that the life of the law has not been logic but experience. He served on the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court for twenty years and in 1902 Theodore Roosevelt appointed him to the U.S. Supreme Court, where he served until he was ninety. Holmes argued that courts should usually defer to legislatures, and in Lochner v. New York in 1905 he dissented from striking down a law limiting bakers' hours. In Schenck v. United States in 1919 he wrote that speech could be punished only when it posed a clear and present danger, and later that year, dissenting in Abrams, he defended the free trade in ideas. In Buck v. Bell in 1927 he wrote the opinion upholding a state law on compulsory sterilization. He died in 1935.","keyDates":[{"date":"1861–1864","event":"Serves in the Union army; wounded three times"},{"date":"1881","event":"The Common Law"},{"date":"1902","event":"Appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court"},{"date":"1905","event":"Dissent in Lochner v. New York"},{"date":"1919","event":"Schenck opinion; Abrams dissent"},{"date":"1932","event":"Retires"},{"date":"1935","event":"Dies in Washington"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["schenck-v-united-states","lochner-v-new-york","buck-v-bell","holmes-the-common-law"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"schenck-v-united-states","url":"/works/schenck-v-united-states/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"lochner-v-new-york","url":"/works/lochner-v-new-york/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[{"text":"He retired from the U.S. Supreme Court at 90 years and 10 months, the oldest justice in the Court's history.","source":{"title":"Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Wendell_Holmes_Jr."}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented; his ancestors were Puritans, and as a judge he rejected natural-law theories.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Wendell_Holmes_Jr.","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"homer","name":"Homer","url":"/great-lives/homer/","dates":"c. 8th century BC (traditional)","born":-800,"died":-701,"era":"ancient","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Ancient Greek poet to whom tradition credits the Iliad and the Odyssey.","bio":"Homer is the name the ancient Greeks gave to the poet of the Iliad and the Odyssey, the two great epic poems at the start of Western literature. Almost nothing is known about him for certain. Ancient traditions describe him as a blind singer and offer several possible birthplaces, including Smyrna and the island of Chios in Ionia, on the coast of Asia Minor. Most modern scholars think the poems took their present form around the eighth or seventh century BC, growing out of a long tradition of oral poetry composed and performed by singers who used repeated phrases and episodes to build long stories. Whether one poet, two or many shaped the poems has long been debated, a puzzle known as the Homeric Question. The Iliad tells of the anger of Achilles during the Trojan War, and the Odyssey follows Odysseus on his ten-year journey home from Troy. The poems were recited at Greek festivals, studied in schools, and influenced later writers, including Virgil, Dante and James Joyce.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 8th–7th century BC","event":"The Iliad and the Odyssey take shape"},{"date":"6th century BC","event":"Poems recited at the Panathenaic festival in Athens"},{"date":"3rd–2nd century BC","event":"Scholars in Alexandria edit the texts"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Homer","relatedWorks":["the-odyssey","the-iliad"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-odyssey","url":"/works/the-odyssey/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-iliad","url":"/works/the-iliad/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented; almost nothing certain is known of his life.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homer","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[{"series":"Very Short Introductions","title":"Homer: A Very Short Introduction","author":"Barbara Graziosi","publisher":"Oxford University Press","year":2019,"isbn13":null,"url":null}],"needsVerification":["Homer's existence and dates are uncertain; scholars debate whether the poems had a single author."]},{"slug":"richard-hooker","name":"Richard Hooker","url":"/great-lives/richard-hooker/","dates":"1554–1600","born":1554,"died":1600,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["theologians-church-fathers","philosophers"],"knownFor":"English priest and theologian, author of Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, a foundational work of Anglican thought.","bio":"Richard Hooker was born in 1554 in Heavitree, near Exeter, in Devon, England. His family could not afford a university education, but Bishop John Jewel of Salisbury became his patron and sent him to Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where he became a fellow in 1577. He was ordained in the Church of England. In 1585 he was appointed Master of the Temple Church in London, where the afternoon preacher, Walter Travers, was a leading Puritan; their opposing sermons became a famous public debate, with Hooker defending the established church. Hooker later served as a parish priest in Wiltshire and then at Bishopsbourne, near Canterbury. His great work, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, the first books of which appeared in 1594, defended the Church of England's government by bishops and its forms of worship against Puritan critics. Drawing on Scripture, reason and tradition, and on the idea of natural law, he argued that not every detail of church life had to be laid down in the Bible. The work became a foundation of Anglican theology. He died at Bishopsbourne in 1600.","keyDates":[{"date":"1554","event":"Born in Heavitree, Devon"},{"date":"1585","event":"Master of the Temple Church"},{"date":"1594","event":"First books of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity"},{"date":"1595","event":"Rector of Bishopsbourne"},{"date":"1600","event":"Dies at Bishopsbourne"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Richard Hooker","relatedWorks":["hooker-laws-of-ecclesiastical-polity"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"hooker-laws-of-ecclesiastical-polity","url":"/works/hooker-laws-of-ecclesiastical-polity/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"English priest and leading defender of the Church of England in his Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity.","source":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dictionary_of_National_Biography%2C_1885-1900/Hooker%2C_Richard","sourceName":"Dictionary of National Biography (1885–1900) (via Wikisource)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"william-hooper","name":"William Hooper","url":"/great-lives/william-hooper/","dates":"1742–1790","born":1742,"died":1790,"era":"18th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"Boston-born North Carolina lawyer who was away for the July vote and returned to sign the Declaration in August.","bio":"William Hooper was born in 1742 in Boston, studied at Harvard, and moved to North Carolina, where he became a lawyer in Wilmington. He sat in the provincial congress and in the Continental Congress, but he was absent from Philadelphia during the early July votes on independence. He returned in time to sign the engrossed Declaration on or after 2 August. During the war he and his family were forced to move as the fighting reached the Carolina coast, and his property suffered. After independence he was more conservative than many former colleagues: he defended some Loyalists in the courts and was criticized for it. He died in 1790, still in middle age. Hooper's record is mixed in a useful way for students: he accepted the risk of signing, then tried, not always popularly, to restore the rule of law once the fighting had passed.","keyDates":[{"date":"1742","event":"Born in Boston"},{"date":"1776","event":"Returns to Congress and signs the Declaration"},{"date":"1790","event":"Dies in North Carolina"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["the-founding-documents"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-founding-documents","url":"/works/the-founding-documents/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":null,"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"gerard-manley-hopkins","name":"Gerard Manley Hopkins","url":"/great-lives/gerard-manley-hopkins/","dates":"1844–1889","born":1844,"died":1889,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets","theologians-church-fathers"],"knownFor":"English poet and Jesuit priest whose innovative poems, such as God's Grandeur and The Windhover, were published after his death.","bio":"Gerard Manley Hopkins was born in 1844 in Stratford, Essex, the eldest of nine children in a prosperous Anglican family. He studied classics at Balliol College, Oxford, where he was influenced by John Henry Newman, and in 1866 he became a Roman Catholic. Two years later he entered the Society of Jesus, and he burned many of his early poems, believing poetry might conflict with his vocation. In 1875 his superiors encouraged him to write a poem about the wreck of the ship Deutschland, in which five Franciscan nuns drowned, and The Wreck of the Deutschland marked his return to poetry. He developed a rhythm he called 'sprung rhythm', and he used bold sound patterns and compound words to express what he called the 'inscape' of things. His poems include God's Grandeur, Pied Beauty and The Windhover. He was ordained a priest in 1877 and served in parishes in England and Scotland before becoming professor of Greek at University College Dublin. He died of typhoid in Dublin in 1889. His friend Robert Bridges published his poems in 1918.","keyDates":[{"date":"1844","event":"Born in Stratford, Essex"},{"date":"1866","event":"Becomes a Roman Catholic"},{"date":"1868","event":"Enters the Society of Jesus"},{"date":"1875","event":"The Wreck of the Deutschland"},{"date":"1877","event":"Ordained a priest"},{"date":"1889","event":"Dies in Dublin"},{"date":"1918","event":"Poems published by Robert Bridges"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Gerard Manley Hopkins","relatedWorks":["gods-grandeur","poems-hopkins"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"gods-grandeur","url":"/works/gods-grandeur/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"poems-hopkins","url":"/works/poems-hopkins/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"A building at University College Dublin is named after him.","source":{"title":"Gerard Manley Hopkins (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerard_Manley_Hopkins"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Jesuit priest and poet.","source":"https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/16045b.htm","sourceName":"Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"stephen-hopkins","name":"Stephen Hopkins","url":"/great-lives/stephen-hopkins/","dates":"1707–1785","born":1707,"died":1785,"era":"18th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"Longtime Rhode Island governor, the second-oldest signer, whose hand shook as he wrote his name on the Declaration.","bio":"Stephen Hopkins was born in 1707 in Providence, Rhode Island, and became a merchant, judge, and many times governor of the colony. In 1764 he published The Rights of Colonies Examined, an early and widely read argument against taxation without representation. He sat in the Continental Congress from its first meeting and, at sixty-nine, was the second-oldest man to sign the Declaration, after Benjamin Franklin. A palsy caused his hand to shake; as he signed he is said to have remarked that his hand trembled but his heart did not. The wording of that remark comes from later recollection, but the shaky signature is plain on the parchment. Hopkins had taken part in the slave trade as a merchant earlier in life and also supported measures that began to restrict it in Rhode Island. He died in Providence in 1785.","keyDates":[{"date":"1707","event":"Born in Providence, Rhode Island"},{"date":"1764","event":"Publishes The Rights of Colonies Examined"},{"date":"1774","event":"Sits in the First Continental Congress"},{"date":"1776","event":"Signs the Declaration of Independence"},{"date":"1785","event":"Dies in Providence"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["the-founding-documents"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-founding-documents","url":"/works/the-founding-documents/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":null,"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"francis-hopkinson","name":"Francis Hopkinson","url":"/great-lives/francis-hopkinson/","dates":"1737–1791","born":1737,"died":1791,"era":"18th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders","artists-composers-architects"],"knownFor":"New Jersey lawyer, musician and satirist who signed the Declaration and later designed several early American emblems.","bio":"Francis Hopkinson was born in 1737 in Philadelphia, was the first student to enter the College of Philadelphia, and became a lawyer, writer, and musician. He moved to New Jersey, sat in the Continental Congress, and signed the Declaration of Independence. During the war he wrote satires and songs that made the patriot cause vivid for ordinary readers, including The Battle of the Kegs. He later claimed to have designed the American flag, and Congress did pay him for other official designs, including work on the great seal; the flag claim itself is still disputed by historians, and it should not be treated as settled fact. After independence Hopkinson served as a federal judge in Pennsylvania. He died in Philadelphia in 1791. His life is a reminder that the founding generation included artists as well as soldiers and lawyers.","keyDates":[{"date":"1737","event":"Born in Philadelphia"},{"date":"1776","event":"Signs the Declaration of Independence for New Jersey"},{"date":"1778","event":"Publishes the ballad The Battle of the Kegs"},{"date":"1789","event":"Becomes a federal judge in Pennsylvania"},{"date":"1791","event":"Dies in Philadelphia"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["the-founding-documents"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-founding-documents","url":"/works/the-founding-documents/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":null,"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"horace","name":"Horace","url":"/great-lives/horace/","dates":"65–8 BC","born":-65,"died":-8,"era":"ancient","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Roman lyric poet and satirist of the age of Augustus, author of the Odes, Satires and Epistles.","bio":"Quintus Horatius Flaccus, known as Horace, was born in 65 BC in Venusia, in southern Italy. His father was a freedman, a formerly enslaved man, who worked as an auctioneer's agent and spent his savings to give his son the best education in Rome and then in Athens. While Horace was studying in Athens, civil war broke out after the murder of Julius Caesar, and he served as an officer in the army of Brutus, which was defeated at Philippi in 42 BC. Returning to Italy, he found his family property confiscated and worked as a treasury clerk while writing poetry. The poet Virgil introduced him to Maecenas, a wealthy friend of Octavian (the future emperor Augustus), who became his patron and gave him a farm in the Sabine hills. Horace wrote the Satires, conversational poems about life and human folly, the Epodes, four books of Odes, the Epistles and the Ars Poetica, on the art of poetry. Phrases from his Odes, such as carpe diem, 'seize the day', became famous. He died in 8 BC, shortly after Maecenas.","keyDates":[{"date":"65 BC","event":"Born in Venusia"},{"date":"42 BC","event":"Fights for Brutus at Philippi"},{"date":"c. 35 BC","event":"First book of Satires"},{"date":"23 BC","event":"Odes, books 1–3"},{"date":"17 BC","event":"Writes a hymn for Augustus's Secular Games"},{"date":"8 BC","event":"Dies in Rome"}],"quotes":[{"text":"Seize the present; trust to-morrow e'en as little as you may.","work":"horace-odes"}],"author":"Horace","relatedWorks":["the-satires-of-horace-and-persius","horace-odes","horace-ars-poetica"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-satires-of-horace-and-persius","url":"/works/the-satires-of-horace-and-persius/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"horace-odes","url":"/works/horace-odes/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"horace-ars-poetica","url":"/works/horace-ars-poetica/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented beyond the Roman religion of his time.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horace","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[{"series":"Very Short Introductions","title":"Horace: A Very Short Introduction","author":"Llewelyn Morgan","publisher":"Oxford University Press","year":2023,"isbn13":"9780192849649","url":"https://bookshop.org/a/130650/9780192849649"}],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"edwin-hubble","name":"Edwin Hubble","url":"/great-lives/edwin-hubble/","dates":"1889–1953","born":1889,"died":1953,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["scientists-mathematicians"],"knownFor":"American astronomer who showed that the universe contains many galaxies and is expanding.","bio":"Edwin Powell Hubble was born in Marshfield, Missouri, and grew up in Wheaton, Illinois, where he was a fine student and athlete. He studied mathematics and astronomy at the University of Chicago and then, as a Rhodes Scholar, law at Oxford. He briefly practiced law and taught high school before returning to astronomy. After serving in the army in the First World War, he joined the Mount Wilson Observatory in California, which had the largest telescope in the world. In 1923 and 1924 he found a type of variable star in the Andromeda nebula and used it to measure the distance, showing that Andromeda lay far outside the Milky Way. This proved that the universe contains many galaxies besides our own. He then sorted galaxies by their shapes. In 1929, using measurements by Vesto Slipher and his assistant Milton Humason, he showed that the farther away a galaxy is, the faster it is moving away from us, evidence that the universe is expanding. He served again in the Second World War, testing ballistics. He died in 1953. The Hubble Space Telescope is named for him.","keyDates":[{"date":"1919","event":"Joins Mount Wilson Observatory"},{"date":"1924","event":"Shows Andromeda is a separate galaxy"},{"date":"1926","event":"Classifies galaxies by shape"},{"date":"1929","event":"Evidence for the expanding universe"},{"date":"1953","event":"Dies in San Marino, California"},{"date":"1990","event":"Hubble Space Telescope launched"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"He discovered an asteroid, 1373 Cincinnati, in 1935, and the Hubble Space Telescope, an asteroid and a crater on the Moon are named after him.","source":{"title":"Edwin Hubble (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_Hubble"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Raised a Protestant Christian; some later statements suggest uncertainty.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_Hubble","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"henry-hudson","name":"Henry Hudson","url":"/great-lives/henry-hudson/","dates":"c. 1565–1611","born":1565,"died":1611,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["explorers"],"knownFor":"English navigator who explored the Hudson River and Hudson Bay looking for a passage to Asia.","bio":"Henry Hudson was an English sea captain about whose early life almost nothing is known. In 1607 and 1608 he sailed for the English Muscovy Company, trying to find a route to Asia across the Arctic Ocean north of Europe, but ice turned him back. In 1609, sailing for the Dutch East India Company in the ship Half Moon, he crossed to North America and sailed up the river that now bears his name, past the island of Manhattan, as far as present-day Albany, before deciding it was not a passage to the Pacific. His reports led the Dutch to found the colony of New Netherland, with its town of New Amsterdam, later New York. In 1610 he set out again for England in the ship Discovery and entered the huge bay in northern Canada now called Hudson Bay. In June 1611, with food running out, part of the crew mutinied and set Hudson, his teenage son John and seven others adrift in a small open boat. They were never seen again.","keyDates":[{"date":"1607","event":"First Arctic voyage"},{"date":"1609","event":"Sails up the Hudson River for the Dutch"},{"date":"1610","event":"Enters Hudson Bay"},{"date":"1611","event":"Set adrift by mutineers"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"The Hudson River, Hudson Bay and the city of Hudson, New York, are all named after him.","source":{"title":"Henry Hudson (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Hudson"}}],"records":[{"text":"On his last voyage he became the first European to see Hudson Strait and the huge Hudson Bay.","source":{"title":"Henry Hudson (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Hudson"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Hudson","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"victor-hugo","name":"Victor Hugo","url":"/great-lives/victor-hugo/","dates":"1802–1885","born":1802,"died":1885,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"French poet, novelist and playwright, author of Les Misérables and The Hunchback of Notre-Dame.","bio":"Victor Hugo was born in 1802 in Besançon, France, the youngest son of a general in Napoleon's army. He began writing poetry as a teenager, and his first collection appeared in 1822, the year he married his childhood friend Adèle Foucher. His plays Cromwell and Hernani (1830) made him a leader of the Romantic movement in French literature. His novel Notre-Dame de Paris (1831), known in English as The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, is set around the great cathedral of Paris in the Middle Ages. In 1843 his daughter Léopoldine drowned in the Seine, aged 19. He entered politics, campaigned against the death penalty, and after Napoleon III seized complete power in 1851 he went into exile, living for fifteen years on the Channel Island of Guernsey. There he finished Les Misérables (1862), the story of the former convict Jean Valjean and of the poor of Paris. He returned to France in 1870. When he died in Paris in 1885, he was given a state funeral and buried in the Panthéon.","keyDates":[{"date":"1802","event":"Born in Besançon, France"},{"date":"1830","event":"Hernani performed"},{"date":"1831","event":"Notre-Dame de Paris published"},{"date":"1851","event":"Goes into exile"},{"date":"1862","event":"Les Misérables published"},{"date":"1870","event":"Returns to France"},{"date":"1885","event":"Dies in Paris"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Victor Hugo","relatedWorks":["les-miserables","the-hunchback-of-notre-dame"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"les-miserables","url":"/works/les-miserables/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-hunchback-of-notre-dame","url":"/works/the-hunchback-of-notre-dame/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"Most large French towns and cities have a street or square named after him.","source":{"title":"Victor Hugo (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Hugo"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Grew up a royalist and a Catholic; his views changed later in life.","source":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Hugo%2C_Victor_Marie","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica (1911) (via Wikisource)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"johan-huizinga","name":"Johan Huizinga","url":"/great-lives/johan-huizinga/","dates":"1872–1945","born":1872,"died":1945,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets","philosophers"],"knownFor":"Dutch historian, author of The Waning of the Middle Ages and Homo Ludens.","bio":"Johan Huizinga was born in 1872 in Groningen, in the Netherlands, the son of a professor of physiology. He studied Dutch literature and languages, including Sanskrit, at the University of Groningen and wrote his doctoral thesis on a theme from ancient Indian drama. He taught history at a secondary school in Haarlem before becoming a professor of history at Groningen in 1905 and at Leiden in 1915, where he remained for the rest of his career and served as rector. His most famous book, The Waning of the Middle Ages (1919), also translated as The Autumn of the Middle Ages, describes life, thought and art in France and the Netherlands in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, as the end of an age rather than the start of the Renaissance. In Homo Ludens (1938) he argued that play is a basic element of human culture. During the German occupation the university was closed, and he was held hostage in a camp for a time. He died in 1945, a few weeks before the end of the war.","keyDates":[{"date":"1872","event":"Born in Groningen"},{"date":"1905","event":"Professor of history at Groningen"},{"date":"1915","event":"Professor at Leiden"},{"date":"1919","event":"The Waning of the Middle Ages published"},{"date":"1938","event":"Homo Ludens published"},{"date":"1942","event":"Held as a hostage by the German occupiers"},{"date":"1945","event":"Dies in the Netherlands"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Johan Huizinga","relatedWorks":["huizinga-the-waning-of-the-middle-ages"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"huizinga-the-waning-of-the-middle-ages","url":"/works/huizinga-the-waning-of-the-middle-ages/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johan_Huizinga","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"david-hume","name":"David Hume","url":"/great-lives/david-hume/","dates":"1711–1776","born":1711,"died":1776,"era":"18th-century","categories":["philosophers"],"knownFor":"Scottish philosopher and historian, a leading skeptic of the Enlightenment.","bio":"David Hume was born in Edinburgh and grew up at his family's estate in the Scottish Borders. He entered the University of Edinburgh at about ten or twelve, tried law and business, and then devoted himself to philosophy. His Treatise of Human Nature, written in France and published in 1739 and 1740, fell, he said, dead-born from the press, so he recast its ideas in shorter, clearer books. Hume argued that all our ideas come from experience, that we never observe causes directly but only one event regularly following another, and that our belief that the future will resemble the past rests on habit, not proof. He argued that reason alone cannot move us to act; feelings and desires do. His skeptical writing on miracles and religion led to his being refused professorships at Edinburgh and Glasgow, and he was widely considered an unbeliever. He became famous for his six-volume History of England and his essays on politics and economics. He served as a diplomat in Paris. Cheerful and sociable, he was a close friend of Adam Smith. He died in Edinburgh in 1776.","keyDates":[{"date":"1711","event":"Born in Edinburgh"},{"date":"1739–40","event":"A Treatise of Human Nature"},{"date":"1748","event":"An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding"},{"date":"1754–1762","event":"History of England"},{"date":"1776","event":"Dies in Edinburgh"}],"quotes":[{"text":"A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence","work":"an-enquiry-concerning-human-understanding","location":"Section X, Part I","verified":true},{"text":"Custom, then, is the great guide of human life","work":"an-enquiry-concerning-human-understanding","location":"Section V, Part I","verified":true}],"author":"David Hume","relatedWorks":["an-enquiry-concerning-human-understanding","hume-political-essays","a-treatise-of-human-nature","dialogues-concerning-natural-religion"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"an-enquiry-concerning-human-understanding","url":"/works/an-enquiry-concerning-human-understanding/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"hume-political-essays","url":"/works/hume-political-essays/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"dialogues-concerning-natural-religion","url":"/works/dialogues-concerning-natural-religion/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"a-treatise-of-human-nature","url":"/works/a-treatise-of-human-nature/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Known in his own century as a sceptical and atheistic thinker, though these labels are disputed.","source":"https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hume/","sourceName":"Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy","documented":true},"furtherReading":[{"series":"Very Short Introductions","title":"Hume: A Very Short Introduction","author":"James A. Harris","publisher":"Oxford University Press","year":2021,"isbn13":"9780198849780","url":"https://bookshop.org/a/130650/9780198849780"}],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"irene-hunt","name":"Irene Hunt","url":"/great-lives/irene-hunt/","dates":"1902–2001","born":1902,"died":2001,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American teacher and children's author of Across Five Aprils, set during the Civil War, and the Newbery-winning Up a Road Slowly.","bio":"Irene Hunt was born in 1902 in Pontiac, Illinois. Her family soon moved to Newton, Illinois, and after her father died when she was seven, they moved near her grandparents' farm in southern Illinois. Her childhood was often lonely, but she was close to her grandfather, who told her stories about his own boyhood during the Civil War. She earned a master's degree in Minneapolis, taught English and French in Illinois public schools for many years, taught psychology at the University of South Dakota, and later returned to teaching in elementary and junior high schools. Her first book, Across Five Aprils (1964), drawn from her grandfather's memories, follows Jethro Creighton, a boy on an Illinois farm whose family is divided by the Civil War; it was a Newbery Honor Book. Her second, Up a Road Slowly (1966), about a girl growing up with her aunt, won the Newbery Medal. She wrote several more novels and died in Illinois on her ninety-ninth birthday in 2001.","keyDates":[{"date":"1902","event":"Born in Pontiac, Illinois"},{"date":"1964","event":"Across Five Aprils published"},{"date":"1965","event":"Newbery Honor for Across Five Aprils"},{"date":"1967","event":"Newbery Medal for Up a Road Slowly"},{"date":"2001","event":"Dies in Illinois"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Irene Hunt","relatedWorks":["across-five-aprils"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"across-five-aprils","url":"/works/across-five-aprils/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented; she wrote of her faith in 'courage, love, and mercy'.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irene_Hunt","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"samuel-huntington","name":"Samuel Huntington","url":"/great-lives/samuel-huntington/","dates":"1731–1796","born":1731,"died":1796,"era":"18th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"Connecticut lawyer who signed the Declaration and later served as president of Congress and governor of his state.","bio":"Samuel Huntington was born in 1731 in Windham, Connecticut, apprenticed as a cooper, and then studied law. He built a practice in Norwich, entered colonial politics, and was sent to the Continental Congress, where he signed the Declaration of Independence and later the Articles of Confederation. From 1779 to 1781 he served as president of Congress, the presiding officer of the confederation government, including the period when the Articles of Confederation formally took effect. After returning to Connecticut he became governor, an office he held from 1786 until his death, and he supported ratification of the federal Constitution. Huntington was a quiet, orderly public servant rather than a famous orator, and he remained a regular member of the Congregational church in Norwich. He died in 1796.","keyDates":[{"date":"1731","event":"Born in Windham, Connecticut"},{"date":"1776","event":"Signs the Declaration of Independence"},{"date":"1779","event":"Becomes president of the Continental Congress"},{"date":"1786","event":"Becomes governor of Connecticut"},{"date":"1796","event":"Dies in office as governor"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["the-founding-documents"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-founding-documents","url":"/works/the-founding-documents/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":null,"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"jan-hus","name":"Jan Hus","url":"/great-lives/jan-hus/","dates":"c. 1370–1415","born":1370,"died":1415,"era":"medieval","categories":["saints-reformers","theologians-church-fathers"],"knownFor":"Czech priest and reformer burned at the Council of Constance.","bio":"Jan Hus was born to a poor family in Husinec, in southern Bohemia, now the Czech Republic. He studied at the University of Prague, became a priest, and later rector of the university. From 1402 he preached in Czech at the Bethlehem Chapel in Prague, which drew large crowds. Influenced by the writings of John Wycliffe, he criticized the wealth and corruption of the clergy and the sale of indulgences, and taught that Christ, not the pope, is the head of the Church and that Scripture is the highest authority. He was excommunicated, and Prague was placed under an interdict, so he left the city to preach in the countryside. In 1414 he went to the Council of Constance under a promise of safe conduct from the emperor Sigismund to explain his views. Instead he was imprisoned, tried, and ordered to recant teachings he said he had never held. He refused and was burned at the stake on 6 July 1415. His death set off the Hussite movement in Bohemia, and a century later Martin Luther read his writings with admiration.","keyDates":[{"date":"1402","event":"Begins preaching at the Bethlehem Chapel"},{"date":"1409","event":"Rector of the University of Prague"},{"date":"1412","event":"Leaves Prague"},{"date":"1414","event":"Arrives at Constance and is imprisoned"},{"date":"1415","event":"Burned at the stake, 6 July"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["luther-selected-sermons-and-treatises"],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Czech reformer accused of spreading the Wycliffite heresy; he died at Constance in 1415.","source":"https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07584b.htm","sourceName":"Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"aldous-huxley","name":"Aldous Huxley","url":"/great-lives/aldous-huxley/","dates":"1894–1963","born":1894,"died":1963,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"English novelist and essayist, author of the dystopian novel Brave New World.","bio":"Aldous Huxley was born in 1894 in Godalming, Surrey, into a well-known family of scientists and writers; his grandfather was the biologist Thomas Henry Huxley. At Eton he developed an eye disease that left him nearly blind for a time, ending his hopes of becoming a doctor. He studied English literature at Balliol College, Oxford, and began his career writing satirical novels about English society, such as Crome Yellow and Antic Hay. Brave New World (1932) imagines a future world state that keeps its people content through engineered births, conditioning and a drug called soma; it became one of the best-known novels of the century. In 1937 Huxley moved to the United States and settled in California, where he wrote screenplays and essays and grew interested in mysticism and eastern religion. His later books include The Perennial Philosophy, The Doors of Perception and the novel Island. He died in Los Angeles in 1963, on the same day as C. S. Lewis.","keyDates":[{"date":"1894","event":"Born in Godalming, England"},{"date":"1921","event":"Crome Yellow published"},{"date":"1932","event":"Brave New World published"},{"date":"1937","event":"Moves to the United States"},{"date":"1963","event":"Dies in Los Angeles"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Aldous Huxley","relatedWorks":["brave-new-world"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"brave-new-world","url":"/works/brave-new-world/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"As a child his nickname was 'Ogie', short for 'Ogre'.","source":{"title":"Aldous Huxley (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldous_Huxley"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"In later life he showed a growing interest in Hindu philosophy and mysticism.","source":"https://www.britannica.com/biography/Aldous-Huxley","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"thomas-henry-huxley","name":"Thomas Henry Huxley","url":"/great-lives/thomas-henry-huxley/","dates":"1825–1895","born":1825,"died":1895,"era":"19th-century","categories":["scientists-mathematicians"],"knownFor":"English biologist and anatomist known as \"Darwin's Bulldog\" for his defence of the theory of evolution.","bio":"Thomas Henry Huxley was born in 1825 in Ealing, near London, the son of a schoolteacher. He had little formal schooling and was largely self-taught; as a teenager he taught himself German. At thirteen he began an apprenticeship in medicine, and he later studied at Charing Cross Hospital. In 1846 he joined the Royal Navy as an assistant surgeon on HMS Rattlesnake,, bound for Australia and New Guinea. His studies of sea creatures during the voyage led to his election to the Royal Society on his return in 1850. In 1854 he became professor of natural history at the Royal School of Mines in London. When Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859, Huxley became its most energetic public defender and was nicknamed 'Darwin's Bulldog'. In 1860 he clashed with Bishop Samuel Wilberforce at a famous debate in Oxford. His Man's Place in Nature (1863) argued that humans and apes are closely related. In 1869 he coined the term 'agnosticism'. He served as president of the Royal Society from 1883 to 1885. He died in 1895. His grandsons included Aldous Huxley.","keyDates":[{"date":"1825","event":"Born in Ealing"},{"date":"1846","event":"Sails on HMS Rattlesnake"},{"date":"1850","event":"Elected to the Royal Society"},{"date":"1860","event":"Oxford evolution debate"},{"date":"1863","event":"Man's Place in Nature published"},{"date":"1895","event":"Dies"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Thomas Henry Huxley and Samuel Wilberforce","relatedWorks":["huxley-wilberforce-debate"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"huxley-wilberforce-debate","url":"/works/huxley-wilberforce-debate/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"As a teenager he taught himself German so well that Charles Darwin later used him as a translator.","source":{"title":"Thomas Henry Huxley (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Henry_Huxley"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Defined 'agnosticism' in 1869 to describe his position, while calling atheism philosophically untenable.","source":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Huxley%2C_Thomas_Henry","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica (1911) (via Wikisource)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"christiaan-huygens","name":"Christiaan Huygens","url":"/great-lives/christiaan-huygens/","dates":"1629–1695","born":1629,"died":1695,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["scientists-mathematicians","inventors"],"knownFor":"Dutch mathematician, physicist and astronomer who discovered Saturn's moon Titan, invented the pendulum clock and proposed the wave theory of light.","bio":"Christiaan Huygens was born in The Hague in 1629, the son of Constantijn Huygens, a diplomat and poet who was a friend of René Descartes. He studied law and mathematics at Leiden and Breda. With his brother he ground lenses and built improved telescopes, and in 1655 he discovered Saturn's largest moon, Titan, and soon after explained that Saturn is surrounded by a thin, flat ring. In 1656 he invented the pendulum clock, which made timekeeping far more accurate, and his book Horologium Oscillatorium (1673) analyzed the mathematics of pendulums. He also wrote an early book on probability. In 1666 he became a founding member of the French Academy of Sciences and lived in Paris for about fifteen years. In his Treatise on Light (1690), he described light as a wave spreading through space, a principle still known as Huygens' principle, which explained reflection and refraction. He returned to The Hague, where he died in 1695.","keyDates":[{"date":"1629","event":"Born in The Hague"},{"date":"1655","event":"Discovers Titan"},{"date":"1656","event":"Invents the pendulum clock"},{"date":"1666","event":"Founding member of the French Academy of Sciences"},{"date":"1673","event":"Horologium Oscillatorium"},{"date":"1690","event":"Treatise on Light published"},{"date":"1695","event":"Dies in The Hague"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Christiaan Huygens","relatedWorks":["huygens-treatise-on-light"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"huygens-treatise-on-light","url":"/works/huygens-treatise-on-light/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"The European Space Agency probe that landed on Titan, Saturn's largest moon, in 2005 was named Huygens after him.","source":{"title":"Christiaan Huygens (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christiaan_Huygens"}}],"records":[{"text":"On 25 March 1655 he became the first to identify Titan as a moon of Saturn, and he was the first to explain Saturn's strange shape as a thin, flat ring.","source":{"title":"Christiaan Huygens (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christiaan_Huygens"}},{"text":"He invented the pendulum clock in 1657.","source":{"title":"Christiaan Huygens (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christiaan_Huygens"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christiaan_Huygens","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"ibn-al-nafis","name":"Ibn al-Nafis","url":"/great-lives/ibn-al-nafis/","dates":"1213–1288","born":1213,"died":1288,"era":"medieval","categories":["physicians-medicine"],"knownFor":"Arab physician in Cairo who first described the pulmonary circulation of the blood, centuries before European anatomists.","bio":"Ala al-Din Abu al-Hasan Ali ibn Abi al-Hazm al-Qurashi, called Ibn al-Nafis, was born in 1213 near Damascus, where he studied medicine at the Nuri hospital. He moved to Cairo and worked at the Nasiri hospital and later at the great Mansuri hospital, becoming one of the leading physicians of Mamluk Egypt. He also wrote on Islamic law, theology and grammar. In his Commentary on Anatomy in Avicenna's Canon he rejected the teaching, handed down from Galen, that blood passes from the right side of the heart to the left through invisible pores in the wall between them. Instead he argued that the wall is solid and that blood must travel from the right ventricle through the lungs, where it mixes with air, and back to the left ventricle. This is the first known description of the pulmonary circulation. His commentary was largely forgotten until an Egyptian physician, Muhyo al-Deen al-Tatawi, drew attention to it in 1924. Ibn al-Nafis died in Cairo in 1288, leaving his house and library to the Mansuri hospital.","keyDates":[{"date":"1213","event":"Born near Damascus"},{"date":"c. 1242","event":"Writes his Commentary on Anatomy in the Canon of Avicenna (date approximate)"},{"date":"1288","event":"Dies in Cairo, leaving his library to the Mansuri hospital"},{"date":"1924","event":"Al-Tatawi brings the pulmonary-circulation passage to modern attention"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"avicenna-canon-of-medicine-book-i","url":"/works/avicenna-canon-of-medicine-book-i/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"harvey-on-the-motion-of-the-heart-and-blood","url":"/works/harvey-on-the-motion-of-the-heart-and-blood/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Muslim physician remembered as a devout religious scholar.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_al-Nafis","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["The commentary is often dated to about 1242, when he was 29; the date is not certain."]},{"slug":"ibn-battuta","name":"Ibn Battuta","url":"/great-lives/ibn-battuta/","dates":"1304–c. 1369","born":1304,"died":1369,"era":"medieval","categories":["explorers"],"knownFor":"Moroccan traveler who journeyed some 75,000 miles across the Islamic world and beyond.","bio":"Abu Abdullah Muhammad ibn Battuta was born in Tangier, Morocco, into a family of Muslim legal scholars. In 1325, at twenty-one, he set out alone to make the pilgrimage to Mecca. He did not return home for nearly twenty-five years. He traveled through North Africa, Egypt, Syria, Arabia, Persia and Iraq, sailed down the east coast of Africa to Kilwa, crossed the Black Sea to the lands of the Golden Horde, and visited Constantinople. He spent about eight years in Delhi, India, as a judge for the sultan Muhammad bin Tughluq, who sent him as an envoy to China; after shipwreck and robbery he reached the Maldive Islands, where he served as a judge and married, then traveled on to Sri Lanka, Bengal, Sumatra and China. After returning to Morocco, he crossed to Granada in Spain and finally crossed the Sahara to the Mali Empire, visiting Timbuktu. In all he covered some 75,000 miles. At the sultan of Morocco's request he dictated his travels to the scholar Ibn Juzayy, a book known as the Rihla. He died around 1369.","keyDates":[{"date":"1325","event":"Leaves Tangier for Mecca"},{"date":"1334–1341","event":"Serves in Delhi"},{"date":"1345–1346","event":"Travels to China"},{"date":"1352–1353","event":"Journey to Mali"},{"date":"1355","event":"Dictates the Rihla"},{"date":"c. 1369","event":"Dies in Morocco"}],"quotes":[{"text":"I was astonished at what he said, and determined with myself to visit those countries","work":"ibn-battuta-travels","location":"Chapter II (Alexandria)","verified":true}],"author":"Ibn Battuta","relatedWorks":["ibn-battuta-travels"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"ibn-battuta-travels","url":"/works/ibn-battuta-travels/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"book","title":"The Adventures of Ibn Battuta","author":"Ross E. Dunn","isbn13":"9780520951617","publisher":"University of California Press","year":2012,"format":""}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"Ibn Batouta Stadium in Tangier, his home city, is named after him.","source":{"title":"Ibn Battuta (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_Battuta"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Sunni Muslim traveler and judge, trained in the Maliki school of Islamic law.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_Battuta","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"henrik-ibsen","name":"Henrik Ibsen","url":"/great-lives/henrik-ibsen/","dates":"1828–1906","born":1828,"died":1906,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Norwegian playwright, author of A Doll's House, Hedda Gabler and Peer Gynt, often called the father of modern drama.","bio":"Henrik Ibsen was born in 1828 in Skien, Norway, into a merchant family whose business failed when he was a boy. At fifteen he was apprenticed to a pharmacist in Grimstad, and he wrote his first play while studying to enter university. He then worked for years as a writer and stage director at theaters in Bergen and Christiania (now Oslo), learning stagecraft. In 1864 he left Norway and lived for twenty-seven years in Italy and Germany. His verse dramas Brand (1866) and Peer Gynt (1867) made his name. He then wrote prose plays about middle-class life that questioned social conventions: A Doll's House (1879), in which Nora Helmer leaves her husband and children to find her own identity, caused great controversy; Ghosts, An Enemy of the People, The Wild Duck and Hedda Gabler followed. Their realistic dialogue and serious subjects changed European theater. He returned to Norway in 1891 and was celebrated as a national figure. After a series of strokes, he died in Christiania in 1906.","keyDates":[{"date":"1828","event":"Born in Skien, Norway"},{"date":"1851","event":"Joins the theater in Bergen"},{"date":"1864","event":"Leaves Norway"},{"date":"1867","event":"Peer Gynt published"},{"date":"1879","event":"A Doll's House premieres"},{"date":"1891","event":"Returns to Norway"},{"date":"1906","event":"Dies in Christiania"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Henrik Ibsen","relatedWorks":["a-dolls-house-and-other-plays","ibsen-hedda-gabler-master-builder-wild-duck"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"a-dolls-house-and-other-plays","url":"/works/a-dolls-house-and-other-plays/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"ibsen-hedda-gabler-master-builder-wild-duck","url":"/works/ibsen-hedda-gabler-master-builder-wild-duck/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"The asteroid 5696 Ibsen is named after him, and Norway declared 2006 the 'Ibsen Year'.","source":{"title":"Henrik Ibsen (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrik_Ibsen"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Baptized in the Lutheran state church of Norway; his adult beliefs are not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrik_Ibsen","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"ignatius-of-antioch","name":"Ignatius of Antioch","url":"/great-lives/ignatius-of-antioch/","dates":"died c. 108–140","born":35,"died":110,"era":"ancient","categories":["theologians-church-fathers"],"knownFor":"Early bishop of Antioch who wrote seven letters to churches on his way to martyrdom in Rome.","bio":"Ignatius was bishop of Antioch in Syria, one of the earliest centers of Christianity, where the followers of Jesus were first called Christians. According to early tradition he was the third bishop of the city, and some later writers said he had known the apostles. During the reign of the emperor Trajan he was arrested and sent under armed guard to Rome to be put to death. Along the way, at Smyrna and Troas in Asia Minor, he was met by Christians from nearby churches, and he wrote seven letters, to the churches at Ephesus, Magnesia, Tralles, Philadelphia, Smyrna and Rome, and to Polycarp, the bishop of Smyrna. In them he urged unity around the bishop, priests and deacons, warned against teachers who denied that Christ truly had a body and truly suffered, and spoke of the Eucharist. His letter to the Romans begged them not to try to save him, saying he was God's wheat to be ground by the teeth of wild beasts. He was killed in Rome, by tradition in the arena.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 70","event":"Becomes bishop of Antioch, by tradition"},{"date":"c. 107–110","event":"Arrested and taken to Rome; writes seven letters"},{"date":"c. 108–140","event":"Martyred in Rome"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["the-history-of-the-church"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-history-of-the-church","url":"/works/the-history-of-the-church/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Third bishop of Antioch and early Christian martyr; venerated as a saint.","source":"https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07644a.htm","sourceName":"Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["The date of his death is debated; most scholars place it in Trajan's reign (98–117), some later."]},{"slug":"ignatius-of-loyola","name":"Ignatius of Loyola","url":"/great-lives/ignatius-of-loyola/","dates":"1491–1556","born":1491,"died":1556,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["saints-reformers"],"knownFor":"Basque soldier turned priest who founded the Jesuits and wrote the Spiritual Exercises.","bio":"Íñigo López de Loyola was born at the castle of Loyola in the Basque country of Spain, the youngest of thirteen children. He became a courtier and soldier, fond of fighting and fine clothes. In 1521, defending the fortress of Pamplona against the French, his leg was shattered by a cannonball. During his long, painful recovery, the only books at hand were a life of Christ and lives of the saints, and reading them he resolved to serve God instead. He spent nearly a year praying in a cave near Manresa, where he began writing the Spiritual Exercises, a month-long guide to prayer and decision-making. He made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, then went back to school with boys to learn Latin and studied at the University of Paris. There he gathered six companions, including Francis Xavier, and in 1540 the pope approved their new order, the Society of Jesus, or Jesuits, with Ignatius as its first superior general. The Jesuits founded schools and colleges across Europe and sent missionaries to Asia and the Americas. Ignatius died in Rome in 1556.","keyDates":[{"date":"1521","event":"Wounded at Pamplona"},{"date":"1522","event":"At Manresa; begins the Spiritual Exercises"},{"date":"1534","event":"Vows with his companions in Paris"},{"date":"1540","event":"Society of Jesus approved"},{"date":"1556","event":"Dies in Rome"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"While recovering from surgery he asked for tales of knights, his favourite reading; there were none in the castle, so he read about the life of Christ and the saints instead.","source":{"title":"Ignatius of Loyola (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignatius_of_Loyola"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Founder of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits); a Catholic saint.","source":"https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07639c.htm","sourceName":"Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"john-paul-ii","name":"John Paul II","url":"/great-lives/john-paul-ii/","dates":"1920–2005","born":1920,"died":2005,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["theologians-church-fathers","saints-reformers"],"knownFor":"Polish pope from 1978 to 2005, the first non-Italian pope in more than four centuries, later canonized.","bio":"Karol Józef Wojtyła was born in 1920 in Wadowice, Poland. By the age of twenty he had lost his mother, his older brother and his father. He studied at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków and acted in a theater group, but during the German occupation, when the university was closed, he worked in a quarry and a chemical factory and studied in secret for the priesthood. He was ordained in 1946, earned doctorates in theology and philosophy, and taught ethics. He became a bishop in 1958, archbishop of Kraków in 1964 and a cardinal in 1967, and he took part in the Second Vatican Council. In 1978 he was elected pope, taking the name John Paul II; he was the first non-Italian pope since Adrian VI in the sixteenth century. He traveled to more than a hundred countries and supported the Solidarity movement in Poland. In 1981 he was shot and seriously wounded in St Peter's Square; he later visited his attacker in prison. His encyclicals include Centesimus Annus, Evangelium Vitae and Fides et Ratio. He died in 2005 and was canonized in 2014.","keyDates":[{"date":"1920","event":"Born in Wadowice, Poland"},{"date":"1946","event":"Ordained a priest"},{"date":"1964","event":"Archbishop of Kraków"},{"date":"1978","event":"Elected pope"},{"date":"1981","event":"Survives an assassination attempt"},{"date":"2005","event":"Dies in Vatican City"},{"date":"2014","event":"Canonized"}],"quotes":[],"author":"John Paul II","relatedWorks":["evangelium-vitae","centesimus-annus","fides-et-ratio"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"evangelium-vitae","url":"/works/evangelium-vitae/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"centesimus-annus","url":"/works/centesimus-annus/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"fides-et-ratio","url":"/works/fides-et-ratio/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"As a boy he was athletic and often played football (soccer) as a goalkeeper.","source":{"title":"Pope John Paul II (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_John_Paul_II"}}],"records":[{"text":"He was the first non-Italian pope since the 16th century and the third longest-serving pope in history.","source":{"title":"Pope John Paul II (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_John_Paul_II"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Polish Catholic priest and archbishop of Kraków who was pope from 1978 to 2005; a Catholic saint.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_John_Paul_II","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"irenaeus","name":"Irenaeus of Lyon","url":"/great-lives/irenaeus/","dates":"c. 130–202","born":130,"died":202,"era":"ancient","categories":["theologians-church-fathers"],"knownFor":"Bishop of Lyon whose Against Heresies defended the apostolic faith against the Gnostics.","bio":"Irenaeus was born in Asia Minor, probably in Smyrna, where as a boy he heard the preaching of Bishop Polycarp, who had known the apostle John. He moved to Gaul and became a priest in Lyon. In 177, during a violent persecution in Lyon and Vienne in which many Christians, including the aged bishop Pothinus, were killed, Irenaeus was away in Rome carrying a letter. On his return he became bishop of Lyon. He preached in the local language and wrote his great work, usually called Against Heresies, in five books, examining and answering the Gnostic teachers, who claimed secret knowledge and taught that the material world was evil and made by a lesser god. Irenaeus argued that the one God created the world and is revealed in Christ, that the true faith is the one handed down openly from the apostles through the bishops of the churches, and he is one of the first writers to name the four Gospels together. He taught that Christ summed up and restored all of human history. He died around 202, by later tradition as a martyr.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 130","event":"Born in Asia Minor"},{"date":"177","event":"Persecution at Lyon; becomes bishop"},{"date":"c. 180","event":"Writes Against Heresies"},{"date":"c. 202","event":"Dies"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Irenaeus of Lyons","relatedWorks":["the-history-of-the-church","irenaeus-against-heresies"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"irenaeus-against-heresies","url":"/works/irenaeus-against-heresies/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-history-of-the-church","url":"/works/the-history-of-the-church/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Bishop of Lyons and one of the most distinguished theologians of the early Church.","source":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Irenaeus","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica (1911) (via Wikisource)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["Birth and death years are approximate."]},{"slug":"washington-irving","name":"Washington Irving","url":"/great-lives/washington-irving/","dates":"1783–1859","born":1783,"died":1859,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American writer of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle, one of the first American authors famous in Europe.","bio":"Washington Irving was born in New York City in 1783, one of eleven children, and his mother named him after George Washington. As a young man he contributed humorous essays to newspapers. In 1809 he published A History of New York under the made-up name of Diedrich Knickerbocker, a comic history of the city's Dutch settlers; the name Knickerbocker later became a nickname for New Yorkers. In 1815 he moved to England for the family business. The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon (1819–1820) included 'Rip Van Winkle', about a man who sleeps through the American Revolution, and 'The Legend of Sleepy Hollow', about the schoolmaster Ichabod Crane and the Headless Horseman. It made him one of the first American writers to win fame in Europe. He lived for some years in Spain, writing about Christopher Columbus and the Alhambra in Granada, and later served as the U.S. minister to Spain. He also wrote a life of George Washington. He died at his home, Sunnyside, in Tarrytown, New York, in 1859.","keyDates":[{"date":"1783","event":"Born in New York City"},{"date":"1809","event":"A History of New York published"},{"date":"1815","event":"Moves to England"},{"date":"1819","event":"The Sketch Book begins publication"},{"date":"1842","event":"Appointed U.S. minister to Spain"},{"date":"1859","event":"Dies at Sunnyside, Tarrytown"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Washington Irving","relatedWorks":["the-sketch-book"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-sketch-book","url":"/works/the-sketch-book/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"He gave New York City the nickname 'Gotham' in 1807, and he is credited with inventing the phrase 'the almighty dollar'.","source":{"title":"Washington Irving (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Irving"}},{"text":"The name Knickerbocker, from his comic history of New York, became a nickname for Manhattan residents and was adopted by the New York Knickerbockers basketball team.","source":{"title":"Washington Irving (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Irving"}},{"text":"Before his comic History of New-York came out, he started a hoax by placing 'missing person' newspaper ads looking for its supposed author, Diedrich Knickerbocker, a crusty Dutch historian.","source":{"title":"Washington Irving (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Irving"}}],"records":[{"text":"He was one of the first American writers to win praise in Europe.","source":{"title":"Washington Irving (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Irving"}}],"livedPlaces":[{"name":"Washington Irving’s Sunnyside","note":"Sunnyside in Irvington, New York was Washington Irving’s adult riverside home. Historic Hudson Valley’s educators lead tours of the cottage and its grounds.","url":"https://hudsonvalley.org/historic-sites/washington-irvings-sunnyside/","urlLabel":"Washington Irving’s Sunnyside — house tours"}],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Irving","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"isabella-i-of-castile","name":"Isabella I of Castile","url":"/great-lives/isabella-i-of-castile/","dates":"1451–1504","born":1451,"died":1504,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["kings-queens-emperors"],"knownFor":"Queen of Castile who united Spain with Ferdinand and sponsored Columbus.","bio":"Isabella was the daughter of King John II of Castile, the largest kingdom in Spain. Against her half-brother's wishes, she married Ferdinand, heir to the kingdom of Aragon, in 1469, and after a civil war she secured the throne of Castile. Ruling together as the Catholic Monarchs, she and Ferdinand brought most of Spain under one rule. They strengthened royal power over the nobles and set up the Spanish Inquisition in 1478 to investigate the sincerity of converts from Judaism. In January 1492 they captured Granada, the last Muslim kingdom in Spain, ending a struggle of nearly eight centuries. That same year they ordered all Jews who would not become Christians to leave Spain, and many thousands went into exile. Also in 1492 Isabella agreed to back Christopher Columbus's voyage west. She supported learning and Spanish grammar, and her children married into the royal families of Portugal, England and the Habsburgs; her daughter Catherine of Aragon became the first wife of Henry VIII. She died in 1504.","keyDates":[{"date":"1469","event":"Marries Ferdinand of Aragon"},{"date":"1474","event":"Becomes queen of Castile"},{"date":"1478","event":"Spanish Inquisition established"},{"date":"1492","event":"Fall of Granada; Jews expelled; Columbus sails"},{"date":"1504","event":"Dies at Medina del Campo"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[{"text":"In 1893 she became the first woman shown on United States postage stamps.","source":{"title":"Isabella I of Castile (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isabella_I_of_Castile"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"One of the 'Catholic sovereigns' of Spain, who sought religious unity and acted against the Jews of their kingdoms.","source":"https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08177a.htm","sourceName":"Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"helen-hunt-jackson","name":"Helen Hunt Jackson","url":"/great-lives/helen-hunt-jackson/","dates":"1830–1885","born":1830,"died":1885,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American poet and novelist who championed the rights of Native Americans in A Century of Dishonor and the novel Ramona.","bio":"Helen Maria Fiske was born in 1830 in Amherst, Massachusetts, the daughter of a minister who taught Latin, Greek and philosophy at Amherst College. Both her parents died while she was a teenager. At school she was a classmate of Emily Dickinson, also from Amherst, and the two wrote to each other for the rest of their lives. In 1852 she married Captain Edward Bissell Hunt of the U.S. Army. Her husband and both of their sons died young, and much of her early poetry grew out of that grief. Ralph Waldo Emerson admired her poems and read them in public. In 1875 she married William Sharpless Jackson, a banker in Colorado Springs. After hearing the Ponca chief Standing Bear speak in Boston in 1879, she worked for fair treatment of Native Americans and wrote A Century of Dishonor (1881), a history of broken treaties that she sent to every member of Congress. Her novel Ramona (1884), about the Mission Indians of Southern California, became a bestseller. She died in San Francisco in 1885.","keyDates":[{"date":"1830","event":"Born in Amherst, Massachusetts"},{"date":"1852","event":"Marries Edward Bissell Hunt"},{"date":"1875","event":"Marries William Sharpless Jackson"},{"date":"1879","event":"Hears Standing Bear speak in Boston"},{"date":"1881","event":"A Century of Dishonor published"},{"date":"1884","event":"Ramona published"},{"date":"1885","event":"Dies in San Francisco"}],"quotes":[{"text":"They say the Americans, when they buy the Mexicans' lands, drive the Indians away as if they were dogs; they say we have no right to our lands.","work":"ramona","location":"Chapter VI","verified":true}],"author":"Helen Hunt Jackson","relatedWorks":["ramona"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"ramona","url":"/works/ramona/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented; her children were raised as Unitarians.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Hunt_Jackson","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"robert-h-jackson","name":"Robert H. Jackson","url":"/great-lives/robert-h-jackson/","dates":"1892–1954","born":1892,"died":1954,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["legal-scholars-lawgivers"],"knownFor":"Supreme Court justice and chief American prosecutor at the Nuremberg trial of Nazi leaders (1945–1946).","bio":"Robert Houghwout Jackson was born on 13 February 1892 in Spring Creek Township, Pennsylvania, and grew up in western New York. He never finished college; after a year at Albany Law School he learned law as an apprentice and practised in Jamestown, New York, for twenty years. Joining the Roosevelt administration in 1934, he rose to become Solicitor General in 1938 and Attorney General in 1940. In 1941 President Franklin Roosevelt appointed him to the Supreme Court. His opinion in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette (1943) protected schoolchildren who refused on religious grounds to salute the flag. He dissented in Korematsu (1944), which upheld the removal of Japanese Americans, and his concurrence in the Steel Seizure Case (1952) still guides thinking about presidential power. In 1945 President Truman asked him to lead the American prosecution of the major Nazi war criminals. Jackson helped write the charter of the International Military Tribunal, and on 21 November 1945 he opened the trial at Nuremberg, insisting that the defeated leaders receive a fair trial under law rather than vengeance. He returned to the Court and died on 9 October 1954.","keyDates":[{"date":"1892","event":"Born in Spring Creek Township, Pennsylvania, on 13 February"},{"date":"1940","event":"Attorney General of the United States"},{"date":"1941","event":"Appointed to the Supreme Court"},{"date":"1943","event":"Writes the Court's opinion in West Virginia v. Barnette"},{"date":"1945","event":"Opening statement at Nuremberg on 21 November"},{"date":"1954","event":"Dies in Washington on 9 October"}],"quotes":[{"text":"If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion","work":"west-virginia-v-barnette","location":"Opinion of the Court","verified":true}],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["jackson-nuremberg-opening-statement","west-virginia-v-barnette"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"jackson-nuremberg-opening-statement","url":"/works/jackson-nuremberg-opening-statement/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"west-virginia-v-barnette","url":"/works/west-virginia-v-barnette/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_H._Jackson","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"harriet-a-jacobs","name":"Harriet Jacobs","url":"/great-lives/harriet-a-jacobs/","dates":"1813–1897","born":1813,"died":1897,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets","saints-reformers"],"knownFor":"Formerly enslaved abolitionist and writer, author of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.","bio":"Harriet Jacobs was born into slavery in 1813 in Edenton, North Carolina. Her first enslaver taught her to read and write, but after that woman's death Harriet was passed to a family whose head, a doctor, abused her and threatened to sell her children. In 1835 she ran away and hid in a tiny crawl space under the roof of her grandmother's house, too low to stand up in, where she stayed for about seven years, watching her children through a small hole. In 1842 she escaped by boat to the North and was later reunited with her son and daughter in New York, where she worked as a nanny for the family of the writer Nathaniel Parker Willis. Even there she was in danger of capture until her employer bought her freedom in 1852. With encouragement from abolitionists, she wrote Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, published in 1861 under the name Linda Brent. During and after the Civil War she and her daughter worked to aid formerly enslaved people and founded schools for them. She died in Washington, D.C., in 1897.","keyDates":[{"date":"1813","event":"Born in Edenton, North Carolina"},{"date":"1835","event":"Goes into hiding"},{"date":"1842","event":"Escapes to the North"},{"date":"1852","event":"Freedom purchased"},{"date":"1861","event":"Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl published"},{"date":"1897","event":"Dies in Washington, D.C."}],"quotes":[],"author":"Harriet A. Jacobs","relatedWorks":["incidents-in-the-life-of-a-slave-girl"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"incidents-in-the-life-of-a-slave-girl","url":"/works/incidents-in-the-life-of-a-slave-girl/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A Christian whose faith was tested by ministers who defended slavery; she later found new access to her faith.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harriet_Jacobs","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["Some sources give her birth year as 1815."]},{"slug":"henry-james","name":"Henry James","url":"/great-lives/henry-james/","dates":"1843–1916","born":1843,"died":1916,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American-born novelist who settled in England, author of Daisy Miller, The Portrait of a Lady and The Turn of the Screw.","bio":"Henry James was born in New York City in 1843 into a wealthy and intellectual family; his father was a religious writer and his elder brother, William James, became a famous psychologist and philosopher. The children were educated by tutors and in schools in Europe and America. Henry briefly studied law at Harvard but soon turned to writing stories and reviews. In 1875 he settled in Europe, first in Paris and then from 1876 in London, and later at Lamb House in Rye, Sussex. Many of his novels explore Americans meeting older European society, such as Daisy Miller (1878), about a free-spirited American girl in Europe, and The Portrait of a Lady (1881), about Isabel Archer's fateful choices. Washington Square is set in New York. The ghost story The Turn of the Screw (1898) leaves readers unsure whether the ghosts are real. His late novels, including The Wings of the Dove, The Ambassadors and The Golden Bowl, are known for their long, subtle sentences. He became a British citizen in 1915 and died in London in 1916.","keyDates":[{"date":"1843","event":"Born in New York City"},{"date":"1876","event":"Settles in London"},{"date":"1878","event":"Daisy Miller published"},{"date":"1881","event":"The Portrait of a Lady published"},{"date":"1898","event":"The Turn of the Screw published"},{"date":"1915","event":"Becomes a British citizen"},{"date":"1916","event":"Dies in London"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Henry James","relatedWorks":["the-portrait-of-a-lady","daisy-miller","washington-square","the-turn-of-the-screw-and-the-aspern-papers","henry-james-the-beast-in-the-jungle","james-the-ambassadors","james-the-golden-bowl","james-what-maisie-knew","james-the-american"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-portrait-of-a-lady","url":"/works/the-portrait-of-a-lady/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"daisy-miller","url":"/works/daisy-miller/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"washington-square","url":"/works/washington-square/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-turn-of-the-screw-and-the-aspern-papers","url":"/works/the-turn-of-the-screw-and-the-aspern-papers/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"henry-james-the-beast-in-the-jungle","url":"/works/henry-james-the-beast-in-the-jungle/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"james-the-ambassadors","url":"/works/james-the-ambassadors/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"james-the-golden-bowl","url":"/works/james-the-golden-bowl/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"james-what-maisie-knew","url":"/works/james-what-maisie-knew/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"james-the-american","url":"/works/james-the-american/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_James","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[{"series":"Very Short Introductions","title":"Henry James: A Very Short Introduction","author":"Susan L. Mizruchi","publisher":"Oxford University Press","year":2021,"isbn13":"9780190944384","url":"https://bookshop.org/a/130650/9780190944384"}],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"william-james","name":"William James","url":"/great-lives/william-james/","dates":"1842–1910","born":1842,"died":1910,"era":"19th-century","categories":["philosophers","scientists-mathematicians"],"knownFor":"American philosopher and psychologist, often called the father of American psychology, author of The Principles of Psychology and Pragmatism.","bio":"William James was born in 1842 at the Astor House hotel in New York City into a wealthy family. His father, Henry James Sr., was a theologian, his brother Henry became a famous novelist, and his sister Alice became known for her diary. The family travelled often to Europe, and he became fluent in German and French. William first wanted to be a painter and studied in the studio of William Morris Hunt, but he turned to science and entered Harvard Medical School. In 1865 he joined the naturalist Louis Agassiz on an expedition up the Amazon River. He earned his medical degree in 1869 but never practised; instead he taught anatomy at Harvard and then psychology and philosophy. He was the first teacher to offer a psychology course in the United States. In 1878 he married Alice Howe Gibbens, and they had five children. His Principles of Psychology became a groundbreaking text. In The Varieties of Religious Experience and Pragmatism he explored religious experience and argued that ideas should be judged by their practical results. He retired from Harvard in 1907 and died in 1910.","keyDates":[{"date":"1842","event":"Born in New York City"},{"date":"1865","event":"Expedition to the Amazon with Louis Agassiz"},{"date":"1878","event":"Marries Alice Howe Gibbens"},{"date":"1907","event":"Retires from Harvard; Pragmatism published"},{"date":"1910","event":"Dies"}],"quotes":[],"author":"William James","relatedWorks":["james-pragmatism","the-varieties-of-religious-experience","the-principles-of-psychology"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"james-pragmatism","url":"/works/james-pragmatism/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-varieties-of-religious-experience","url":"/works/the-varieties-of-religious-experience/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-principles-of-psychology","url":"/works/the-principles-of-psychology/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"To explain his ideas he told a puzzle about a man chasing a squirrel around a tree: if the squirrel always keeps the trunk between them, does the man go 'round' the squirrel?","source":{"title":"William James (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_James"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented; he studied religious experience in The Varieties of Religious Experience.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_James","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"pierre-janet","name":"Pierre Janet","url":"/great-lives/pierre-janet/","dates":"1859–1947","born":1859,"died":1947,"era":"19th-century","categories":["physicians-medicine","philosophers"],"knownFor":"French psychologist and physician who studied dissociation and traumatic memory.","bio":"Pierre Janet was born in Paris in 1859; his uncle was the philosopher Paul Janet. He studied and taught philosophy and became interested in hypnosis and hysteria. He then trained in medicine and worked under the neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot at the Psychological Laboratory of the Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris. He published the results of his research in his philosophy thesis in 1889 and in his medical thesis on the mental state of hysterical patients in 1892, earning his medical doctorate in 1893. Janet was one of the first to describe how painful past experiences can cause present-day symptoms, and he introduced the terms 'dissociation' and 'subconscious'. In 1898 he became a lecturer in psychology at the Sorbonne, in 1901 he founded the French Psychological Society, and from 1902 to 1936 he held the chair of experimental and comparative psychology at the Collège de France. He lectured in the United States, where his Harvard lectures were published as The Major Symptoms of Hysteria (1907). He died in Paris in 1947.","keyDates":[{"date":"1859","event":"Born in Paris"},{"date":"1889","event":"Philosophy thesis on psychological automatism"},{"date":"1893","event":"Medical doctorate"},{"date":"1902","event":"Chair at the Collège de France"},{"date":"1907","event":"The Major Symptoms of Hysteria"},{"date":"1947","event":"Dies in Paris"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Pierre Janet","relatedWorks":["the-major-symptoms-of-hysteria"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-major-symptoms-of-hysteria","url":"/works/the-major-symptoms-of-hysteria/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Janet","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"john-jay","name":"John Jay","url":"/great-lives/john-jay/","dates":"1745–1829","born":1745,"died":1829,"era":"18th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders","legal-scholars-lawgivers"],"knownFor":"American Founding Father, co-author of The Federalist Papers and first chief justice of the United States.","bio":"John Jay was born in New York City in 1745 to a wealthy merchant family and graduated from King's College, now Columbia University. He became a lawyer and served in the Continental Congress, becoming its president in 1778. He helped write the first constitution of New York and served as its chief justice. As minister to Spain and then as a negotiator in Paris with Benjamin Franklin and John Adams, he helped conclude the Treaty of Paris of 1783, which ended the American Revolutionary War. He then served as secretary for foreign affairs under the Articles of Confederation. To support ratification of the Constitution, he joined Alexander Hamilton and James Madison in writing The Federalist Papers, contributing five essays. George Washington appointed him the first chief justice of the United States in 1789. In 1794 he negotiated the Jay Treaty with Britain, which was unpopular with many Americans. He served two terms as governor of New York, where he signed a law for the gradual abolition of slavery in 1799. He died in Bedford, New York, in 1829.","keyDates":[{"date":"1745","event":"Born in New York City"},{"date":"1778","event":"President of the Continental Congress"},{"date":"1783","event":"Treaty of Paris"},{"date":"1787–1788","event":"Contributes to The Federalist Papers"},{"date":"1789","event":"First chief justice of the United States"},{"date":"1795–1801","event":"Governor of New York"},{"date":"1829","event":"Dies in Bedford, New York"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay","relatedWorks":["the-federalist-papers"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-federalist-papers","url":"/works/the-federalist-papers/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A member of the Church of England and later of the Episcopal Church.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Jay","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"thomas-jefferson","name":"Thomas Jefferson","url":"/great-lives/thomas-jefferson/","dates":"1743–1826","born":1743,"died":1826,"era":"18th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"Author of the Declaration of Independence and third President of the United States.","bio":"Thomas Jefferson was a Virginia planter, lawyer and scholar who read widely in law, science, architecture and the classics. In 1776, at thirty-three, he drafted the Declaration of Independence for the Continental Congress, stating that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with unalienable rights. He wrote the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, served as governor of Virginia during the war, as minister to France, and as the first Secretary of State under Washington, where he clashed with Alexander Hamilton. As third president from 1801 to 1809 he bought the vast Louisiana Territory from France in 1803, doubling the size of the country, and sent Lewis and Clark to explore it. He designed his home, Monticello, and founded the University of Virginia. Jefferson called slavery a moral evil yet held more than six hundred people in slavery over his lifetime, and freed only a few. He died on 4 July 1826, the same day as John Adams.","keyDates":[{"date":"1743","event":"Born at Shadwell, Virginia"},{"date":"1776","event":"Drafts the Declaration of Independence"},{"date":"1801","event":"Becomes third President"},{"date":"1803","event":"Louisiana Purchase"},{"date":"1819","event":"Founds the University of Virginia"},{"date":"1826","event":"Dies on 4 July"}],"quotes":[{"text":"I cannot live without books","work":"jefferson-selected-writings","location":"Letter to John Adams, June 10, 1815","verified":true}],"author":"Thomas Jefferson","relatedWorks":["jefferson-selected-writings","virginia-and-kentucky-resolutions","virginia-statute-for-religious-freedom","jefferson-first-inaugural-address","jefferson-second-inaugural-address","the-founding-documents","declaration-of-the-causes-and-necessity-of-taking-up-arms","olive-branch-petition"],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"book","title":"Who Was Thomas Jefferson?","author":"Dennis B. Fradin","isbn13":"9780448431451","publisher":"Grosset & Dunlap","year":2003,"format":""},{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"virginia-statute-for-religious-freedom","url":"/works/virginia-statute-for-religious-freedom/"},{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"jefferson-first-inaugural-address","url":"/works/jefferson-first-inaugural-address/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"jefferson-selected-writings","url":"/works/jefferson-selected-writings/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"virginia-and-kentucky-resolutions","url":"/works/virginia-and-kentucky-resolutions/"},{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-founding-documents","url":"/works/the-founding-documents/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"He spent much of his adult life designing his home, Monticello, saying 'Architecture is my delight, and putting up, and pulling down, one of my favorite amusements.'","source":{"title":"Thomas Jefferson (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson"}},{"text":"He played the violin and cello, often accompanying his wife Martha, a skilled pianist.","source":{"title":"Thomas Jefferson (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Baptized in his youth and a member of his local Episcopal church; his personal views are often described as deist-leaning and are debated.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"edward-jenner","name":"Edward Jenner","url":"/great-lives/edward-jenner/","dates":"1749–1823","born":1749,"died":1823,"era":"18th-century","categories":["physicians-medicine"],"knownFor":"English country doctor who developed vaccination against smallpox.","bio":"Edward Jenner was born in Berkeley, Gloucestershire, the son of a vicar. He was apprenticed to a surgeon at thirteen and later studied in London under the famous surgeon John Hunter, who told him not to think but to try. Returning to Berkeley as a country doctor, he also studied nature, showing how young cuckoos push other eggs out of the nest. Smallpox then killed many thousands each year, and survivors were often scarred or blinded. Jenner heard country people say that milkmaids who caught cowpox, a mild disease from cows, never caught smallpox. On 14 May 1796 he took matter from a cowpox sore on the hand of a milkmaid, Sarah Nelmes, and put it into scratches on the arm of James Phipps, the eight-year-old son of his gardener. Weeks later he exposed the boy to smallpox, and he did not fall ill. Jenner tested more cases and published his findings in 1798, calling the method vaccination, from the Latin for cow. Vaccination spread around the world within a few years. Jenner died in 1823. In 1980 smallpox was declared eradicated.","keyDates":[{"date":"1749","event":"Born in Berkeley"},{"date":"1796","event":"Vaccinates James Phipps"},{"date":"1798","event":"Publishes his findings"},{"date":"1823","event":"Dies in Berkeley"},{"date":"1980","event":"Smallpox declared eradicated"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["pasteur-and-lister-germ-theory-papers","jenner-inquiry-into-the-variolae-vaccinae"],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"He experimented with balloons, and his trial balloon came down in the park of the family of Catherine Kingscote, whom he later married.","source":{"title":"Edward Jenner (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Jenner"}},{"text":"A crater on the Moon is named after him.","source":{"title":"Edward Jenner (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Jenner"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A Christian whose personal letters show him to have been quite spiritual.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Jenner","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"jerome-k-jerome","name":"Jerome K. Jerome","url":"/great-lives/jerome-k-jerome/","dates":"1859–1927","born":1859,"died":1927,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"English humorist, playwright and editor, author of the comic classic Three Men in a Boat (1889).","bio":"Jerome Klapka Jerome was born in Walsall, Staffordshire, in 1859, and grew up in poverty in the East End of London after his father's business failed. He left school at fourteen and worked as a railway clerk, a schoolmaster, an actor, a journalist and a solicitor's clerk. His first books, On the Stage and Off and Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow, drew on these experiences. In 1888 he married Georgina Marris, and after their honeymoon on the Thames he wrote Three Men in a Boat (1889), based on boating trips with his friends George Wingrave and Carl Hentschel. Critics called it vulgar, but it sold enormously and has never been out of print. Jerome co-founded and edited the magazine The Idler, which published Mark Twain, Arthur Conan Doyle and others, and he wrote many plays, including The Passing of the Third Floor Back (1908). A sequel, Three Men on the Bummel, followed in 1900. During the First World War, too old to enlist, he served as an ambulance driver in France. He died in Northampton in 1927.","keyDates":[{"date":"1859","event":"Born in Walsall"},{"date":"1889","event":"Three Men in a Boat published"},{"date":"1892","event":"Co-founds The Idler"},{"date":"1900","event":"Three Men on the Bummel"},{"date":"1927","event":"Dies in Northampton"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Jerome K. Jerome","relatedWorks":["jerome-three-men-in-a-boat"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"jerome-three-men-in-a-boat","url":"/works/jerome-three-men-in-a-boat/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":null,"sourceName":null,"documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"joan-of-arc","name":"Joan of Arc","url":"/great-lives/joan-of-arc/","dates":"c. 1412–1431","born":1412,"died":1431,"era":"medieval","categories":["saints-reformers","military-leaders"],"knownFor":"French peasant girl who led the army to lift the siege of Orléans and was burned at the stake.","bio":"Joan was born in Domrémy, a village in northeastern France, the daughter of a farmer. France was then losing the Hundred Years' War against England and its Burgundian allies, and the heir to the French throne, Charles, had not been crowned. From about thirteen Joan said she heard the voices of Saint Michael, Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret, who told her to help Charles. In 1429, at seventeen, she persuaded a local commander to send her to Charles, who, after she was examined by theologians, let her ride with the army to relieve the besieged city of Orléans. The siege was lifted within days, and after further victories she stood beside Charles when he was crowned at Reims. In 1430 she was captured by the Burgundians and sold to the English. At Rouen a church court friendly to the English tried her for heresy; the records of her answers survive. She was condemned and burned at the stake on 30 May 1431, aged about nineteen. A later court overturned the verdict in 1456, and she was declared a saint in 1920.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 1412","event":"Born at Domrémy"},{"date":"1429","event":"Lifts the siege of Orléans; Charles VII crowned at Reims"},{"date":"1430","event":"Captured at Compiègne"},{"date":"1431","event":"Tried at Rouen; burned at the stake"},{"date":"1456","event":"Verdict overturned"},{"date":"1920","event":"Canonized"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["the-trial-of-joan-of-arc","shaw-saint-joan"],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"book","title":"Who Was Joan of Arc?","author":"Pamela D. Pollack","isbn13":"9780448483047","publisher":"Paperback","year":2016,"format":""},{"band":"3-5","kind":"book","title":"Joan of Arc","author":"Diane Stanley","isbn13":"9780064437486","publisher":"HarperTrophy","year":2002,"format":"paperback"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-trial-of-joan-of-arc","url":"/works/the-trial-of-joan-of-arc/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"shaw-saint-joan","url":"/works/shaw-saint-joan/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[{"text":"The earliest written record of her being called 'Joan of Arc' dates from 1455, 24 years after her death.","source":{"title":"Joan of Arc (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_of_Arc"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"French Catholic heroine executed in 1431; canonized in 1920 by Pope Benedict XV.","source":"https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08409c.htm","sourceName":"Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"john-chrysostom","name":"John Chrysostom","url":"/great-lives/john-chrysostom/","dates":"c. 347–407","born":347,"died":407,"era":"ancient","categories":["theologians-church-fathers"],"knownFor":"Archbishop of Constantinople, the Golden Mouth, famous for his preaching.","bio":"John was born in Antioch in Syria and raised by his widowed mother. He studied rhetoric under the famous pagan teacher Libanius, then turned to the monastic life and spent years living as a hermit in the mountains, until his health broke. Back in Antioch he was ordained a priest and became the city's great preacher. His sermons, explaining books of the Bible verse by verse and applying them to daily life, drew huge crowds, and he was later called Chrysostom, meaning golden-mouthed. In 387, after rioters smashed statues of the emperor and the city feared terrible punishment, he preached a series of sermons called the Homilies on the Statues. In 398 he was made archbishop of Constantinople. There he cut the expenses of his household, gave to the poor and hospitals, and denounced luxury among the rich and at court, offending the empress Eudoxia. His sermons against Jews in Antioch were harsh and were later misused. He was deposed and exiled twice, and died in 407 while being marched to a more remote place of exile.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 347","event":"Born in Antioch"},{"date":"386","event":"Ordained priest"},{"date":"387","event":"Homilies on the Statues"},{"date":"398","event":"Becomes archbishop of Constantinople"},{"date":"404","event":"Exiled"},{"date":"407","event":"Dies in exile"}],"quotes":[],"author":"John Chrysostom","relatedWorks":["homilies-on-the-statues"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"homilies-on-the-statues","url":"/works/homilies-on-the-statues/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Christian archbishop of Constantinople and famous preacher; venerated as a saint by Orthodox and Catholic churches.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Chrysostom","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"john-of-damascus","name":"John of Damascus","url":"/great-lives/john-of-damascus/","dates":"c. 675–749","born":675,"died":749,"era":"medieval","categories":["theologians-church-fathers"],"knownFor":"Syrian monk and theologian who defended the veneration of icons and summarized Greek Christian doctrine in the Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith.","bio":"John was born in Damascus around 675 into a prominent Christian Arab family, the Mansur, who served as financial officials under the Umayyad caliphs; he himself held a post in the caliph's administration. Around the early eighth century he left Damascus and became a monk, traditionally at the monastery of Mar Saba near Jerusalem, where he was ordained a priest. When the Byzantine emperor Leo III began to oppose the veneration of religious images in the 720s and 730s, John, living outside the empire, wrote three treatises in defense of icons, arguing that because God became visible in Christ he may be depicted. His Fount of Knowledge combined a philosophical introduction, a catalogue of heresies, including a chapter on Islam, and the Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, a summary of the teaching of the Greek fathers that became a standard textbook in East and West. He also wrote hymns still sung in the Orthodox liturgy. He died around 749 and is honoured as a Doctor of the Church. He defended icons by appeal to the Incarnation of Christ.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 675","event":"Born in Damascus"},{"date":"c. 700s","event":"Becomes a monk, traditionally at Mar Saba"},{"date":"c. 726–730","event":"Treatises against the iconoclasts"},{"date":"c. 743","event":"Fount of Knowledge"},{"date":"c. 749","event":"Dies"}],"quotes":[],"author":"John of Damascus","relatedWorks":["john-of-damascus-exact-exposition"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"john-of-damascus-exact-exposition","url":"/works/john-of-damascus-exact-exposition/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Christian monk and theologian of the Eastern Church.","source":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/John_of_Damascus","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica (1911) (via Wikisource)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"john-of-god","name":"John of God","url":"/great-lives/john-of-god/","dates":"1495–1550","born":1495,"died":1550,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["saints-reformers","physicians-medicine"],"knownFor":"Portuguese soldier turned servant of the sick poor in Granada, founder of the Brothers Hospitallers and patron saint of hospitals.","bio":"João Cidade was born in 1495 at Montemor-o-Novo in Portugal. As a boy he left home and grew up in Castile, where he worked as a shepherd and later served as a soldier in Spanish campaigns. In his forties, after years of wandering, he sold books and holy pictures in Granada. There, moved by a sermon of the preacher John of Ávila, he underwent a dramatic conversion; his public penance was so extreme that he was confined in the Royal Hospital as a madman, where he saw how the mentally ill were whipped and chained. After his release he rented a house and began gathering the sick, the homeless and the insane, begging for them in the streets with the cry, as tradition records it, 'Do good, brothers, to yourselves.' His hospital grew, and men who joined him became the nucleus of the Brothers Hospitallers, approved by Pope Pius V in 1572. He died in Granada on 8 March 1550, worn out after trying to save a drowning man. He was canonized in 1690 and named a patron of hospitals and the sick.","keyDates":[{"date":"1495","event":"Born at Montemor-o-Novo, Portugal"},{"date":"c. 1537","event":"Converted in Granada after hearing John of Ávila preach (year given as 1537 or 1539)"},{"date":"1539","event":"Opens his first house for the sick poor in Granada (approximate)"},{"date":"1550","event":"Dies in Granada on 8 March"},{"date":"1572","event":"Pius V approves the Brothers Hospitallers"},{"date":"1690","event":"Canonized"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Catholic founder of a hospital in Granada who cared for the sick; a Catholic saint.","source":"https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08472c.htm","sourceName":"Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["Sources differ on whether the conversion sermon was in 1537 or 1539.","His begging cry is recorded in early biographies; wording varies in translation.","The drowning-rescue account comes from his early biographer Francisco de Castro (1585)."]},{"slug":"john-of-the-cross","name":"John of the Cross","url":"/great-lives/john-of-the-cross/","dates":"1542–1591","born":1542,"died":1591,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["saints-reformers","writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Spanish Carmelite friar, mystic and poet who worked with Teresa of Ávila to reform the Carmelite order; author of Dark Night of the Soul.","bio":"Juan de Yepes was born in 1542 at Fontiveros, near Ávila in Castile, into a poor family; his father died when he was a child. He worked in a hospital while studying with the Jesuits at Medina del Campo, entered the Carmelite order in 1563 and studied at Salamanca. In 1567 he met Teresa of Ávila, who persuaded him to join her reform, and in 1568 he helped found the first house of Discalced Carmelite friars, taking the name John of the Cross. Friars opposed to the reform kidnapped him in 1577 and imprisoned him for about nine months in a small cell in Toledo, where he composed much of his Spiritual Canticle before escaping. He later served as prior and leader in Andalusia and wrote commentaries on his poems: The Ascent of Mount Carmel, The Dark Night, The Spiritual Canticle and The Living Flame of Love. He died at Úbeda in 1591. He was canonized in 1726 and declared a Doctor of the Church in 1926, and is counted among the great poets of the Spanish language. His writings guide Christians through seasons of spiritual dryness.","keyDates":[{"date":"1542","event":"Born at Fontiveros"},{"date":"1567","event":"Meets Teresa of Ávila"},{"date":"1568","event":"First house of Discalced friars"},{"date":"1577–1578","event":"Imprisoned in Toledo"},{"date":"1591","event":"Dies at Úbeda"}],"quotes":[],"author":"John of the Cross","relatedWorks":["life-of-st-teresa-of-jesus","dark-night-of-the-soul"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"dark-night-of-the-soul","url":"/works/dark-night-of-the-soul/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"life-of-st-teresa-of-jesus","url":"/works/life-of-st-teresa-of-jesus/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Spanish Discalced Carmelite friar and mystic; a Catholic saint and Doctor of the Church.","source":"https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08480a.htm","sourceName":"Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"james-weldon-johnson","name":"James Weldon Johnson","url":"/great-lives/james-weldon-johnson/","dates":"1871–1938","born":1871,"died":1938,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets","statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"Writer, diplomat and civil-rights leader; author of 'Lift Every Voice and Sing' and The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man.","bio":"James Weldon Johnson was born in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1871, the son of a headwaiter and a schoolteacher. After graduating from Atlanta University, he became principal of a black school in Jacksonville, founded a newspaper, and became the first African American admitted to the Florida bar after Reconstruction. In 1900 he wrote the words of 'Lift Every Voice and Sing', which his brother Rosamond set to music; it became known as the Negro National Anthem. The brothers wrote successful songs for Broadway in New York. Johnson served as United States consul in Venezuela and Nicaragua, and there he wrote The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, published anonymously in 1912. From 1920 to 1930 he led the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People as its executive secretary, campaigning against lynching. He edited anthologies of black poetry and spirituals, and his God's Trombones (1927) turned folk sermons into poetry. Later he taught at Fisk University. He died in a car accident in Maine in 1938.","keyDates":[{"date":"1871","event":"Born in Jacksonville, Florida"},{"date":"1900","event":"Writes 'Lift Every Voice and Sing'"},{"date":"1912","event":"The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man published"},{"date":"1920","event":"Becomes executive secretary of the NAACP"},{"date":"1927","event":"God's Trombones published"},{"date":"1938","event":"Dies in Maine"}],"quotes":[],"author":"James Weldon Johnson","relatedWorks":["johnson-autobiography-of-an-ex-colored-man"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"johnson-autobiography-of-an-ex-colored-man","url":"/works/johnson-autobiography-of-an-ex-colored-man/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented; his God's Trombones retells Black sermons in verse.","source":null,"sourceName":null,"documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"samuel-johnson","name":"Samuel Johnson","url":"/great-lives/samuel-johnson/","dates":"1709–1784","born":1709,"died":1784,"era":"18th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"English lexicographer, critic, essayist, and author of Rasselas and A Dictionary of the English Language.","bio":"Samuel Johnson was born in Lichfield in 1709, the son of a bookseller. His early reading and education gave him a deep knowledge of classical and English literature, but a lack of money ended his time at Oxford. After an unsuccessful attempt to run a school, he moved to London in 1737 and supported himself through writing. His Dictionary of the English Language appeared in 1755, drawing definitions and examples from wide reading. Rasselas followed in 1759, exploring the search for happiness through an imagined journey. Johnson also edited Shakespeare and wrote literary biography and criticism. His Anglican faith informed his concern with duty, charity, suffering, and the limits of human achievement. The conversations and friendships recorded in James Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson helped make him one of the most vividly remembered literary figures of eighteenth-century Britain. He died in London in 1784.","keyDates":[{"date":"1709","event":"Born in Lichfield"},{"date":"1755","event":"Dictionary of the English Language published"},{"date":"1759","event":"Rasselas published"},{"date":"1784","event":"Dies in London"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Samuel Johnson","relatedWorks":["rasselas","boswell-life-of-johnson"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"rasselas","url":"/works/rasselas/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"boswell-life-of-johnson","url":"/works/boswell-life-of-johnson/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":null,"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"absalom-jones","name":"Absalom Jones","url":"/great-lives/absalom-jones/","dates":"1746–1818","born":1746,"died":1818,"era":"18th-century","categories":["saints-reformers"],"knownFor":"Philadelphia abolitionist and clergyman, cofounder of the Free African Society and the first African American ordained a priest in the Episcopal Church.","bio":"Absalom Jones was born into slavery in Sussex County, Delaware, in 1746 and as a boy taught himself to read. He was taken to Philadelphia, where he worked in his enslaver's shop, attended a night school, and married. He bought his wife's freedom first and later his own, gaining it in 1784. Jones became a lay preacher at St. George's Methodist Church, and in 1787 he and Richard Allen founded the Free African Society, a mutual aid society for Black Philadelphians. During the yellow fever epidemic of 1793, members of the society nursed the sick and buried the dead, and Jones and Allen afterward wrote a narrative defending their work against public criticism. In 1794 Jones founded the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas, and in 1802 he became the first African American ordained a priest in the Episcopal Church. He died in Philadelphia in 1818 and is remembered on the Episcopal calendar on February 13.","keyDates":[{"date":"1746","event":"Born in Sussex County, Delaware"},{"date":"1784","event":"Gains his freedom"},{"date":"1787","event":"Founds the Free African Society with Richard Allen"},{"date":"1793","event":"Serves during the Philadelphia yellow fever epidemic"},{"date":"1794","event":"Founds St. Thomas African Episcopal Church"},{"date":"1802","event":"Ordained a priest"},{"date":"1818","event":"Dies in Philadelphia"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Richard Allen and Absalom Jones","relatedWorks":["narrative-of-yellow-fever-1793"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"narrative-of-yellow-fever-1793","url":"/works/narrative-of-yellow-fever-1793/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[{"text":"In 1802 he became the first African American ordained as a priest in the Episcopal Church.","source":{"title":"Absalom Jones (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absalom_Jones"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Raised in slavery and active in Methodism; founded the first Black Episcopal congregation (1794) and in 1802 became the first African American ordained a priest in the Episcopal Church.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absalom_Jones","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"chief-joseph","name":"Chief Joseph","url":"/great-lives/chief-joseph/","dates":"1840–1904","born":1840,"died":1904,"era":"19th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders","military-leaders"],"knownFor":"Leader of the Wallowa band of the Nez Perce who led his people's retreat in 1877 and spoke for their rights for the rest of his life.","bio":"Chief Joseph, known in his own language as Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt, 'Thunder Rolling Down the Mountain', was born in 1840 in the Wallowa Valley, in what is now northeastern Oregon. His father, also called Joseph, led the Wallowa band of the Nez Perce and refused to sign an 1863 treaty that greatly reduced their lands. After his father's death in 1871, Joseph became leader. In 1877 the United States Army ordered the band onto a reservation in Idaho, and after fighting broke out, about 800 Nez Perce fled, traveling some 1,170 miles through Idaho, Wyoming and Montana and fighting several battles as they tried to reach Canada. They were caught about forty miles from the border, and Joseph surrendered; his words as reported, ending 'I will fight no more forever', became famous. His people were sent to Kansas and then to Indian Territory, and Joseph visited Washington to plead for their return home. He was never allowed back to the Wallowa Valley and died on the Colville Reservation in Washington in 1904.","keyDates":[{"date":"1840","event":"Born in the Wallowa Valley"},{"date":"1871","event":"Becomes leader after his father's death"},{"date":"1877","event":"Nez Perce War and surrender in Montana"},{"date":"1879","event":"Speaks in Washington, D.C."},{"date":"1904","event":"Dies on the Colville Reservation"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Chief Joseph","relatedWorks":["i-will-fight-no-more-forever"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"i-will-fight-no-more-forever","url":"/works/i-will-fight-no-more-forever/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented; his father had been baptized a Christian and took the name Joseph.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chief_Joseph","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"flavius-josephus","name":"Flavius Josephus","url":"/great-lives/flavius-josephus/","dates":"c. 37–c. 100","born":37,"died":100,"era":"ancient","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Jewish priest, general and historian whose Jewish War and Jewish Antiquities are major sources for Judea in the first century.","bio":"Josephus was born Yosef ben Mattityahu in Jerusalem around AD 37, to a father of priestly descent and a mother who claimed royal Hasmonean ancestry. He received a thorough education and visited Rome as a young man. When the Jewish revolt against Rome broke out in 66, he became a commander of Jewish forces in Galilee. In 67 the town of Yodfat (Jotapata), which he defended, fell to the Roman army of Vespasian after a siege of about six weeks, and Josephus surrendered. He claimed that he had predicted that Vespasian would become emperor, and when this came true in 69 he was freed. He took the family name Flavius from his patron and accompanied Titus, Vespasian's son, at the siege and destruction of Jerusalem in 70. He then lived in Rome on an imperial pension and wrote in Greek: The Jewish War, an account of the revolt, and the Jewish Antiquities, a history of the Jewish people from the creation onward, as well as an autobiography and Against Apion. He died around 100.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 37","event":"Born in Jerusalem"},{"date":"66","event":"Jewish revolt begins; commands in Galilee"},{"date":"67","event":"Surrenders to Vespasian after the siege of Yodfat"},{"date":"70","event":"Witnesses the destruction of Jerusalem"},{"date":"c. 75","event":"The Jewish War completed"},{"date":"c. 94","event":"Jewish Antiquities completed"},{"date":"c. 100","event":"Dies in Rome"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Flavius Josephus","relatedWorks":["jewish-antiquities","the-jewish-war"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"jewish-antiquities","url":"/works/jewish-antiquities/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-jewish-war","url":"/works/the-jewish-war/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A Jew who went to Rome in 64 to seek the release of imprisoned Jewish priests who were his friends.","source":"https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08522a.htm","sourceName":"Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["His dates are approximate."]},{"slug":"james-joyce","name":"James Joyce","url":"/great-lives/james-joyce/","dates":"1882–1941","born":1882,"died":1941,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Irish novelist and poet, author of Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses.","bio":"James Joyce was born in 1882 in Rathgar, a suburb of Dublin, the eldest surviving of ten children. His father's money troubles forced the family to move many times. He was educated by the Jesuits at Clongowes Wood College and Belvedere College and studied modern languages at University College Dublin. In 1904 he met Nora Barnacle, and that year they left Ireland together; they lived in Pola, Trieste, Rome, Zurich and Paris, and Joyce supported them by teaching English. Except for a few short visits, he never lived in Ireland again, but all his fiction is set in Dublin. Dubliners (1914) is a collection of stories about ordinary city life. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) follows the boyhood and youth of Stephen Dedalus, who, like Joyce, breaks from family, church and country to become a writer. Ulysses (1922), which follows a single day in Dublin, and Finnegans Wake (1939) are famous for their experimental language. Joyce suffered from eye disease for much of his life. He died in Zurich in 1941.","keyDates":[{"date":"1882","event":"Born in Rathgar, Dublin"},{"date":"1904","event":"Leaves Ireland with Nora Barnacle"},{"date":"1914","event":"Dubliners published"},{"date":"1916","event":"A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man"},{"date":"1922","event":"Ulysses published"},{"date":"1939","event":"Finnegans Wake published"},{"date":"1941","event":"Dies in Zurich"}],"quotes":[],"author":"James Joyce","relatedWorks":["joyce-portrait-of-the-artist","joyce-dubliners"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"joyce-portrait-of-the-artist","url":"/works/joyce-portrait-of-the-artist/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"joyce-dubliners","url":"/works/joyce-dubliners/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Baptized Catholic and educated by Jesuits; critics debate whether he fully rejected the Catholic faith.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Joyce","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[{"series":"Very Short Introductions","title":"James Joyce: A Very Short Introduction","author":"Colin MacCabe","publisher":"Oxford University Press","year":2021,"isbn13":"9780192894472","url":"https://bookshop.org/a/130650/9780192894472"}],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"c-g-jung","name":"Carl Gustav Jung","url":"/great-lives/c-g-jung/","dates":"1875–1961","born":1875,"died":1961,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["physicians-medicine"],"knownFor":"Swiss psychiatrist who founded analytical psychology and introduced ideas such as the collective unconscious, archetypes and introversion.","bio":"Carl Gustav Jung was born in 1875 in Kesswil, Switzerland, the son of a Protestant pastor, and grew up near Basel. He studied medicine at the University of Basel and in 1900 began work at the Burghölzli psychiatric hospital in Zurich under Eugen Bleuler, where he studied patients with schizophrenia, then called dementia praecox, and developed word-association tests. His book The Psychology of Dementia Praecox (1907) drew Sigmund Freud's attention, and the two worked closely until they broke with each other in 1913 over theory. Jung then went through a period of intense inner experiences, which he recorded in what became The Red Book. He founded what he called analytical psychology, with ideas such as the collective unconscious, archetypes, and introverted and extraverted personality types. He traveled to Africa, India and the American Southwest and wrote on religion, myth, alchemy and dreams. He taught for many years in Zurich and died at his home in Küsnacht in 1961.","keyDates":[{"date":"1875","event":"Born in Kesswil, Switzerland"},{"date":"1900","event":"Joins the Burghölzli hospital in Zurich"},{"date":"1907","event":"The Psychology of Dementia Praecox; meets Freud"},{"date":"1913","event":"Breaks with Freud"},{"date":"1921","event":"Psychological Types published"},{"date":"1961","event":"Dies in Küsnacht"}],"quotes":[],"author":"C. G. Jung","relatedWorks":["the-psychology-of-dementia-praecox"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-psychology-of-dementia-praecox","url":"/works/the-psychology-of-dementia-praecox/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"As a boy he carved a tiny figure into the end of the wooden ruler from his pencil case and hid the case in the attic.","source":{"title":"Carl Jung (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Jung"}}],"records":[{"text":"He was the first to build the ideas of 'introversion' and 'extraversion' into a full theory of personality.","source":{"title":"Carl Jung (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Jung"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Son of a pastor.","source":"https://www.britannica.com/biography/Carl-Jung","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica","documented":true},"furtherReading":[{"series":"Very Short Introductions","title":"Jung: A Very Short Introduction","author":"Anthony Stevens","publisher":"Oxford University Press","year":2001,"isbn13":"9780192854582","url":"https://bookshop.org/a/130650/9780192854582"}],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"norton-juster","name":"Norton Juster","url":"/great-lives/norton-juster/","dates":"1929–2021","born":1929,"died":2021,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["writers-poets","artists-composers-architects"],"knownFor":"American architect and author of The Phantom Tollbooth.","bio":"Norton Juster was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1929, to Jewish immigrant parents; his father, born in Romania, became an architect through a correspondence course. Juster studied architecture at the University of Pennsylvania, graduating in 1952, and then city planning at the University of Liverpool in England. In 1954 he joined the Civil Engineer Corps of the United States Navy. To fight boredom during his service he began writing stories, and while posted at the Brooklyn Navy Yard he met the cartoonist Jules Feiffer while taking out the trash. After leaving the navy he worked for an architectural firm in Manhattan. The Phantom Tollbooth (1961), with drawings by Feiffer, tells of Milo, a bored boy who drives a toy car through a magic tollbooth into a land of words and numbers, where he sets out to rescue the princesses Rhyme and Reason. It became a children's classic. He followed it with The Dot and the Line (1963), a mathematical romance. Juster taught architecture and environmental design at Hampshire College from 1970 to 1992 and co-founded an architectural firm in Massachusetts. He died in 2021.","keyDates":[{"date":"1929","event":"Born in Brooklyn"},{"date":"1952","event":"Graduates in architecture from the University of Pennsylvania"},{"date":"1954","event":"Joins the Navy Civil Engineer Corps"},{"date":"1961","event":"The Phantom Tollbooth published"},{"date":"1963","event":"The Dot and the Line published"},{"date":"1970–1992","event":"Professor at Hampshire College"},{"date":"2021","event":"Dies"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Norton Juster","relatedWorks":["the-phantom-tollbooth"],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"library","work":"the-phantom-tollbooth","url":"/works/the-phantom-tollbooth/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Born to Jewish parents; his personal beliefs are not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norton_Juster","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"justin-martyr","name":"Justin Martyr","url":"/great-lives/justin-martyr/","dates":"c. 100–c. 165","born":100,"died":165,"era":"ancient","categories":["theologians-church-fathers","saints-reformers"],"knownFor":"Second-century philosopher and Christian apologist whose First Apology gives the earliest full description of Christian Sunday worship.","bio":"Justin was born around 100 at Flavia Neapolis, the modern Nablus, in Samaria, to a pagan family of Greek culture. As he tells in his Dialogue with Trypho, he studied with Stoic, Peripatetic, Pythagorean and Platonist teachers in search of the truth about God, until an old man he met by the sea directed him to the Hebrew prophets and to Christ. He continued to wear the philosopher's cloak and taught Christianity as the true philosophy, opening a school in Rome. Around 155 he addressed his First Apology to the emperor Antoninus Pius, defending Christians against charges of atheism and immorality and describing baptism and the weekly Sunday gathering for readings, prayer and the Eucharist. He also wrote a Second Apology and the Dialogue with Trypho, a debate with a Jewish teacher. He taught that the divine Word had sown seeds of truth among philosophers. Around 165, under Marcus Aurelius, he and several companions were beheaded in Rome after refusing to sacrifice to the gods. The church honours him as a martyr and early apologist.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 100","event":"Born at Flavia Neapolis, Samaria"},{"date":"c. 130","event":"Becomes a Christian"},{"date":"c. 155","event":"First Apology addressed to Antoninus Pius"},{"date":"c. 160","event":"Dialogue with Trypho"},{"date":"c. 165","event":"Martyred in Rome"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Justin Martyr","relatedWorks":["early-christian-writings","justin-martyr-first-apology"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"justin-martyr-first-apology","url":"/works/justin-martyr-first-apology/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"early-christian-writings","url":"/works/early-christian-writings/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Early Christian apologist; venerated as a saint.","source":"https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08580c.htm","sourceName":"Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"justinian-i","name":"Justinian I","url":"/great-lives/justinian-i/","dates":"c. 482–565","born":482,"died":565,"era":"medieval","categories":["kings-queens-emperors","legal-scholars-lawgivers"],"knownFor":"Byzantine emperor who codified Roman law and built Hagia Sophia.","bio":"Justinian was born to a peasant family in the Balkans and rose through the help of his uncle Justin, a soldier who became emperor. Justinian succeeded him in 527 and ruled the Eastern Roman, or Byzantine, Empire from Constantinople for thirty-eight years, with his wife Theodora, a former actress, as a strong partner. In 532 riots called the Nika revolt nearly drove him from the city; Theodora is said to have persuaded him to stay, and the army crushed the rioters. He then rebuilt the great church of Hagia Sophia, whose huge dome still stands. His commission of lawyers, led by Tribonian, gathered centuries of Roman law into the Corpus Juris Civilis, which later shaped the law of much of Europe. His generals, especially Belisarius, won back North Africa, Italy and part of Spain, though the long wars and a terrible plague in 541 strained the empire. The historian Procopius praised him in public works and attacked him in his Secret History. He died in 565.","keyDates":[{"date":"527","event":"Becomes emperor"},{"date":"529–534","event":"Corpus Juris Civilis issued"},{"date":"532","event":"Nika riots; rebuilding of Hagia Sophia begins"},{"date":"537","event":"Hagia Sophia dedicated"},{"date":"541","event":"Plague strikes the empire"},{"date":"565","event":"Dies in Constantinople"}],"quotes":[{"text":"Justice is the set and constant purpose which gives to every man his due.","work":"justinian-institutes","location":"Book I, Title 1, pr.","verified":true},{"text":"The precepts of the law are these: to live honestly, to injure no one, and to give every man his due.","work":"justinian-institutes","location":"Book I, Title 1.3","verified":true}],"author":"Justinian I (Tribonian and commissioners)","relatedWorks":["justinian-institutes","procopius-history-of-the-wars-persian-war","procopius-secret-history","kaldellis-the-new-roman-empire"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"justinian-institutes","url":"/works/justinian-institutes/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"procopius-history-of-the-wars-persian-war","url":"/works/procopius-history-of-the-wars-persian-war/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"procopius-secret-history","url":"/works/procopius-secret-history/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Byzantine emperor and devoted Chalcedonian (Orthodox) Christian who took an active part in theological debates.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justinian_I","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"franz-kafka","name":"Franz Kafka","url":"/great-lives/franz-kafka/","dates":"1883–1924","born":1883,"died":1924,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"German-language writer from Prague, author of The Metamorphosis and The Trial.","bio":"Franz Kafka was born in 1883 in Prague, then part of Austria-Hungary, into a middle-class German-speaking Jewish family. His father, a forceful shopkeeper, dominated the household, and Kafka later wrote a long Letter to His Father describing their difficult relationship. He studied law at the German university in Prague and spent most of his working life at the Workers' Accident Insurance Institute, writing in the evenings and at night. During his lifetime he published only a few stories, including The Judgment and The Metamorphosis (1915), in which a traveling salesman, Gregor Samsa, wakes up to find himself transformed into a huge insect. His novels The Trial, about a man arrested and prosecuted by a mysterious court for a crime that is never named, The Castle and Amerika were left unfinished. He was engaged several times but never married. Ill with tuberculosis, he died in a sanatorium near Vienna in 1924. He asked his friend Max Brod to burn his manuscripts, but Brod published them instead.","keyDates":[{"date":"1883","event":"Born in Prague"},{"date":"1908","event":"Joins the Workers' Accident Insurance Institute"},{"date":"1915","event":"The Metamorphosis published"},{"date":"1917","event":"Diagnosed with tuberculosis"},{"date":"1924","event":"Dies near Vienna"},{"date":"1925","event":"The Trial published by Max Brod"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Franz Kafka","relatedWorks":["the-metamorphosis","the-trial"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-metamorphosis","url":"/works/the-metamorphosis/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-trial","url":"/works/the-trial/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"Though he did not like exercise as a child, he grew up to be a keen rider, swimmer and rower.","source":{"title":"Franz Kafka (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Kafka"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Born into a Jewish family; his personal beliefs are debated.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Kafka","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[{"series":"Very Short Introductions","title":"Kafka: A Very Short Introduction","author":"Ritchie Robertson","publisher":"Oxford University Press","year":2004,"isbn13":"9780192804556","url":"https://bookshop.org/a/130650/9780192804556"}],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"anthony-kaldellis","name":"Anthony Kaldellis","url":"/great-lives/anthony-kaldellis/","dates":"born 1971","born":1971,"died":null,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Greek-American historian of Byzantium, author of The New Roman Empire: A History of Byzantium.","bio":"Anthony Kaldellis is a historian of the Byzantine Empire, which he and many recent scholars describe as the continuation of the Roman Empire in the east. He was born in Athens, Greece, in 1971 and studied history and philosophy at the University of Michigan, receiving his doctorate in history there in 2001. He taught classics at Ohio State University for about two decades, serving as chair of the department, and in 2022 joined the department of classics at the University of Chicago. His research covers Greek historical writing, the reception of Plato, and Byzantine politics, identity and culture. His books include Romanland, which argues that the Byzantines saw themselves as Romans, Streams of Gold, Rivers of Blood, and The New Roman Empire (2023), a one-volume history of Byzantium from the founding of Constantinople to its fall in 1453.","keyDates":[{"date":"1971","event":"Born in Athens"},{"date":"2001","event":"Doctorate from the University of Michigan"},{"date":"2022","event":"Joins the University of Chicago"},{"date":"2023","event":"The New Roman Empire published"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Anthony Kaldellis","relatedWorks":["kaldellis-the-new-roman-empire"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"kaldellis-the-new-roman-empire","url":"/works/kaldellis-the-new-roman-empire/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Kaldellis","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"immanuel-kant","name":"Immanuel Kant","url":"/great-lives/immanuel-kant/","dates":"1724–1804","born":1724,"died":1804,"era":"18th-century","categories":["philosophers"],"knownFor":"German philosopher of the Critique of Pure Reason and the categorical imperative.","bio":"Immanuel Kant was born in Königsberg, in East Prussia, the son of a harness maker, and was raised in a devout Pietist Lutheran household. He studied at the university there and worked for years as a private tutor and lecturer before becoming professor of logic and metaphysics in 1770. He never traveled far from his home city, and his daily walks were said to be so regular that neighbors set their clocks by them. Reading David Hume, he said, woke him from his dogmatic slumber. In the Critique of Pure Reason, published in 1781, he argued that the mind does not simply receive the world but shapes experience through built-in forms such as space, time and cause, and that reason cannot prove things beyond all possible experience. In his moral philosophy he taught the categorical imperative: act only on a rule you could will to be a law for everyone, and treat people always as ends, never merely as means. He also wrote on science, religion, beauty, history and lasting peace among nations. He died in Königsberg in 1804.","keyDates":[{"date":"1724","event":"Born in Königsberg"},{"date":"1770","event":"Becomes professor"},{"date":"1781","event":"Critique of Pure Reason"},{"date":"1785","event":"Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals"},{"date":"1795","event":"Perpetual Peace"},{"date":"1804","event":"Dies in Königsberg"}],"quotes":[{"text":"Act only on that maxim whereby thou canst at the same time will that it should become a universal law","work":"groundwork-of-the-metaphysics-of-morals","location":"Second Section","verified":true},{"text":"Thoughts without content are void; intuitions without conceptions, blind","work":"critique-of-pure-reason","location":"Transcendental Logic, Introduction, §I (A 51 / B 75)","verified":true}],"author":"Immanuel Kant","relatedWorks":["groundwork-of-the-metaphysics-of-morals","kant-perpetual-peace","critique-of-pure-reason","kant-critique-of-practical-reason","kant-metaphysical-elements-of-ethics","kant-science-of-right","kant-critique-of-judgement"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"groundwork-of-the-metaphysics-of-morals","url":"/works/groundwork-of-the-metaphysics-of-morals/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"kant-perpetual-peace","url":"/works/kant-perpetual-peace/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"critique-of-pure-reason","url":"/works/critique-of-pure-reason/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"kant-critique-of-practical-reason","url":"/works/kant-critique-of-practical-reason/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"kant-metaphysical-elements-of-ethics","url":"/works/kant-metaphysical-elements-of-ethics/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"kant-science-of-right","url":"/works/kant-science-of-right/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"kant-critique-of-judgement","url":"/works/kant-critique-of-judgement/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Raised in Pietism, an evangelical Lutheran movement.","source":"https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant/","sourceName":"Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy","documented":true},"furtherReading":[{"series":"Very Short Introductions","title":"Kant: A Very Short Introduction","author":"Roger Scruton","publisher":"Oxford University Press","year":2001,"isbn13":"9780192801999","url":"https://bookshop.org/a/130650/9780192801999"}],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"andreas-karlstadt","name":"Andreas Karlstadt","url":"/great-lives/andreas-karlstadt/","dates":"1486–1541","born":1486,"died":1541,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["theologians-church-fathers","saints-reformers"],"knownFor":"German theologian at Wittenberg, an early colleague and later critic of Martin Luther in the Reformation.","bio":"Andreas Bodenstein was born in 1486 in Karlstadt, in Franconia, Germany, and is known by the name of his hometown. He studied at Erfurt and Cologne and became a professor at the new University of Wittenberg, where in 1512 he presided at the ceremony at which Martin Luther received his doctorate in theology. Karlstadt became one of Luther's earliest supporters, and in 1519 he debated the Catholic theologian Johann Eck at the Leipzig Disputation, with Luther joining later. While Luther was hidden at the Wartburg castle in 1521–1522, Karlstadt led rapid changes in Wittenberg, celebrating communion in plain clothes and in German and supporting the removal of images from churches. Luther returned and opposed the pace of these reforms, and the two men became rivals, disagreeing especially about the Lord's Supper. Karlstadt was expelled from Saxony in 1524 and later moved among Reformed communities in Switzerland. He became a professor at Basel, where he died of plague in 1541.","keyDates":[{"date":"1486","event":"Born in Karlstadt, Franconia"},{"date":"1512","event":"Confers Luther's doctorate at Wittenberg"},{"date":"1519","event":"Debates Johann Eck at Leipzig"},{"date":"1521–1522","event":"Leads reforms in Wittenberg"},{"date":"1524","event":"Expelled from Saxony"},{"date":"1541","event":"Dies in Basel"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Martin Luther, Johann Eck, and Andreas Karlstadt","relatedWorks":["leipzig-disputation"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"leipzig-disputation","url":"/works/leipzig-disputation/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"German theologian and early supporter of Martin Luther who later pressed for more extensive reform.","source":"https://www.britannica.com/biography/Andreas-Rudolf-Bodenstein-von-Carlstadt","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"kautilya","name":"Kautilya (Chanakya)","url":"/great-lives/kautilya/","dates":"4th century BC (traditional)","born":-375,"died":-283,"era":"ancient","categories":["philosophers","statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"Ancient Indian adviser traditionally named as the author of the Arthashastra, a treatise on statecraft.","bio":"Kautilya, also called Chanakya and Vishnugupta, is remembered in Indian tradition as a Brahmin scholar who helped Chandragupta Maurya overthrow the Nanda dynasty and found the Maurya Empire in the fourth century BC. There is no documented historical information about his life; the stories about him come from later legendary accounts, preserved in Buddhist, Jain and Sanskrit sources written centuries afterward, including the Sanskrit play Mudrarakshasa. In all of these versions, Chanakya is insulted by the Nanda king, vows to destroy him, and places Chandragupta on the throne; according to the legends, he then served as chief adviser to Chandragupta and to his son Bindusara. Tradition identifies him as the author of the Arthashastra, a long Sanskrit treatise on government, economics, law, diplomacy and war, which advises a king on how to gain and keep power and how to keep his people prosperous. Modern scholars think the Arthashastra was probably composed by several authors in the early centuries AD, and that its link to Chanakya was added later to give it prestige.","keyDates":[{"date":"4th century BC","event":"Traditional lifetime, as adviser to Chandragupta Maurya"},{"date":"Early centuries AD","event":"Arthashastra probably composed in its present form"},{"date":"1905","event":"Arthashastra manuscript rediscovered"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Kautilya","relatedWorks":["the-arthashastra"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-arthashastra","url":"/works/the-arthashastra/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented; accounts of his life are mostly legendary.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chanakya","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["Kautilya/Chanakya is known only from legendary accounts; the birth and death years given by Wikidata (c. 375–283 BC) are traditional, and modern scholarship doubts that he wrote the Arthashastra as we have it."]},{"slug":"yasunari-kawabata","name":"Yasunari Kawabata","url":"/great-lives/yasunari-kawabata/","dates":"1899–1972","born":1899,"died":1972,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Japanese novelist of Snow Country and Thousand Cranes, the first Japanese author to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.","bio":"Yasunari Kawabata was born in Osaka, Japan, in 1899. By the age of four he had lost both parents, and he was raised by his grandparents; his grandmother died when he was seven and his grandfather when he was fifteen. In 1917 he moved to Tokyo, where he entered the First Higher School and then studied literature at Tokyo University. While still a student he helped revive a university literary magazine and began publishing stories. With the writer Riichi Yokomitsu he led a modernist group called the Shinkankakuha, which experimented with new ways of writing influenced by European art movements. His early works include the novella The Dancing Girl of Izu. His most famous novel, Snow Country, about a love affair at a hot-spring resort in the snowy mountains, appeared in parts from 1935. After the Second World War he wrote Thousand Cranes, The Sound of the Mountain and The Old Capital. In 1968 he became the first Japanese writer to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature. He died in 1972.","keyDates":[{"date":"1899","event":"Born in Osaka"},{"date":"1917","event":"Moves to Tokyo to study"},{"date":"1935","event":"Snow Country begins to appear"},{"date":"1968","event":"Nobel Prize in Literature"},{"date":"1972","event":"Dies"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Yasunari Kawabata","relatedWorks":["kawabata-snow-country"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"kawabata-snow-country","url":"/works/kawabata-snow-country/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented; his Nobel lecture focused on Zen Buddhism.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasunari_Kawabata","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"john-keats","name":"John Keats","url":"/great-lives/john-keats/","dates":"1795–1821","born":1795,"died":1821,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"English Romantic poet, author of the great odes of 1819, who died at 25.","bio":"John Keats was born in London in 1795, the eldest son of a man who managed the stables of a London inn. His father died after a fall from a horse when John was eight, and his mother died of tuberculosis when he was fourteen. He trained as an apothecary and surgeon at Guy's Hospital and qualified in 1816, but he decided to devote himself to poetry. The writer Leigh Hunt encouraged him and published his early sonnets, including 'On First Looking into Chapman's Homer'. His long poem Endymion (1818) was harshly reviewed. In 1818 he nursed his younger brother Tom, who died of tuberculosis, and he fell in love with Fanny Brawne. In 1819 he wrote most of the poems for which he is best known, including 'Ode to a Nightingale', 'Ode on a Grecian Urn' and 'To Autumn'. In 1820 he too developed tuberculosis. He traveled to Italy for his health and died in Rome in 1821, aged 25. He asked that his gravestone bear the words 'Here lies one whose name was writ in water.'","keyDates":[{"date":"1795","event":"Born in London"},{"date":"1816","event":"Qualifies as an apothecary"},{"date":"1818","event":"Endymion published"},{"date":"1819","event":"Writes his great odes"},{"date":"1820","event":"Falls ill with tuberculosis"},{"date":"1821","event":"Dies in Rome"}],"quotes":[],"author":"John Keats","relatedWorks":["ode-on-a-grecian-urn"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"ode-on-a-grecian-urn","url":"/works/ode-on-a-grecian-urn/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Keats","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"helen-keller","name":"Helen Keller","url":"/great-lives/helen-keller/","dates":"1880–1968","born":1880,"died":1968,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets","saints-reformers"],"knownFor":"American author and activist who lost her sight and hearing as a baby and, with her teacher Anne Sullivan, learned to read, write and speak.","bio":"Helen Keller was born in 1880 in Tuscumbia, Alabama. When she was nineteen months old an illness left her deaf and blind. As a young child she could communicate only with simple signs she invented and was often frustrated. In 1887 the Perkins Institution for the Blind sent a young teacher, Anne Sullivan, to work with her. Sullivan spelled words into Helen's hand, and the breakthrough came at a water pump, when Helen understood that the letters spelled into one hand meant the water flowing over the other. She learned to read braille, to write and eventually to speak. She attended the Perkins Institution and other schools and in 1904 graduated from Radcliffe College, the first deafblind person to earn a bachelor's degree. While a student she wrote The Story of My Life (1903). She spent her life writing, lecturing around the world and campaigning for people with disabilities, especially for the American Foundation for the Blind, and she supported causes such as women's suffrage. She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964 and died in Connecticut in 1968.","keyDates":[{"date":"1880","event":"Born in Tuscumbia, Alabama"},{"date":"1882","event":"Loses her sight and hearing"},{"date":"1887","event":"Anne Sullivan becomes her teacher"},{"date":"1903","event":"The Story of My Life published"},{"date":"1904","event":"Graduates from Radcliffe College"},{"date":"1964","event":"Presidential Medal of Freedom"},{"date":"1968","event":"Dies in Connecticut"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Helen Keller","relatedWorks":["the-story-of-my-life"],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"library","work":"the-story-of-my-life","url":"/works/the-story-of-my-life/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"Her first Akita, Kamikaze-Go, was the first Akita dog in America. Her next, Kenzan-Go, she nicknamed Go-Go; on his first night he slept at the foot of her bed.","source":{"title":"Helen Keller (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Keller"}},{"text":"She travelled to more than 40 countries with her teacher, Anne Sullivan.","source":{"title":"Helen Keller (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Keller"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A Christian who followed the teachings of Emanuel Swedenborg (the New Church); she called herself a Christian socialist.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Keller","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"hugh-kennedy","name":"Hugh Kennedy","url":"/great-lives/hugh-kennedy/","dates":"born 1947","born":1947,"died":null,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"British historian of the early Islamic Middle East, author of The Great Arab Conquests and When Baghdad Ruled the Muslim World.","bio":"Hugh Kennedy is a British historian who specializes in the history of the early Islamic Middle East, Muslim Spain and the Crusades. He was born in 1947 in Hythe, Kent, England. Before university he spent a year studying Arabic at the Middle East Centre for Arab Studies at Shemlan in Lebanon. He then studied Arabic, Persian and history at Pembroke College, Cambridge, graduating in 1969, and completed a doctorate at Cambridge. He taught for many years at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, where he was professor of Middle Eastern history from 1997 to 2007, and he then became professor of Arabic at SOAS, University of London. His books include The Prophet and the Age of the Caliphates, a history of the early Islamic world; When Baghdad Ruled the Muslim World (2004), about the Abbasid caliphs and the court of Harun al-Rashid; The Great Arab Conquests (2007), about how the armies of Islam spread from Arabia across the Middle East and North Africa; and Crusader Castles. He has also written for general readers on the caliphate.","keyDates":[{"date":"1947","event":"Born in Hythe, Kent"},{"date":"1969","event":"Graduates from Cambridge"},{"date":"1997–2007","event":"Professor at St Andrews"},{"date":"2004","event":"When Baghdad Ruled the Muslim World"},{"date":"2007","event":"The Great Arab Conquests; professor at SOAS"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Hugh Kennedy","relatedWorks":["kennedy-the-great-arab-conquests","kennedy-when-baghdad-ruled-the-muslim-world"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"kennedy-the-great-arab-conquests","url":"/works/kennedy-the-great-arab-conquests/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"kennedy-when-baghdad-ruled-the-muslim-world","url":"/works/kennedy-when-baghdad-ruled-the-muslim-world/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_N._Kennedy","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"john-f-kennedy","name":"John F. Kennedy","url":"/great-lives/john-f-kennedy/","dates":"1917–1963","born":1917,"died":1963,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"Thirty-fifth president of the United States, assassinated in Dallas in 1963.","bio":"John Fitzgerald Kennedy was born in 1917 in Brookline, Massachusetts, the second of nine children of Joseph P. Kennedy, a businessman and later ambassador to Britain, and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy. He graduated from Harvard in 1940. In the Second World War he commanded a patrol torpedo boat, PT-109, in the Pacific; when it was sunk by a Japanese destroyer in 1943 he led the survivors to safety. He was elected to the House of Representatives in 1946 and to the Senate in 1952, and in 1953 married Jacqueline Bouvier. His book Profiles in Courage won a Pulitzer Prize. In 1960 he defeated Richard Nixon to become, at 43, the youngest person elected president and the first Roman Catholic. His inaugural address in 1961 asked Americans to 'ask what you can do for your country'. His presidency included the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, the founding of the Peace Corps, and the goal of landing a man on the Moon. He was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963.","keyDates":[{"date":"1917","event":"Born in Brookline, Massachusetts"},{"date":"1943","event":"PT-109 sunk in the Pacific"},{"date":"1952","event":"Elected to the Senate"},{"date":"1960","event":"Elected president"},{"date":"1961","event":"Inaugural address"},{"date":"1962","event":"Cuban Missile Crisis"},{"date":"1963","event":"Assassinated in Dallas"}],"quotes":[],"author":"John F. Kennedy","relatedWorks":["kennedy-inaugural-address"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"kennedy-inaugural-address","url":"/works/kennedy-inaugural-address/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"He was a Boy Scout as a child.","source":{"title":"John F. Kennedy (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_F._Kennedy"}}],"records":[{"text":"He was the youngest person ever elected U.S. president, at 43, and the first Roman Catholic president.","source":{"title":"John F. Kennedy (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_F._Kennedy"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A Roman Catholic, the first Catholic elected U.S. president.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_F._Kennedy","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"johannes-kepler","name":"Johannes Kepler","url":"/great-lives/johannes-kepler/","dates":"1571–1630","born":1571,"died":1630,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["scientists-mathematicians"],"knownFor":"German astronomer who discovered that planets move in ellipses.","bio":"Johannes Kepler was born in Weil der Stadt, Germany, to a poor family. Smallpox in childhood left him with weak eyesight. He studied theology at Tübingen, intending to become a Lutheran minister, but a teacher there introduced him to the idea of Copernicus that the planets circle the Sun, and he became a mathematics teacher in Graz. In 1600 he went to Prague to work with the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe, who had made the most accurate observations of the planets ever recorded. After Tycho died in 1601, Kepler became imperial mathematician and spent years working on the orbit of Mars. He found that the planets move in ellipses, not perfect circles, and move faster when closer to the Sun, published in his New Astronomy in 1609; a third law, relating a planet's period to its distance, followed in 1619. He believed he was thinking God's thoughts after him. His life was hard: his first wife and several children died, and he spent years defending his mother against a charge of witchcraft. He died in 1630.","keyDates":[{"date":"1571","event":"Born in Weil der Stadt"},{"date":"1600","event":"Joins Tycho Brahe in Prague"},{"date":"1609","event":"Publishes New Astronomy with his first two laws"},{"date":"1619","event":"Publishes Harmony of the World with his third law"},{"date":"1630","event":"Dies at Regensburg"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Johannes Kepler","relatedWorks":["kepler-new-astronomy-and-harmony-of-the-world","copernicus-on-the-revolutions","kepler-epitome-of-copernican-astronomy"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"kepler-new-astronomy-and-harmony-of-the-world","url":"/works/kepler-new-astronomy-and-harmony-of-the-world/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"kepler-epitome-of-copernican-astronomy","url":"/works/kepler-epitome-of-copernican-astronomy/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[{"text":"Neuroscientists generally consider him the first to recognise that the eye projects images onto the retina upside down and reversed.","source":{"title":"Johannes Kepler (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Kepler"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Born to Lutheran parents and trained at a Lutheran seminary; he remained a Lutheran.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Kepler","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"jack-kerouac","name":"Jack Kerouac","url":"/great-lives/jack-kerouac/","dates":"1922–1969","born":1922,"died":1969,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American writer of the Beat Generation, author of On the Road.","bio":"Jack Kerouac was born in 1922 in Lowell, Massachusetts, to French-Canadian parents, and spoke French at home before learning English at school. He was a talented football player and won a scholarship to Columbia University in New York, but he left after a leg injury and disagreements with his coach. During the Second World War he served briefly in the merchant marine and the navy. In New York he became friends with Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs and Neal Cassady, writers and wanderers who became known as the Beat Generation. Between 1947 and 1950 he made several journeys across the United States and to Mexico, often by hitchhiking, and he wrote about them in On the Road, famously typing a draft on a long continuous roll of paper in 1951. Published in 1957, the novel follows Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty and made Kerouac famous. His other books include The Dharma Bums, which reflects his interest in Buddhism, and Big Sur. Uncomfortable with fame, he struggled with alcohol and died in St. Petersburg, Florida, in 1969.","keyDates":[{"date":"1922","event":"Born in Lowell, Massachusetts"},{"date":"1947","event":"First cross-country journey"},{"date":"1951","event":"Types the scroll draft of On the Road"},{"date":"1957","event":"On the Road published"},{"date":"1958","event":"The Dharma Bums published"},{"date":"1969","event":"Dies in St. Petersburg, Florida"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Jack Kerouac","relatedWorks":["on-the-road"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"on-the-road","url":"/works/on-the-road/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"His friends jokingly called him 'The Wizard of Ozone Park', after Thomas Edison's nickname and the film The Wizard of Oz.","source":{"title":"Jack Kerouac (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Kerouac"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Raised by a devout Catholic mother; he was also deeply interested in Buddhism.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Kerouac","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"john-maynard-keynes","name":"John Maynard Keynes","url":"/great-lives/john-maynard-keynes/","dates":"1883–1946","born":1883,"died":1946,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["philosophers","statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"English economist whose General Theory changed how governments respond to recessions.","bio":"John Maynard Keynes was born in Cambridge, England, in 1883, the son of an economist and a mother who later became the city's mayor. He studied mathematics at King's College, Cambridge, where he became a fellow, and he worked at the India Office and later the Treasury. As a Treasury official at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, he opposed the heavy reparations demanded of Germany and resigned; his book The Economic Consequences of the Peace made him famous. He was part of the Bloomsbury Group of writers and artists, married the Russian ballerina Lydia Lopokova, and was a successful investor. In The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936), written during the Great Depression, he argued that economies can remain stuck with high unemployment and that government spending can raise demand. His ideas, called Keynesian economics, shaped the policies of many governments for decades. During the Second World War he advised the British Treasury and helped design the Bretton Woods system of international finance. He died in Sussex in 1946.","keyDates":[{"date":"1883","event":"Born in Cambridge"},{"date":"1919","event":"The Economic Consequences of the Peace"},{"date":"1925","event":"Marries Lydia Lopokova"},{"date":"1936","event":"The General Theory published"},{"date":"1944","event":"Bretton Woods conference"},{"date":"1946","event":"Dies in Sussex"}],"quotes":[{"text":"The power to become habituated to his surroundings is a marked characteristic of mankind.","work":"keynes-the-economic-consequences-of-the-peace","location":"Chapter I: Introductory","verified":true},{"text":"There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency.","work":"keynes-the-economic-consequences-of-the-peace","location":"Chapter VI: Europe After the Treaty","verified":true}],"author":"John Maynard Keynes","relatedWorks":["keynes-the-economic-consequences-of-the-peace","keynes-the-general-theory"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"keynes-the-economic-consequences-of-the-peace","url":"/works/keynes-the-economic-consequences-of-the-peace/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"keynes-the-general-theory","url":"/works/keynes-the-general-theory/"}],"majorWorks":[{"title":"Indian Currency and Finance","year":"1913","note":"His first book, drawn from his work at the India Office","work":null,"url":null},{"title":"The Economic Consequences of the Peace","year":"1919","note":null,"work":"keynes-the-economic-consequences-of-the-peace","url":"/works/keynes-the-economic-consequences-of-the-peace/"},{"title":"A Treatise on Probability","year":"1921","note":"His work on the logic of probability","work":null,"url":null},{"title":"A Tract on Monetary Reform","year":"1923","note":"Argues for stable prices over the prewar gold standard","work":null,"url":null},{"title":"The End of Laissez-Faire","year":"1926","note":"Essay on the limits of the free market","work":null,"url":null},{"title":"A Treatise on Money","year":"1930","note":"Two-volume study of money and the trade cycle","work":null,"url":null},{"title":"The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money","year":"1936","note":null,"work":"keynes-the-general-theory","url":"/works/keynes-the-general-theory/"},{"title":"How to Pay for the War","year":"1940","note":"Proposed compulsory saving to finance the Second World War","work":null,"url":null}],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"An agnostic all his life, according to Cambridge University.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Maynard_Keynes","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[{"series":"Very Short Introductions","title":"Keynes: A Very Short Introduction","author":"Robert Skidelsky","publisher":"Oxford University Press","year":2010,"isbn13":"9780199591640","url":"https://bookshop.org/a/130650/9780199591640"}],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"ibn-khaldun","name":"Ibn Khaldun","url":"/great-lives/ibn-khaldun/","dates":"1332–1406","born":1332,"died":1406,"era":"medieval","categories":["philosophers","statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"North African historian and scholar whose Muqaddimah is a pioneering study of history, society and economics.","bio":"Ibn Khaldun was born in Tunis in 1332 into an Arab family that had come from Seville in Muslim Spain. He received a thorough education in the Quran, law, philosophy and poetry, but his parents and many teachers died in the Black Death of 1348–1349. He spent much of his life in the service of the rulers of North Africa and Granada, holding posts as secretary, minister and diplomat, and was sometimes imprisoned when political fortunes changed. Around 1375 he withdrew for several years to a castle at Qalat Ibn Salama in Algeria, where he wrote the Muqaddimah, the introduction to his universal history. It analyzes why dynasties rise and fall, emphasizing asabiyya, the group solidarity that he argued gives desert peoples the strength to conquer cities, and which weakens over generations of settled luxury. It also discusses economics, labor, taxation and the methods of historians. In 1382 he moved to Cairo, where he taught and served several times as a chief judge. In 1401 he met the conqueror Timur outside Damascus. He died in Cairo in 1406.","keyDates":[{"date":"1332","event":"Born in Tunis"},{"date":"1348–1349","event":"Loses his parents to the Black Death"},{"date":"1377","event":"Completes the first draft of the Muqaddimah"},{"date":"1382","event":"Moves to Cairo"},{"date":"1401","event":"Meets Timur near Damascus"},{"date":"1406","event":"Dies in Cairo"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Ibn Khaldun","relatedWorks":["ibn-khaldun-muqaddimah"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"ibn-khaldun-muqaddimah","url":"/works/ibn-khaldun-muqaddimah/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Sunni Muslim historian and scholar.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_Khaldun","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"al-khwarizmi","name":"Al-Khwarizmi","url":"/great-lives/al-khwarizmi/","dates":"c. 780–850","born":780,"died":850,"era":"medieval","categories":["scientists-mathematicians"],"knownFor":"Persian mathematician in Baghdad whose books gave us the words algebra and algorithm.","bio":"Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi was a Persian scholar whose name suggests his family came from Khwarazm, a region south of the Aral Sea in Central Asia. He worked in Baghdad at the House of Wisdom, a center of learning and translation supported by the Abbasid caliph al-Mamun, where scholars translated Greek, Persian and Indian works into Arabic. Around 820 he wrote The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing, which explained systematic ways to solve linear and quadratic equations, using practical examples from inheritance, trade and land measurement. The Arabic word al-jabr in its title, meaning restoring or completion, became our word algebra. Another book explained the Hindu decimal number system, with nine digits and zero. When it was translated into Latin, his name was written Algoritmi, giving us the word algorithm, and it helped bring Arabic numerals to Europe. He also prepared astronomical tables and revised Ptolemy's geography, listing the coordinates of cities and places. He died around 850.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 780","event":"Born, probably in Khwarazm"},{"date":"c. 820","event":"Writes his book on algebra"},{"date":"c. 825","event":"Book on Hindu numerals"},{"date":"12th century","event":"His works translated into Latin"},{"date":"c. 850","event":"Dies"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["kennedy-when-baghdad-ruled-the-muslim-world","ptolemy-almagest"],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"A crater on the far side of the Moon is named after him.","source":{"title":"Al-Khwarizmi (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Khwarizmi"}}],"records":[{"text":"He was the first known writer to treat algebra as a subject of its own, which is why he is often called the father of algebra.","source":{"title":"Al-Khwarizmi (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Khwarizmi"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A Muslim mathematician and astronomer.","source":"https://www.britannica.com/biography/al-Khwarizmi","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["Dates are approximate."]},{"slug":"soren-kierkegaard","name":"Søren Kierkegaard","url":"/great-lives/soren-kierkegaard/","dates":"1813–1855","born":1813,"died":1855,"era":"19th-century","categories":["philosophers","theologians-church-fathers"],"knownFor":"Danish Christian philosopher who wrote on faith, choice and the individual.","bio":"Søren Kierkegaard was born in Copenhagen, the youngest of seven children of a wealthy, deeply religious and melancholy wool merchant. He studied theology at the University of Copenhagen. In 1840 he became engaged to Regine Olsen but broke off the engagement a year later, an event he wrote about for the rest of his life. Living on his inheritance, he wrote a remarkable stream of books in a few years, many under invented pen names, so that readers would have to think for themselves rather than simply follow an author. In Either/Or, Fear and Trembling, The Sickness unto Death and other works he described the stages of life, the anxiety of choice, and faith as a passionate personal commitment, illustrated by Abraham's willingness to sacrifice Isaac. He stressed that truth must be lived by the individual before God, not merely understood. He was mocked by a satirical newspaper, The Corsair. In his last years he sharply attacked the Danish state church for making Christianity comfortable and conventional. He collapsed in the street and died in 1855, at forty-two.","keyDates":[{"date":"1813","event":"Born in Copenhagen"},{"date":"1841","event":"Breaks his engagement to Regine Olsen"},{"date":"1843","event":"Either/Or and Fear and Trembling"},{"date":"1849","event":"The Sickness unto Death"},{"date":"1855","event":"Dies in Copenhagen"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Soren Kierkegaard","relatedWorks":["fear-and-trembling","the-sickness-unto-death","kierkegaard-either-or"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"fear-and-trembling","url":"/works/fear-and-trembling/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-sickness-unto-death","url":"/works/the-sickness-unto-death/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"kierkegaard-either-or","url":"/works/kierkegaard-either-or/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"He loved walking the crooked streets of Copenhagen, where carriages rarely went.","source":{"title":"Søren Kierkegaard (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%B8ren_Kierkegaard"}},{"text":"The philosopher William James's favourite line from him was 'We live forwards but we understand backwards.'","source":{"title":"Søren Kierkegaard (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%B8ren_Kierkegaard"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Danish Christian philosopher in the Lutheran tradition.","source":"https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kierkegaard/","sourceName":"Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy","documented":true},"furtherReading":[{"series":"Very Short Introductions","title":"Kierkegaard: A Very Short Introduction","author":"Patrick Gardiner","publisher":"Oxford University Press","year":2002,"isbn13":"9780192802569","url":"https://bookshop.org/a/130650/9780192802569"}],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"martin-luther-king-jr","name":"Martin Luther King Jr.","url":"/great-lives/martin-luther-king-jr/","dates":"1929–1968","born":1929,"died":1968,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["saints-reformers","statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"Baptist minister and leader of the civil rights movement, who used nonviolent protest.","bio":"Martin Luther King Jr. was born in Atlanta, Georgia, the son and grandson of Baptist preachers. He entered college at fifteen, studied theology, and earned a doctorate from Boston University. In 1954 he became pastor of a church in Montgomery, Alabama. The next year, after Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her bus seat, he led a year-long bus boycott that ended with segregated buses being ruled unconstitutional. Drawing on the Bible and on Gandhi's example, King taught that unjust laws should be resisted openly and without violence, accepting the penalty. He helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, was jailed many times, and wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail in 1963. That August he gave his I Have a Dream speech at the March on Washington. His work helped bring the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and in 1964 he received the Nobel Peace Prize. On 4 April 1968 he was shot and killed in Memphis, Tennessee.","keyDates":[{"date":"1929","event":"Born in Atlanta"},{"date":"1955–56","event":"Leads the Montgomery bus boycott"},{"date":"1963","event":"Letter from Birmingham Jail; I Have a Dream"},{"date":"1964","event":"Nobel Peace Prize"},{"date":"1968","event":"Assassinated in Memphis"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Martin Luther King Jr.","relatedWorks":["i-have-a-dream","sermons-and-letter-from-birmingham-jail"],"reading":[{"band":"K-2","kind":"book","title":"I am Martin Luther King, Jr.","author":"Brad Meltzer","isbn13":"9780525428527","publisher":"Dial Books","year":2016,"format":"hardcover"},{"band":"3-5","kind":"book","title":"Who Was Martin Luther King, Jr.?","author":"Bonnie Bader","isbn13":"9780448447230","publisher":"Grosset & Dunlap","year":2007,"format":"paperback"},{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"i-have-a-dream","url":"/works/i-have-a-dream/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"sermons-and-letter-from-birmingham-jail","url":"/works/sermons-and-letter-from-birmingham-jail/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"book","title":"Parting the Waters","author":"Taylor Branch","isbn13":"9781416558682","publisher":"Simon & Schuster","year":2007,"format":""}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"From the age of six he sang hymns at church events while his mother played the piano.","source":{"title":"Martin Luther King Jr. (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King_Jr."}},{"text":"He also took violin and piano lessons.","source":{"title":"Martin Luther King Jr. (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King_Jr."}}],"records":[{"text":"At 13 he became the youngest assistant manager of a newspaper delivery station for the Atlanta Journal.","source":{"title":"Martin Luther King Jr. (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King_Jr."}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A Baptist minister, the son and grandson of Baptist pastors.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King_Jr.","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"charles-kingsley","name":"Charles Kingsley","url":"/great-lives/charles-kingsley/","dates":"1819–1875","born":1819,"died":1875,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"English clergyman, novelist and historian, author of The Water-Babies and The Heroes.","bio":"Charles Kingsley was born in 1819 in Holne, Devon, the son of a clergyman, and spent part of his boyhood in the Fens and in Clovelly. He studied at King's College London and Magdalene College, Cambridge, and in 1844 became rector of Eversley in Hampshire, where he served for the rest of his life. He supported the Christian socialist movement, which sought to improve the lives of working people, and wrote novels about social conditions, such as Alton Locke. His historical novels include Hypatia and Westward Ho!, an adventure set in the Elizabethan era. For his children he wrote The Heroes (1856), retelling the Greek myths of Perseus, Theseus and the Argonauts, and The Water-Babies (1863), a fantasy about a young chimney sweep. Kingsley was an amateur naturalist who welcomed Darwin's theory of evolution. He was a chaplain to Queen Victoria, professor of modern history at Cambridge and a canon of Westminster. He died at Eversley in 1875.","keyDates":[{"date":"1819","event":"Born in Holne, Devon"},{"date":"1844","event":"Becomes rector of Eversley"},{"date":"1855","event":"Westward Ho! published"},{"date":"1856","event":"The Heroes published"},{"date":"1863","event":"The Water-Babies published"},{"date":"1875","event":"Dies at Eversley"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Charles Kingsley","relatedWorks":["kingsley-the-heroes"],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"library","work":"kingsley-the-heroes","url":"/works/kingsley-the-heroes/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[{"text":"He was one of the first to welcome Charles Darwin's book On the Origin of Species.","source":{"title":"Charles Kingsley (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Kingsley"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A British clergyman, ordained in 1842, who served as parish priest at Eversley.","source":"https://www.britannica.com/biography/Charles-Kingsley","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"rudyard-kipling","name":"Rudyard Kipling","url":"/great-lives/rudyard-kipling/","dates":"1865–1936","born":1865,"died":1936,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"English writer born in India, author of The Jungle Book, Just So Stories, Kim and the poem If—, and Nobel laureate.","bio":"Rudyard Kipling was born in 1865 in Bombay, India, where his father, John Lockwood Kipling, taught at an art school. At five he and his younger sister were sent to England to board with a family in Southsea, where he was unhappy, and he later attended the United Services College in Devon. At sixteen he returned to India to work as a journalist in Lahore, and his stories of Anglo-Indian life, such as Plain Tales from the Hills (1888), made him famous. In 1892 he married Caroline Balestier, an American, and they lived for four years in Vermont, where he wrote The Jungle Book (1894), about Mowgli, a boy raised by wolves. Back in England, he wrote Captains Courageous, Kim (1901), about an orphan boy in India, and Just So Stories (1902), gathered after his daughter Josephine died of pneumonia in 1899. His poems, including 'If—', were very popular. In 1907 he became the first English-language writer to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature. His only son, John, was killed at the Battle of Loos in 1915. Kipling died in London in 1936.","keyDates":[{"date":"1865","event":"Born in Bombay, India"},{"date":"1882","event":"Returns to India as a journalist"},{"date":"1892","event":"Marries Caroline Balestier"},{"date":"1894","event":"The Jungle Book published"},{"date":"1901","event":"Kim published"},{"date":"1902","event":"Just So Stories published"},{"date":"1907","event":"Nobel Prize in Literature"},{"date":"1936","event":"Dies in London"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Rudyard Kipling","relatedWorks":["if-kipling","just-so-stories","the-jungle-book","captains-courageous","kim"],"reading":[{"band":"K-2","kind":"library","work":"just-so-stories","url":"/works/just-so-stories/"},{"band":"3-5","kind":"library","work":"the-jungle-book","url":"/works/the-jungle-book/"},{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"if-kipling","url":"/works/if-kipling/"},{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"captains-courageous","url":"/works/captains-courageous/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"kim","url":"/works/kim/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudyard_Kipling","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"russell-kirk","name":"Russell Kirk","url":"/great-lives/russell-kirk/","dates":"1918–1994","born":1918,"died":1994,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["writers-poets","philosophers"],"knownFor":"American political theorist and author of The Conservative Mind (1953).","bio":"Russell Kirk was born in 1918 in Plymouth, Michigan, where his father was a railroad engineer. He studied history at Michigan State College and earned a master's degree at Duke University. During the Second World War he served in the United States armed forces. After the war he studied at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, where in 1953 he became the first American awarded its Doctor of Letters. His dissertation became The Conservative Mind (1953), a study of thinkers from Edmund Burke to T. S. Eliot that helped shape American conservatism after the war. He taught at Michigan State but resigned in 1953 and chose to write from his family's home in Mecosta, Michigan, known as Piety Hill. He wrote many books on history, politics and education, a long-running column, and ghost stories and other fiction. He also helped found the journal Modern Age. In 1963 he became a Catholic and married Annette Courtemanche; they had four daughters. He died at Piety Hill in 1994.","keyDates":[{"date":"1918","event":"Born in Plymouth, Michigan"},{"date":"1953","event":"The Conservative Mind published"},{"date":"1957","event":"Helps found Modern Age"},{"date":"1963","event":"Marries Annette Courtemanche"},{"date":"1994","event":"Dies in Mecosta, Michigan"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Russell Kirk","relatedWorks":["kirk-the-conservative-mind"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"kirk-the-conservative-mind","url":"/works/kirk-the-conservative-mind/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Raised in a culturally Protestant environment, he was drawn over time to Catholicism.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_Kirk","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"eric-knight","name":"Eric Knight","url":"/great-lives/eric-knight/","dates":"1897–1943","born":1897,"died":1943,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"English-born writer who created the collie Lassie in Lassie Come-Home.","bio":"Eric Knight was born in 1897 in Menston, in Yorkshire, England, the youngest of three sons in a Quaker family. His father, a wealthy diamond merchant, was killed during the Boer War when Eric was two, and his mother went to work as a governess in Saint Petersburg, Russia. The family settled in the United States in 1912. During the First World War Knight served as a signaller with the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, and both of his brothers were killed in the war. Afterward he worked as an art student, newspaper reporter and Hollywood screenwriter. He wrote novels about Yorkshire, and in 1938 he published a short story in The Saturday Evening Post about a loyal collie who makes a long journey home to the boy who loves her; he expanded it into the novel Lassie Come-Home (1940), which was made into a popular film in 1943. Knight became an American citizen in 1942. Serving as an officer in the United States Army during the Second World War, he was killed in a plane crash in Dutch Guiana (Suriname) in 1943.","keyDates":[{"date":"1897","event":"Born in Menston, Yorkshire"},{"date":"1912","event":"Family settles in the United States"},{"date":"1938","event":"Lassie story appears in The Saturday Evening Post"},{"date":"1940","event":"Lassie Come-Home published"},{"date":"1942","event":"Becomes an American citizen"},{"date":"1943","event":"Killed in a plane crash"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Eric Knight","relatedWorks":["lassie-come-home"],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"library","work":"lassie-come-home","url":"/works/lassie-come-home/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Born to Quaker parents; his own adult beliefs are not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Knight","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"john-knox","name":"John Knox","url":"/great-lives/john-knox/","dates":"c. 1514–1572","born":1514,"died":1572,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["saints-reformers","theologians-church-fathers"],"knownFor":"Scottish reformer who founded the Presbyterian Church of Scotland.","bio":"John Knox was born near Haddington, Scotland, and was ordained a Catholic priest. Influenced by the Protestant preacher George Wishart, who was burned for heresy in 1546, he joined the Protestants who held St. Andrews Castle after the murder of Cardinal Beaton. When French forces captured the castle in 1547, Knox spent nineteen months as a galley slave. When the Catholic Queen Mary I came to the English throne, he fled to the Continent, and in Geneva he studied with John Calvin, whose church he called the most perfect school of Christ. In 1558 he published a fierce pamphlet arguing that rule by women was against nature. He returned to Scotland in 1559, and his preaching helped spark a revolt; in 1560 the Scottish Parliament rejected the pope's authority and adopted a Reformed confession of faith that he helped write. As minister of St. Giles in Edinburgh, he clashed in famous interviews with the Catholic Mary, Queen of Scots. He helped shape the Presbyterian Church of Scotland and wrote a History of the Reformation in Scotland. He died in Edinburgh in 1572.","keyDates":[{"date":"1547","event":"Captured and made a galley slave"},{"date":"1554–1559","event":"Exile, much of it in Geneva"},{"date":"1559","event":"Returns to Scotland"},{"date":"1560","event":"Scottish Parliament adopts the Reformed faith"},{"date":"1572","event":"Dies in Edinburgh"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Trained for the Catholic priesthood but adopted the principles of the Reformers and became a leader of the Protestant Reformation in Scotland.","source":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dictionary_of_National_Biography%2C_1885-1900/Knox%2C_John_%281505-1572%29","sourceName":"Dictionary of National Biography (1885–1900) (via Wikisource)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"robert-koch","name":"Robert Koch","url":"/great-lives/robert-koch/","dates":"1843–1910","born":1843,"died":1910,"era":"19th-century","categories":["physicians-medicine","scientists-mathematicians"],"knownFor":"German doctor who identified the germs that cause anthrax, tuberculosis and cholera.","bio":"Robert Koch was born in Clausthal, Germany, the son of a mining official, one of thirteen children. He studied medicine at Göttingen and became a country doctor in Wollstein. His wife gave him a microscope for his birthday, and in a small laboratory in his home he studied anthrax, a disease that killed cattle and sheep. In 1876 he showed that a particular bacterium causes anthrax and traced its full life cycle, the first time a specific germ was proved to cause a specific disease. He developed ways to grow bacteria on solid gelatin and agar plates, to stain them, and to photograph them. In 1882 he announced that he had found the bacterium that causes tuberculosis, then one of the leading causes of death. In 1883, in Egypt and India, he identified the bacterium that causes cholera, and showed that it spreads through contaminated water. He set out rules, called Koch's postulates, for proving that a germ causes a disease. A remedy he announced for tuberculosis failed. He received the Nobel Prize in 1905 and died in 1910.","keyDates":[{"date":"1876","event":"Proves the cause of anthrax"},{"date":"1882","event":"Discovers the tuberculosis bacterium"},{"date":"1883","event":"Identifies the cholera bacterium"},{"date":"1891","event":"Heads the Institute for Infectious Diseases in Berlin"},{"date":"1905","event":"Nobel Prize"},{"date":"1910","event":"Dies in Baden-Baden"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["pasteur-and-lister-germ-theory-papers"],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"He taught himself to read and write before he started school.","source":{"title":"Robert Koch (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Koch"}}],"records":[{"text":"His method of growing bacteria on agar and glass plates, later developed into the Petri dish by his assistant Julius Petri, made him the first to grow bacteria in the laboratory.","source":{"title":"Robert Koch (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Koch"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Koch","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"arthur-koestler","name":"Arthur Koestler","url":"/great-lives/arthur-koestler/","dates":"1905–1983","born":1905,"died":1983,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Hungarian-born British writer and journalist, author of the novel Darkness at Noon.","bio":"Arthur Koestler was born in Budapest in 1905 into a Jewish family and grew up there and in Vienna, where he studied engineering. He went to Palestine in 1926, then worked as a newspaper correspondent in the Middle East, Paris and Berlin, and in 1931 joined the German Communist Party. During the Spanish Civil War he was captured by Franco's forces and held under sentence of death before being released in 1937 after a British campaign. He left the Communist Party in 1938, disillusioned by Stalin's purges and show trials. His novel Darkness at Noon (1940) tells of Rubashov, an old revolutionary imprisoned and interrogated by the party he served, and it became one of the most influential political novels of the century. After internment in France in 1940 he escaped to Britain, where he settled and became a British citizen. His later books ranged widely, including The Sleepwalkers on the history of astronomy. He died in London in 1983.","keyDates":[{"date":"1905","event":"Born in Budapest"},{"date":"1931","event":"Joins the Communist Party"},{"date":"1937","event":"Imprisoned in Spain and released"},{"date":"1938","event":"Leaves the Communist Party"},{"date":"1940","event":"Darkness at Noon published"},{"date":"1983","event":"Dies in London"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Arthur Koestler","relatedWorks":["darkness-at-noon"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"darkness-at-noon","url":"/works/darkness-at-noon/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Jewish by birth but did not practice the religion.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Koestler","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"anna-komnene","name":"Anna Komnene","url":"/great-lives/anna-komnene/","dates":"1083–c. 1153","born":1083,"died":1153,"era":"medieval","categories":["writers-poets","kings-queens-emperors"],"knownFor":"Byzantine princess and historian whose Alexiad records the reign of her father, Emperor Alexios I Komnenos.","bio":"Anna Komnene was born in Constantinople in 1083, the eldest child of the Byzantine emperor Alexios I Komnenos and Irene Doukaina. She received an unusually thorough education in literature, philosophy, history, mathematics and medicine. As a child she was engaged to Constantine Doukas, who was expected to inherit the throne, but after the birth of her brother John her prospects changed, and she later married the nobleman and historian Nikephoros Bryennios. When her father died in 1118, John became emperor. Byzantine historians report that Anna was involved in a plot against him, after which she lost her property and spent the rest of her life at the Kecharitomene monastery in Constantinople. There she wrote the Alexiad, a history in Greek of her father's reign, including wars with the Normans and Turks and the arrival of the armies of the First Crusade. It is one of the main sources for the period. She died around 1153.","keyDates":[{"date":"1083","event":"Born in Constantinople"},{"date":"1118","event":"Death of her father; her brother John becomes emperor"},{"date":"After 1118","event":"Writes the Alexiad in monastic retirement"},{"date":"c. 1153","event":"Dies"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Anna Komnene","relatedWorks":["anna-komnene-alexiad"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"anna-komnene-alexiad","url":"/works/anna-komnene-alexiad/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Eastern Orthodox Byzantine princess who spent her later years in the Kecharitomene convent.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Komnene","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["Her year of death is uncertain (c. 1153)."]},{"slug":"emil-kraepelin","name":"Emil Kraepelin","url":"/great-lives/emil-kraepelin/","dates":"1856–1926","born":1856,"died":1926,"era":"19th-century","categories":["physicians-medicine"],"knownFor":"German psychiatrist who built modern psychiatric classification and separated dementia praecox from manic-depressive illness.","bio":"Emil Kraepelin was born in 1856 in Neustrelitz, in northern Germany. He studied medicine at Leipzig and Würzburg, and in Leipzig he worked in the laboratory of Wilhelm Wundt, a founder of experimental psychology, where he studied the effects of substances such as alcohol and caffeine on the mind. He became a professor of psychiatry at Dorpat (now Tartu, Estonia) in 1886, then at Heidelberg and from 1903 in Munich. Kraepelin believed that mental illnesses had mainly biological causes and could be classified by their symptoms and course over time. In the successive editions of his textbook of psychiatry, he grouped illnesses into categories and distinguished dementia praecox, later called schizophrenia, from manic-depressive illness. His Lectures on Clinical Psychiatry presented typical cases to students. In 1917 he founded a research institute for psychiatry in Munich. His approach to classification strongly influenced later diagnostic systems. He died in Munich in 1926.","keyDates":[{"date":"1856","event":"Born in Neustrelitz"},{"date":"1886","event":"Professor of psychiatry at Dorpat"},{"date":"1891","event":"Professor at Heidelberg"},{"date":"1903","event":"Professor in Munich"},{"date":"1917","event":"Founds a psychiatric research institute in Munich"},{"date":"1926","event":"Dies in Munich"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Emil Kraepelin","relatedWorks":["lectures-on-clinical-psychiatry"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"lectures-on-clinical-psychiatry","url":"/works/lectures-on-clinical-psychiatry/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented; in his last years he was interested in Buddhist teachings.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emil_Kraepelin","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"richard-von-krafft-ebing","name":"Richard von Krafft-Ebing","url":"/great-lives/richard-von-krafft-ebing/","dates":"1840–1902","born":1840,"died":1902,"era":"19th-century","categories":["physicians-medicine"],"knownFor":"German-Austrian psychiatrist and author of an influential medical textbook of sexual disorders.","bio":"Richard von Krafft-Ebing was born in 1840 in Mannheim, in the Grand Duchy of Baden, Germany, and studied medicine at the University of Heidelberg, where he became interested in psychiatry. After working in asylums and serving as an army doctor in the Franco-Prussian War, he became a professor of psychiatry at Strasbourg in 1872, and later at Graz and at the University of Vienna, where he was a leading figure in the field. He wrote a widely used textbook of psychiatry and many studies of forensic psychiatry, the use of psychiatry in the courts. His best-known book, Psychopathia Sexualis (1886), is a medical study of human sexual behavior and its disorders, based on case histories, written for doctors and lawyers. It was expanded through many editions and introduced several medical terms still in use. Krafft-Ebing argued that many people who came before the courts should be treated as patients rather than criminals. He died in Graz in 1902.","keyDates":[{"date":"1840","event":"Born in Mannheim"},{"date":"1872","event":"Professor of psychiatry at Strasbourg"},{"date":"1873","event":"Professor at Graz"},{"date":"1886","event":"Psychopathia Sexualis published"},{"date":"1889","event":"Professor at the University of Vienna"},{"date":"1902","event":"Dies in Graz"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Richard von Krafft-Ebing","relatedWorks":["psychopathia-sexualis"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"psychopathia-sexualis","url":"/works/psychopathia-sexualis/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_von_Krafft-Ebing","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"peter-kropotkin","name":"Peter Kropotkin","url":"/great-lives/peter-kropotkin/","dates":"1842–1921","born":1842,"died":1921,"era":"19th-century","categories":["philosophers","scientists-mathematicians"],"knownFor":"Russian prince, geographer and leading theorist of anarchist communism; author of Mutual Aid and The Conquest of Bread.","bio":"Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin was born in Moscow in 1842 into an old princely family. As a boy he served as a page to Tsar Alexander II. Choosing service in Siberia instead of the court, he joined a Cossack regiment and made geographical expeditions in Siberia and Manchuria, later studying glaciers in Finland and Sweden. These experiences, and the cooperation he observed among animals and peasant communities, shaped his ideas. He renounced his title, joined the revolutionary movement, and was imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress in 1874; in 1876 he made a daring escape. In western Europe he became a leading anarchist writer, was imprisoned in France from 1883 to 1886, and then lived for some thirty years in England. His books include The Conquest of Bread (1892), Fields, Factories and Workshops (1899), Memoirs of a Revolutionist (1899) and Mutual Aid (1902), which argued that cooperation is a major factor in evolution. He returned to Russia in 1917, opposed the Bolshevik dictatorship, and died at Dmitrov in 1921.","keyDates":[{"date":"1842","event":"Born in Moscow"},{"date":"1876","event":"Escapes from prison in St. Petersburg"},{"date":"1892","event":"The Conquest of Bread published"},{"date":"1902","event":"Mutual Aid published"},{"date":"1921","event":"Dies at Dmitrov"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Peter Kropotkin","relatedWorks":["kropotkin-the-conquest-of-bread"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"kropotkin-the-conquest-of-bread","url":"/works/kropotkin-the-conquest-of-bread/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented; in his writing on ethics he praised the Christian teaching against revenge while arguing for anarchism.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Kropotkin","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"thomas-s-kuhn","name":"Thomas S. Kuhn","url":"/great-lives/thomas-s-kuhn/","dates":"1922–1996","born":1922,"died":1996,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["philosophers","scientists-mathematicians"],"knownFor":"American physicist and philosopher of science, author of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962).","bio":"Thomas Samuel Kuhn was born in 1922 in Cincinnati, Ohio. He studied physics at Harvard University, earning his doctorate in 1949. He then turned to the history and philosophy of science and taught at Harvard, the University of California, Berkeley, Princeton University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His first book, The Copernican Revolution (1957), described how astronomers came to accept a sun-centred universe. In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) he argued that science does not simply grow by adding facts. Instead, long periods of 'normal science', carried out within a shared framework that he called a 'paradigm', are interrupted by revolutions in which one paradigm replaces another. The terms 'paradigm' and 'paradigm shift' became widely used, and the book became one of the most cited academic books of all time. He died in 1996.","keyDates":[{"date":"1922","event":"Born in Cincinnati, Ohio"},{"date":"1949","event":"Doctorate in physics from Harvard"},{"date":"1957","event":"The Copernican Revolution published"},{"date":"1962","event":"The Structure of Scientific Revolutions published"},{"date":"1996","event":"Dies"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Thomas S. Kuhn","relatedWorks":["kuhn-the-structure-of-scientific-revolutions"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"kuhn-the-structure-of-scientific-revolutions","url":"/works/kuhn-the-structure-of-scientific-revolutions/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Born to Jewish though non-observant parents; his own beliefs are not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Kuhn","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"abraham-kuyper","name":"Abraham Kuyper","url":"/great-lives/abraham-kuyper/","dates":"1837–1920","born":1837,"died":1920,"era":"19th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders","theologians-church-fathers"],"knownFor":"Dutch Reformed theologian, journalist and founder of the Free University of Amsterdam who served as prime minister of the Netherlands from 1901 to 1905.","bio":"Abraham Kuyper was born in Maassluis in the Netherlands in 1837, the son of a minister. He studied theology at Leiden and became a pastor, serving congregations in Beesd, Utrecht and Amsterdam, where his views became strongly Calvinist. He founded and edited a daily newspaper, De Standaard, and led the Anti-Revolutionary Party, one of the first organized political parties in the country. In 1880 he founded the Vrije Universiteit (Free University) in Amsterdam, independent of both church and state, and he later led a split from the national Dutch Reformed Church that formed the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands. He set out his idea of 'sphere sovereignty', that family, church, school and state each have their own authority. In 1898 he gave the Stone Lectures at Princeton, published as Lectures on Calvinism. He was prime minister of the Netherlands from 1901 to 1905 and continued writing and serving in parliament until his death in The Hague in 1920.","keyDates":[{"date":"1837","event":"Born in Maassluis"},{"date":"1880","event":"Founds the Free University of Amsterdam"},{"date":"1898","event":"Gives the Stone Lectures at Princeton"},{"date":"1901–1905","event":"Prime minister of the Netherlands"},{"date":"1920","event":"Dies in The Hague"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Abraham Kuyper","relatedWorks":["kuyper-lectures-on-calvinism"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"kuyper-lectures-on-calvinism","url":"/works/kuyper-lectures-on-calvinism/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Dutch Reformed pastor and orthodox Calvinist theologian who led a secession from the national Reformed Church in 1886.","source":"https://www.britannica.com/biography/Abraham-Kuyper","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"madeleine-lengle","name":"Madeleine L'Engle","url":"/great-lives/madeleine-lengle/","dates":"1918–2007","born":1918,"died":2007,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American author of A Wrinkle in Time and other books for young readers and adults.","bio":"Madeleine L'Engle Camp was born in New York City in 1918; her father was a writer and journalist and her mother a pianist. She attended boarding schools in Switzerland and South Carolina and studied English at Smith College. She then worked in the theater in New York, where she met the actor Hugh Franklin; they married in 1946 and from 1952 lived in Connecticut, where they ran a general store. A Wrinkle in Time, about Meg Murry, her brother Charles Wallace and their friend Calvin, who travel through space and time to rescue Meg's father, was rejected by many publishers before it appeared in 1962. It won the Newbery Medal in 1963 and was followed by other books about the Murry family. L'Engle wrote more than sixty books, including novels, poetry, memoirs such as A Circle of Quiet, and reflections on faith and art. For many years she served as librarian and writer-in-residence at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York. She received the National Humanities Medal in 2004 and died in Connecticut in 2007.","keyDates":[{"date":"1918","event":"Born in New York City"},{"date":"1946","event":"Marries Hugh Franklin"},{"date":"1962","event":"A Wrinkle in Time published"},{"date":"1963","event":"Newbery Medal"},{"date":"2004","event":"National Humanities Medal"},{"date":"2007","event":"Dies in Connecticut"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Madeleine L'Engle","relatedWorks":["a-wrinkle-in-time"],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"library","work":"a-wrinkle-in-time","url":"/works/a-wrinkle-in-time/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"Her favourite book as a girl was Emily of New Moon, whose heroine she later said she deeply identified with.","source":{"title":"Madeleine L'Engle (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madeleine_L%27Engle"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A Christian who attended Episcopal churches and believed in universal salvation.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madeleine_L%27Engle","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"etienne-de-la-boetie","name":"Étienne de La Boétie","url":"/great-lives/etienne-de-la-boetie/","dates":"1530–1563","born":1530,"died":1563,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["philosophers","legal-scholars-lawgivers"],"knownFor":"French magistrate and writer, author of the Discourse on Voluntary Servitude and close friend of Michel de Montaigne.","bio":"Étienne de La Boétie was born in 1530 in Sarlat, in the Périgord region of southwestern France, into an aristocratic family; his father was a royal official. Orphaned young, he was raised by his uncle, a priest. He took a law degree at the University of Orléans in 1553, and the following year, though under the usual age, he was appointed to the Parlement of Bordeaux, the high court of the region. As a young man, perhaps while still a student, he wrote the Discourse on Voluntary Servitude, which asks why so many people obey a single ruler, and argues that tyranny depends on the consent of those it rules and would collapse if they simply stopped supporting it. He also translated works by Xenophon and Plutarch and wrote poetry. In Bordeaux he became the close friend of Michel de Montaigne, who later wrote his famous essay On Friendship about him. La Boétie died of illness in 1563, aged 32, and the Discourse was later published by Huguenot writers.","keyDates":[{"date":"1530","event":"Born in Sarlat"},{"date":"1553","event":"Law degree from Orléans"},{"date":"1554","event":"Appointed to the Parlement of Bordeaux"},{"date":"1563","event":"Dies near Bordeaux"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Étienne de La Boétie","relatedWorks":["discourse-on-voluntary-servitude"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"discourse-on-voluntary-servitude","url":"/works/discourse-on-voluntary-servitude/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Catholic; he favored reconciling Catholics and Protestants through church reform.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89tienne_de_La_Bo%C3%A9tie","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"selma-lagerlof","name":"Selma Lagerlöf","url":"/great-lives/selma-lagerlof/","dates":"1858–1940","born":1858,"died":1940,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Swedish author of The Wonderful Adventures of Nils, and the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.","bio":"Selma Lagerlöf was born in 1858 at Mårbacka, her family's farm in Värmland, in western Sweden. When she was three and a half, an illness left her lame in both legs for a time; she was a quiet child who loved reading, and her grandmother told her many fairy tales and stories. She trained as a teacher in Stockholm and from 1885 to 1895 taught at a girls' school in Landskrona. Her first novel, Gösta Berling's Saga (1891), a romantic tale of life in Värmland, brought her success and allowed her to write full time. In 1902 the National Teachers' Association asked her to write a geography book for children, and the result was The Wonderful Adventures of Nils (1906–1907), about a boy shrunk to tiny size who travels across Sweden on the back of a goose. In 1909 she became the first woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, and with the prize money she bought back Mårbacka, her father's old estate. In 1914 she became the first woman elected to the Swedish Academy. She died at Mårbacka in 1940.","keyDates":[{"date":"1858","event":"Born at Mårbacka, Värmland"},{"date":"1891","event":"Gösta Berling's Saga published"},{"date":"1906","event":"The Wonderful Adventures of Nils begins"},{"date":"1909","event":"First woman awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature"},{"date":"1914","event":"Elected to the Swedish Academy"},{"date":"1940","event":"Dies at Mårbacka"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Selma Lagerlöf","relatedWorks":["christ-legends"],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"library","work":"christ-legends","url":"/works/christ-legends/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"Her home, Mårbacka, in Sweden, is preserved as a museum.","source":{"title":"Selma Lagerlöf (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selma_Lagerl%C3%B6f"}}],"records":[{"text":"In 1909 she became the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, and in 1914 the first woman member of the Swedish Academy.","source":{"title":"Selma Lagerlöf (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selma_Lagerl%C3%B6f"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selma_Lagerl%C3%B6f","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"imre-lakatos","name":"Imre Lakatos","url":"/great-lives/imre-lakatos/","dates":"1922–1974","born":1922,"died":1974,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["philosophers"],"knownFor":"Hungarian-born British philosopher of mathematics and science, author of Proofs and Refutations and the methodology of scientific research programmes.","bio":"Imre Lakatos was born Imre Lipsitz in 1922 in Debrecen, Hungary, into a Jewish family. He earned a degree in mathematics, physics and philosophy at the University of Debrecen in 1944. During the German occupation of Hungary that year he joined a resistance group, and he changed his name. After the war he worked in the education ministry, but in 1950 he was arrested by the communist government and spent three years in prison. He later worked as a translator of mathematics books. After the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 he fled to Vienna and then to England, where he studied at Cambridge and in 1960 joined the London School of Economics, working alongside Karl Popper. His Proofs and Refutations, written as a classroom dialogue, argues that mathematics develops through the criticism of attempted proofs and counterexamples. In the philosophy of science he proposed that scientists work within 'research programmes', judged by whether they lead to new discoveries over time rather than by single tests. He died in London in 1974.","keyDates":[{"date":"1922","event":"Born in Debrecen, Hungary"},{"date":"1944","event":"Graduates from the University of Debrecen"},{"date":"1950–1953","event":"Imprisoned in Hungary"},{"date":"1956","event":"Flees Hungary"},{"date":"1960","event":"Joins the London School of Economics"},{"date":"1974","event":"Dies in London"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Imre Lakatos","relatedWorks":["lakatos-the-methodology-of-scientific-research-programmes"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"lakatos-the-methodology-of-scientific-research-programmes","url":"/works/lakatos-the-methodology-of-scientific-research-programmes/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Born into a Hungarian-Jewish family; his adult beliefs are not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imre_Lakatos","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"charles-lamb","name":"Charles Lamb","url":"/great-lives/charles-lamb/","dates":"1775–1834","born":1775,"died":1834,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"English essayist and poet, author of the Essays of Elia and, with his sister Mary, Tales from Shakespeare.","bio":"Charles Lamb was born in London in 1775, the son of a lawyer's clerk. At Christ's Hospital school he became a lifelong friend of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. A stammer kept him from university, and from 1792 he worked as a clerk at the East India Company for over thirty years. In 1796 his elder sister Mary, in a fit of mental illness, killed their mother. Charles took responsibility for her care, and the two lived together for the rest of his life; she was sometimes hospitalized during further attacks. Together they wrote Tales from Shakespeare (1807), retelling twenty of the plays in prose for children, with Mary writing the comedies and Charles the tragedies. Charles also wrote poetry and criticism that helped revive interest in older English drama. His essays for the London Magazine, written under the name Elia and collected as the Essays of Elia, are humorous and personal reflections on London life. He retired in 1825 and died in Edmonton in 1834.","keyDates":[{"date":"1775","event":"Born in London"},{"date":"1792","event":"Begins work at the East India Company"},{"date":"1796","event":"Takes charge of his sister Mary"},{"date":"1807","event":"Tales from Shakespeare published"},{"date":"1823","event":"Essays of Elia collected"},{"date":"1834","event":"Dies in Edmonton"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Charles and Mary Lamb","relatedWorks":["tales-from-shakespeare"],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"library","work":"tales-from-shakespeare","url":"/works/tales-from-shakespeare/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A Dissenter sympathetic to Unitarianism; his letters show he sought consolation in Christian faith.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Lamb","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"mary-lamb","name":"Mary Lamb","url":"/great-lives/mary-lamb/","dates":"1764–1847","born":1764,"died":1847,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"English writer who, with her brother Charles, wrote Tales from Shakespeare for children.","bio":"Mary Lamb was born in London in 1764, the third of seven children of John and Elizabeth Lamb, servants of a barrister who lived in the Inner Temple; only she and two brothers, John and Charles, survived childhood. She learned about books and writers from her father and had little formal schooling, and she worked as a seamstress to help support the family. Mary suffered from a serious mental illness. In 1796, during a breakdown, she fatally stabbed her mother. Her brother Charles, a clerk at the East India House and later a well-known essayist, took responsibility for her care, and for the rest of her life she lived with him when she was well and in private mental facilities when she was ill. Together they hosted a literary circle in London that included William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. For the publisher William Godwin they wrote Tales from Shakespeare (1807), retelling twenty of the plays in prose for children; Mary wrote the comedies and Charles the tragedies. They also wrote Mrs. Leicester's School. Mary outlived Charles and died in 1847.","keyDates":[{"date":"1764","event":"Born in London"},{"date":"1796","event":"Mental breakdown and death of her mother"},{"date":"1807","event":"Tales from Shakespeare published"},{"date":"1809","event":"Mrs. Leicester's School published"},{"date":"1834","event":"Death of Charles Lamb"},{"date":"1847","event":"Dies"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Charles and Mary Lamb","relatedWorks":["tales-from-shakespeare"],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"library","work":"tales-from-shakespeare","url":"/works/tales-from-shakespeare/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Lamb","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"edward-william-lane","name":"Edward William Lane","url":"/great-lives/edward-william-lane/","dates":"1801–1876","born":1801,"died":1876,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"British scholar of Arabic who described Egyptian life and translated The Thousand and One Nights.","bio":"Edward William Lane was born in 1801 in Hereford, England, the son of a clergyman. He trained as an engraver in London, but poor health led him to travel to Egypt in 1825. He spent several years there, learning Arabic, adopting local dress and making detailed drawings of ancient monuments and modern life. On later visits he lived in Cairo among Egyptians and gathered material for his Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians (1836), a detailed description of daily life, religion and customs in Cairo that became a classic. From 1838 to 1841 he published an English translation of The Thousand and One Nights, with many notes explaining Arab life and customs; he left out passages he thought unsuitable for family reading. He then returned to Egypt for several years to work on his great Arabic–English Lexicon, which he continued in England for the rest of his life; it was completed after his death by his great-nephew Stanley Lane-Poole. He died in Worthing in 1876.","keyDates":[{"date":"1801","event":"Born in Hereford"},{"date":"1825","event":"First journey to Egypt"},{"date":"1836","event":"Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians"},{"date":"1838–1841","event":"Translation of The Thousand and One Nights"},{"date":"1863","event":"First volume of the Arabic–English Lexicon"},{"date":"1876","event":"Dies in Worthing"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Anonymous; translated by Edward William Lane","relatedWorks":["lane-thousand-and-one-nights"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"lane-thousand-and-one-nights","url":"/works/lane-thousand-and-one-nights/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_William_Lane","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"andrew-lang","name":"Andrew Lang","url":"/great-lives/andrew-lang/","dates":"1844–1912","born":1844,"died":1912,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Scottish writer and scholar who collected fairy tales from around the world in the colored Fairy Books.","bio":"Andrew Lang was born in 1844 in Selkirk, Scotland, in the Border country made famous by the stories of Walter Scott. He studied at the University of St Andrews and at Balliol College, Oxford, and became a fellow of Merton College before moving to London to work as a journalist and critic. He was a remarkably varied writer: he published poetry, novels, history, studies of myth and folklore, and translations of Homer's Odyssey and Iliad with other scholars. He is best remembered for the Fairy Books, beginning with The Blue Fairy Book in 1889 and continuing through twelve colors, from red and green to lilac. The books gathered stories from many countries and were largely translated and retold by his wife, Leonora Blanche Alleyne, and other collaborators. Their popularity helped bring fairy tales back into favor as reading for children. Lang also edited a children's edition of The Arabian Nights. He died in 1912.","keyDates":[{"date":"1844","event":"Born in Selkirk, Scotland"},{"date":"1889","event":"The Blue Fairy Book published"},{"date":"1898","event":"The Arabian Nights Entertainments edited for children"},{"date":"1910","event":"The Lilac Fairy Book, the last of the colored series"},{"date":"1912","event":"Dies"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Andrew Lang","relatedWorks":["the-blue-fairy-book","the-arabian-nights"],"reading":[{"band":"K-2","kind":"library","work":"the-blue-fairy-book","url":"/works/the-blue-fairy-book/"},{"band":"3-5","kind":"library","work":"the-arabian-nights","url":"/works/the-arabian-nights/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented; he wrote widely on myth, folklore and religion as a scholar.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Lang","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"stephen-langton","name":"Stephen Langton","url":"/great-lives/stephen-langton/","dates":"c. 1150–1228","born":1150,"died":1228,"era":"medieval","categories":["theologians-church-fathers","legal-scholars-lawgivers"],"knownFor":"Archbishop of Canterbury who helped shape Magna Carta in 1215 and is credited with dividing the Bible into chapters.","bio":"Stephen Langton was born in England around 1150, probably in Lincolnshire. He taught theology at Paris for more than twenty years and wrote commentaries on almost every book of the Bible. The system of chapter divisions still used in Bibles today is usually credited to him. In 1206 Pope Innocent III, who had known him at Paris, made him a cardinal, and in 1207 consecrated him archbishop of Canterbury. King John refused to accept him, and the dispute led the pope to place England under an interdict from 1208 and to excommunicate the king. John finally submitted in 1213, and Langton came to England. As the barons rebelled against John's heavy-handed rule, Langton acted as a mediator, and he is named first among the king's advisers in the preamble of Magna Carta, sealed at Runnymede in June 1215. Historians believe he influenced its language, especially its first promise that the English Church shall be free. Later in 1215 the pope suspended him for refusing to punish the rebels. Restored, he presided over the church in England until his death on 9 July 1228.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 1150","event":"Born in England"},{"date":"1207","event":"Consecrated archbishop of Canterbury by Innocent III"},{"date":"1208–1214","event":"England under papal interdict"},{"date":"1215","event":"Named among King John's advisers in Magna Carta"},{"date":"1228","event":"Dies on 9 July"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["magna-carta"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"magna-carta","url":"/works/magna-carta/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Archbishop of Canterbury and cardinal.","source":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dictionary_of_National_Biography%2C_1885-1900/Langton%2C_Stephen","sourceName":"Dictionary of National Biography (1885–1900) (via Wikisource)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["Birth year and place are approximate.","The extent of his role in drafting Magna Carta is debated."]},{"slug":"nella-larsen","name":"Nella Larsen","url":"/great-lives/nella-larsen/","dates":"1891–1964","born":1891,"died":1964,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American novelist of the Harlem Renaissance, author of Quicksand and Passing.","bio":"Nella Larsen was born Nellie Walker in Chicago in 1891, the daughter of a Danish mother and a father from the Danish West Indies, who disappeared when she was small. Her mother remarried, and Nella grew up as the only Black member of her family, an experience of not belonging that shaped her fiction. As a child she lived in Denmark for three years, and about 1907 she attended the Fisk University Normal School in Nashville. She trained as a nurse at Lincoln Hospital in New York. In 1919 she married the physicist Elmer Imes. She later became the first Black woman to graduate from the New York Public Library's library school and worked as a librarian in Harlem, where she met writers of the Harlem Renaissance. Her novels Quicksand (1928) and Passing (1929), about women of mixed ancestry and the color line, were praised by critics. In 1930 she became the first African American woman to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship. She later returned to nursing and died in New York in 1964.","keyDates":[{"date":"1891","event":"Born in Chicago"},{"date":"1919","event":"Marries Elmer Imes"},{"date":"1928","event":"Quicksand published"},{"date":"1929","event":"Passing published"},{"date":"1930","event":"Guggenheim Fellowship"},{"date":"1964","event":"Dies in New York"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Nella Larsen","relatedWorks":["passing"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"passing","url":"/works/passing/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nella_Larsen","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"bartolome-de-las-casas","name":"Bartolomé de las Casas","url":"/great-lives/bartolome-de-las-casas/","dates":"1484–1566","born":1484,"died":1566,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["saints-reformers","theologians-church-fathers","legal-scholars-lawgivers"],"knownFor":"Spanish colonist turned Dominican friar and bishop who spent fifty years defending the native peoples of the Americas.","bio":"Bartolomé de las Casas was born in Seville in 1484. He sailed to Hispaniola in 1502 and, like other settlers, received an encomienda, a grant of native people forced to work for him. As a priest he served as chaplain in the conquest of Cuba and witnessed massacres. In 1514, while preparing a sermon, he read in the book of Sirach that an offering taken from the poor is like killing a son before his father's eyes. He gave up his Indians and began preaching against the encomienda system. For fifty years he argued before kings and councils that the native peoples were free human beings. He became a Dominican in 1523, helped win the New Laws of 1542 and served as bishop of Chiapas. In 1550–1551 at Valladolid he debated the scholar Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, who held that the Indians were natural slaves. Early in his career he suggested bringing African slaves to spare the Indians; he later repented of this and condemned African slavery as equally unjust. He died in Madrid on 18 July 1566.","keyDates":[{"date":"1484","event":"Born in Seville"},{"date":"1502","event":"Sails to Hispaniola"},{"date":"1514","event":"Gives up his encomienda and begins preaching against it"},{"date":"1523","event":"Joins the Dominican order"},{"date":"1542","event":"New Laws issued; Brief Account written"},{"date":"1550–1551","event":"Valladolid debate with Sepúlveda"},{"date":"1566","event":"Dies in Madrid on 18 July"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["las-casas-destruction-of-the-indies"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"las-casas-destruction-of-the-indies","url":"/works/las-casas-destruction-of-the-indies/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Spanish settler in the Indies who became a priest and later Bishop of Chiapas.","source":"https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03397a.htm","sourceName":"Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["Birth year is sometimes given as 1474; 1484 is now usual.","The Sirach passage is chapter 34 (Ecclesiasticus 34:18–22 in older numbering)."]},{"slug":"jean-lee-latham","name":"Jean Lee Latham","url":"/great-lives/jean-lee-latham/","dates":"1902–1995","born":1902,"died":1995,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American author of biographies for young readers, including the Newbery-winning Carry On, Mr. Bowditch.","bio":"Jean Lee Latham was born in 1902 in Buckhannon, West Virginia, the daughter of a cabinetmaker and a teacher. She studied at West Virginia Wesleyan College, where she wrote plays, graduated in 1925, and later attended the Ithaca Conservatory and earned a master's degree from Cornell University in 1930. She taught English, history and play production in Ithaca, New York, and wrote plays for radio and the stage. During the Second World War she trained inspectors for the United States Signal Corps. After the war she turned to writing for young readers, beginning with The Story of Eli Whitney. Her best-known book, Carry On, Mr. Bowditch (1955), is a fictionalized life of Nathaniel Bowditch, an eighteenth-century boy from Salem, Massachusetts, who was bound as an apprentice but taught himself mathematics and navigation and wrote a famous guide for sailors; it won the Newbery Medal in 1956. She went on to write many more biographies for children, of figures such as Samuel Morse, Sam Houston and Rachel Carson. She died in 1995.","keyDates":[{"date":"1902","event":"Born in Buckhannon, West Virginia"},{"date":"1925","event":"Graduates from West Virginia Wesleyan College"},{"date":"1930","event":"Master's degree from Cornell"},{"date":"1955","event":"Carry On, Mr. Bowditch published"},{"date":"1956","event":"Newbery Medal"},{"date":"1995","event":"Dies"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Jean Lee Latham","relatedWorks":["carry-on-mr-bowditch"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"carry-on-mr-bowditch","url":"/works/carry-on-mr-bowditch/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Lee_Latham","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"hugh-latimer","name":"Hugh Latimer","url":"/great-lives/hugh-latimer/","dates":"c. 1487–1555","born":1487,"died":1555,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["theologians-church-fathers","saints-reformers"],"knownFor":"English Protestant reformer and bishop of Worcester, a famous preacher burned at Oxford under Queen Mary I.","bio":"Hugh Latimer was born around 1487 in Thurcaston, Leicestershire, the son of a yeoman farmer. He studied at Cambridge, became a fellow and was ordained a priest. At first he opposed the new Protestant ideas, but around 1524 he was won over by the reformer Thomas Bilney. He became known for plain, forceful preaching in English, often criticizing the greed of the powerful. He supported King Henry VIII's break with Rome and in 1535 became bishop of Worcester, but he resigned in 1539 in protest against the king's Six Articles, which restored traditional doctrines, and he was imprisoned for a time. Under the young Protestant king Edward VI he returned to prominence as a preacher, delivering sermons such as the Sermon on the Plough. When the Catholic Queen Mary I came to the throne in 1553, he was arrested and tried for heresy with Nicholas Ridley and Thomas Cranmer. On 16 October 1555 he and Ridley were burned at the stake in Oxford. According to John Foxe, Latimer told Ridley that they would light such a candle in England as would never be put out.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 1487","event":"Born in Thurcaston, Leicestershire"},{"date":"c. 1524","event":"Embraces Protestant ideas"},{"date":"1535","event":"Becomes bishop of Worcester"},{"date":"1539","event":"Resigns over the Six Articles"},{"date":"1548","event":"Sermon on the Plough"},{"date":"1555","event":"Burned at the stake in Oxford"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Hugh Latimer","relatedWorks":["latimer-selected-sermons"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"latimer-selected-sermons","url":"/works/latimer-selected-sermons/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"Latimer Square in Christchurch, New Zealand, is named after him.","source":{"title":"Hugh Latimer (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Latimer"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"English bishop and preacher of the Reformation.","source":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Latimer%2C_Hugh","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica (1911) (via Wikisource)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"antoine-lavoisier","name":"Antoine Lavoisier","url":"/great-lives/antoine-lavoisier/","dates":"1743–1794","born":1743,"died":1794,"era":"18th-century","categories":["scientists-mathematicians"],"knownFor":"French chemist who identified oxygen's role in burning and helped found modern chemistry.","bio":"Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier was born in Paris to a wealthy family and trained as a lawyer, but he devoted himself to science. To fund his research he bought a share in the Ferme générale, a private company that collected taxes for the king. He married Marie-Anne Paulze, who became his partner in the laboratory, translating English papers and drawing his apparatus. Lavoisier insisted on careful weighing. He showed that when substances burn, they combine with a part of the air, which he named oxygen, overturning the old theory that burning released a substance called phlogiston. He showed that water is made of hydrogen and oxygen, and he stated that in a chemical reaction matter is neither created nor destroyed. With colleagues he devised a new system of chemical names still used today, and his Elements of Chemistry of 1789 listed thirty-three elements. He also worked on gunpowder, street lighting and the metric system. During the French Revolution he was arrested with the other tax farmers, tried, and guillotined on 8 May 1794.","keyDates":[{"date":"1743","event":"Born in Paris"},{"date":"1771","event":"Marries Marie-Anne Paulze"},{"date":"1778","event":"Names oxygen"},{"date":"1789","event":"Elements of Chemistry"},{"date":"1794","event":"Guillotined in Paris"}],"quotes":[{"text":"I have imposed upon myself, as a law, never to advance but from what is known to what is unknown","work":"lavoisier-elements-of-chemistry","location":"Preface of the Author","verified":true}],"author":"Antoine Lavoisier","relatedWorks":["lavoisier-elements-of-chemistry"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"lavoisier-elements-of-chemistry","url":"/works/lavoisier-elements-of-chemistry/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine_Lavoisier","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"brother-lawrence","name":"Brother Lawrence","url":"/great-lives/brother-lawrence/","dates":"c. 1614–1691","born":1614,"died":1691,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["saints-reformers","theologians-church-fathers"],"knownFor":"French Carmelite lay brother whose sayings and letters were collected as The Practice of the Presence of God.","bio":"Brother Lawrence was born Nicolas Herman in Hériménil, near Lunéville in Lorraine, France, in about 1614. He came from a peasant family and served as a soldier in the Thirty Years' War, where he was wounded. According to his own account, his religious conversion came at the age of eighteen when, looking at a bare tree in winter, he reflected that it would soon bear leaves and fruit again. After the war he worked for a time as a footman, and in 1640 he joined the Discalced Carmelite monastery in Paris as a lay brother, taking the name Lawrence of the Resurrection. For many years he worked in the monastery kitchen and later repaired sandals, teaching that ordinary tasks could be done for the love of God and that one could speak with God constantly in everyday work. After his death in 1691, Joseph de Beaufort, a priest who had interviewed him, published his conversations and letters as The Practice of the Presence of God.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 1614","event":"Born in Lorraine"},{"date":"1640","event":"Enters the Carmelite monastery in Paris"},{"date":"1691","event":"Dies in Paris"},{"date":"After 1691","event":"The Practice of the Presence of God published"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Brother Lawrence","relatedWorks":["practice-of-the-presence-of-god"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"practice-of-the-presence-of-god","url":"/works/practice-of-the-presence-of-god/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"French Catholic lay brother of the Discalced Carmelite order in Paris.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brother_Lawrence","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["His birth year is approximate."]},{"slug":"d-h-lawrence","name":"D. H. Lawrence","url":"/great-lives/d-h-lawrence/","dates":"1885–1930","born":1885,"died":1930,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"English novelist, short-story writer and poet, author of Sons and Lovers and The Prussian Officer.","bio":"David Herbert Lawrence was born in 1885 in Eastwood, a coal-mining town in Nottinghamshire, the son of a miner and a former schoolteacher. He won a scholarship to Nottingham High School, worked as a clerk, and trained as a teacher at University College Nottingham, then taught at a school in Croydon. His first novel, The White Peacock, appeared in 1911. In 1912 he left England with Frieda Weekley, the German wife of a Nottingham professor, and they married in 1914. Sons and Lovers (1913), based partly on his own family, was followed by The Rainbow (1915), which was banned in Britain, and Women in Love. His short-story collection The Prussian Officer appeared in 1914. During the First World War the couple were suspected of spying and were forced to leave Cornwall. Lawrence then traveled widely, living in Italy, Australia, Mexico and New Mexico, and wrote poems, travel books and essays as well as novels. Suffering from tuberculosis, he died in Vence, France, in 1930.","keyDates":[{"date":"1885","event":"Born in Eastwood, Nottinghamshire"},{"date":"1911","event":"The White Peacock published"},{"date":"1913","event":"Sons and Lovers published"},{"date":"1914","event":"The Prussian Officer and Other Stories; marries Frieda"},{"date":"1930","event":"Dies in Vence, France"}],"quotes":[],"author":"D. H. Lawrence","relatedWorks":["lawrence-the-prussian-officer","lawrence-self-pity"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"lawrence-the-prussian-officer","url":"/works/lawrence-the-prussian-officer/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"lawrence-self-pity","url":"/works/lawrence-self-pity/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D._H._Lawrence","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"t-e-lawrence","name":"T. E. Lawrence","url":"/great-lives/t-e-lawrence/","dates":"1888–1935","born":1888,"died":1935,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["military-leaders","writers-poets"],"knownFor":"British officer and writer known as Lawrence of Arabia, author of Seven Pillars of Wisdom.","bio":"Thomas Edward Lawrence was born in 1888 in Tremadog, Wales, and grew up in Oxford, where he studied history at Jesus College. From 1910 to 1914 he worked as an archaeologist for the British Museum, mainly at Carchemish in Ottoman Syria,. When the First World War began, he joined the British Army and worked in intelligence in Egypt. From 1916 he became involved in the Arab Revolt against Ottoman rule, serving as a liaison officer to Emir Faisal, one of its leaders. He took part in the fighting that ended with the capture of Damascus in October 1918, and the newspapers and lectures of the journalist Lowell Thomas made him famous as 'Lawrence of Arabia'. After the war he worked for the Foreign Office alongside Faisal. Wishing to escape fame, from 1922 he served as an ordinary enlisted man in the Royal Air Force and the army under other names. His account of the revolt, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, was published in 1926, and he also translated Homer's Odyssey. A keen motorcyclist, he died in 1935 after a motorcycle crash in Dorset.","keyDates":[{"date":"1888","event":"Born in Tremadog, Wales"},{"date":"1910","event":"Begins archaeological work at Carchemish"},{"date":"1916","event":"Joins the Arab Revolt"},{"date":"1918","event":"Capture of Damascus"},{"date":"1922","event":"Enlists in the Royal Air Force"},{"date":"1926","event":"Seven Pillars of Wisdom published"},{"date":"1935","event":"Dies after a motorcycle crash"}],"quotes":[],"author":"T. E. Lawrence","relatedWorks":["seven-pillars-of-wisdom"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"seven-pillars-of-wisdom","url":"/works/seven-pillars-of-wisdom/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._E._Lawrence","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"j-sheridan-le-fanu","name":"J. Sheridan Le Fanu","url":"/great-lives/j-sheridan-le-fanu/","dates":"1814–1873","born":1814,"died":1873,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Irish writer of ghost stories and mystery novels, author of the vampire tale Carmilla and Uncle Silas.","bio":"Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu was born in Dublin in 1814 into a family of Huguenot descent; his great-uncle was the playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan. His father was a Church of Ireland clergyman, and Joseph grew up mostly in County Limerick. He studied law at Trinity College Dublin but turned to journalism, and he owned and edited several Dublin newspapers and magazines, including the Dublin University Magazine. His first stories appeared in the 1830s. After the death of his wife in 1858 he withdrew from society and wrote mostly at night. His novels include The House by the Churchyard and Uncle Silas (1864), a mystery about a young heiress in the care of her sinister uncle. In a Glass Darkly (1872) collects five tales presented as the papers of a doctor interested in the supernatural, including Green Tea and Carmilla, about a female vampire who preys on a young woman in a castle in Austria. Carmilla influenced later vampire stories, including Bram Stoker's Dracula. Le Fanu died in Dublin in 1873.","keyDates":[{"date":"1814","event":"Born in Dublin"},{"date":"1858","event":"Death of his wife"},{"date":"1864","event":"Uncle Silas published"},{"date":"1872","event":"In a Glass Darkly, including Carmilla"},{"date":"1873","event":"Dies in Dublin"}],"quotes":[],"author":"J. Sheridan Le Fanu","relatedWorks":["carmilla"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"carmilla","url":"/works/carmilla/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Born into an Irish Protestant family of Huguenot descent.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheridan_Le_Fanu","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"francis-lightfoot-lee","name":"Francis Lightfoot Lee","url":"/great-lives/francis-lightfoot-lee/","dates":"1734–1797","born":1734,"died":1797,"era":"18th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"Quieter of the two Lee brothers in Congress, a Virginia planter who signed the Declaration and the Articles of Confederation.","bio":"Francis Lightfoot Lee was born in 1734 at the Lee family seat of Mount Pleasant, in Westmoreland County, Virginia, a younger brother of Richard Henry Lee. He served in the House of Burgesses and in the Continental Congress, where he worked steadily on committees and signed both the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation. He was less of an orator than his brother and left Congress before the war ended, returning to his plantation, Menokin, in Richmond County. He and his wife, Rebecca Tayloe, had no children. Like the other Virginia Lees of his generation, he was a planter who held people in slavery. He died in 1797, a few years after Richard Henry. Students sometimes overlook him because he did not leave a famous speech; his name on the parchment is the record of a man who did the daily work of Congress when it was dangerous to do so.","keyDates":[{"date":"1734","event":"Born in Westmoreland County, Virginia"},{"date":"1776","event":"Signs the Declaration of Independence"},{"date":"1778","event":"Signs the Articles of Confederation"},{"date":"1797","event":"Dies at his plantation in Virginia"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["the-founding-documents"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-founding-documents","url":"/works/the-founding-documents/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":null,"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"harper-lee","name":"Harper Lee","url":"/great-lives/harper-lee/","dates":"1926–2016","born":1926,"died":2016,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American novelist, author of To Kill a Mockingbird, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1961.","bio":"Nelle Harper Lee was born in 1926 in Monroeville, Alabama, the youngest of four children of Amasa Coleman Lee, a lawyer and newspaper editor. Her childhood friend and neighbor was Truman Capote, who later became a famous writer. She studied at Huntingdon College and law at the University of Alabama, and in 1949 she moved to New York City, where she worked as an airline reservation clerk. In 1956 friends gave her a Christmas gift of a year's wages so that she could write full time. The result was To Kill a Mockingbird (1960), narrated by a girl named Scout Finch, whose father, the lawyer Atticus Finch, defends a Black man falsely accused of a crime in a small Alabama town in the 1930s. It became one of the best-selling and most widely taught American novels, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1961, and was made into an Academy Award–winning film. Lee helped Capote research his book In Cold Blood. She lived quietly, received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2007, and died in Monroeville in 2016.","keyDates":[{"date":"1926","event":"Born in Monroeville, Alabama"},{"date":"1949","event":"Moves to New York"},{"date":"1960","event":"To Kill a Mockingbird published"},{"date":"1961","event":"Pulitzer Prize for Fiction"},{"date":"2007","event":"Presidential Medal of Freedom"},{"date":"2015","event":"Go Set a Watchman published"},{"date":"2016","event":"Dies in Monroeville"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Harper Lee","relatedWorks":["to-kill-a-mockingbird"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"to-kill-a-mockingbird","url":"/works/to-kill-a-mockingbird/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented in detail; her funeral was held at First United Methodist Church in Monroeville.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harper_Lee","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"richard-henry-lee","name":"Richard Henry Lee","url":"/great-lives/richard-henry-lee/","dates":"1732–1794","born":1732,"died":1794,"era":"18th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"Virginia statesman who, on 7 June 1776, moved the resolution that the colonies 'are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states.'","bio":"Richard Henry Lee was born in 1732 at Stratford Hall, in Westmoreland County, Virginia, and became a leading planter and a member of the House of Burgesses. On 7 June 1776, following instructions from Virginia, he moved in Congress that the United Colonies 'are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states.' Congress delayed the final vote until 2 July so that the colonies could be brought together; Lee was then in Virginia and signed the Declaration later in the year. He later served as president of Congress and as a United States senator from Virginia. He feared a strong central government and opposed the Constitution as it stood in 1787, while supporting the amendments that became the Bill of Rights. Lee was a planter who held people in slavery, even as he could also criticize the trade. He died in 1794. His June resolution is the formal beginning of the independence debate in Congress.","keyDates":[{"date":"1732","event":"Born at Stratford Hall, Virginia"},{"date":"7 June 1776","event":"Moves the resolution for independence in Congress"},{"date":"1776","event":"Signs the Declaration after returning from Virginia"},{"date":"1784","event":"Serves as president of Congress"},{"date":"1794","event":"Dies in Virginia"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["the-founding-documents"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-founding-documents","url":"/works/the-founding-documents/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":null,"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"robert-e-lee","name":"Robert E. Lee","url":"/great-lives/robert-e-lee/","dates":"1807–1870","born":1807,"died":1870,"era":"19th-century","categories":["military-leaders"],"knownFor":"Commander of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia in the American Civil War.","bio":"Robert Edward Lee was born in Virginia, the son of Revolutionary War cavalry officer Henry Lee. He graduated second in his class from West Point in 1829 without a single demerit and served as an army engineer. In the Mexican War he won praise for his scouting and was later superintendent of West Point. When Virginia seceded in 1861, Lee declined an offer of high command in the Union army and resigned, saying he could not fight against his home state. In 1862 he took command of the Army of Northern Virginia and drove Union forces from Richmond in the Seven Days Battles. He won major victories at Second Manassas, Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, but his invasions of the North were turned back at Antietam in 1862 and Gettysburg in 1863. From 1864 Ulysses S. Grant pressed him in a long campaign to Petersburg. On April 9, 1865, Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Court House. After the war he became president of Washington College in Lexington, Virginia, and urged reconciliation. He died there in 1870.","keyDates":[{"date":"1829","event":"Graduates from West Point"},{"date":"1861","event":"Resigns from the U.S. Army"},{"date":"1862","event":"Takes command of the Army of Northern Virginia"},{"date":"1863","event":"Defeated at Gettysburg"},{"date":"1865","event":"Surrenders at Appomattox"},{"date":"1870","event":"Dies in Lexington"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["personal-memoirs"],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Known for his earnest Christianity.","source":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Lee%2C_Robert_Edward","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica (1911) (via Wikisource)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"antonie-van-leeuwenhoek","name":"Antonie van Leeuwenhoek","url":"/great-lives/antonie-van-leeuwenhoek/","dates":"1632–1723","born":1632,"died":1723,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["scientists-mathematicians","inventors"],"knownFor":"Dutch draper and lens-maker who was the first to see and describe bacteria and other single-celled life.","bio":"Antonie van Leeuwenhoek was born in Delft, in the Dutch Republic, on 24 October 1632, the son of a basket-maker. He trained in a cloth merchant's shop in Amsterdam, where magnifying glasses were used to inspect fabric, and later ran his own drapery business in Delft and held minor civic offices. Without a university education or knowledge of Latin, he taught himself to grind and polish tiny lenses and built hundreds of simple, single-lens microscopes, some magnifying more than two hundred times. From 1673 until his death he sent about two hundred letters, written in Dutch, to the Royal Society in London describing what he saw. He described red blood cells, muscle fibres, the flow of blood through capillaries, and sperm cells. In a famous letter of 1676 he reported 'little animals' swimming in rainwater and in infusions of pepper, and he later found similar creatures in the plaque scraped from teeth: the first recorded observations of protists and bacteria. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1680. He died in Delft on 26 August 1723.","keyDates":[{"date":"1632","event":"Born in Delft on 24 October"},{"date":"1673","event":"First letter to the Royal Society"},{"date":"1676","event":"Reports microscopic \"little animals\" in water"},{"date":"1680","event":"Elected Fellow of the Royal Society"},{"date":"1723","event":"Dies in Delft on 26 August"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Member of the Dutch Reformed (Calvinist) Church.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonie_van_Leeuwenhoek","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["Counts of his microscopes and letters are approximate."]},{"slug":"gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz","name":"Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz","url":"/great-lives/gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz/","dates":"1646–1716","born":1646,"died":1716,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["philosophers","scientists-mathematicians"],"knownFor":"German philosopher and mathematician who invented calculus independently of Newton.","bio":"Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was born in Leipzig, Germany, the son of a professor of moral philosophy. As a boy he taught himself Latin from his late father's library. He earned a doctorate in law at twenty and worked for most of his life as a diplomat, librarian, historian and adviser to German princes, especially the dukes of Hanover. In Paris in the 1670s he studied mathematics and developed calculus, publishing it in 1684; Isaac Newton had worked out similar methods earlier but not published them, and a bitter dispute followed over who deserved credit. The notation Leibniz invented, such as dx and the integral sign, is still used today. He built a calculating machine that could multiply and divide, and he studied binary arithmetic, using only ones and zeros. In philosophy he argued that the world is made of simple substances called monads and that God chose to create the best of all possible worlds. He worked for the reunion of Protestant and Catholic churches and helped found the Berlin Academy of Sciences. He died in Hanover in 1716, largely neglected.","keyDates":[{"date":"1646","event":"Born in Leipzig"},{"date":"1672–1676","event":"In Paris; develops calculus"},{"date":"1684","event":"Publishes his calculus"},{"date":"1700","event":"First president of the Berlin Academy"},{"date":"1714","event":"Monadology"},{"date":"1716","event":"Dies in Hanover"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz","relatedWorks":["leibniz-logical-writings","principia"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"leibniz-logical-writings","url":"/works/leibniz-logical-writings/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[{"text":"In 1685 he was the first to describe a pinwheel calculator, and he invented the Leibniz wheel, later used in the arithmometer, the first mass-produced mechanical calculator.","source":{"title":"Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottfried_Wilhelm_Leibniz"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Born into a Lutheran family.","source":"https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/leibniz/","sourceName":"Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy","documented":true},"furtherReading":[{"series":"Very Short Introductions","title":"Leibniz: A Very Short Introduction","author":"Maria Rosa Antognazza","publisher":"Oxford University Press","year":2016,"isbn13":"9780198718642","url":"https://bookshop.org/a/130650/9780198718642"}],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"raphael-lemkin","name":"Raphael Lemkin","url":"/great-lives/raphael-lemkin/","dates":"1900–1959","born":1900,"died":1959,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["legal-scholars-lawgivers"],"knownFor":"Polish-Jewish lawyer who coined the word \"genocide\" and campaigned for the UN Genocide Convention of 1948.","bio":"Raphael Lemkin was born on 24 June 1900 into a Jewish farming family near Wolkowysk, then in the Russian Empire and now in Belarus. As a boy he read about the persecution of Christians under Nero, and as a student he was shaken by the killing of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire during the First World War. Why, he asked, was killing a whole people not a crime? He studied law at Lwów and became a prosecutor in Warsaw. In 1933 he proposed that the League of Nations' legal conference outlaw the destruction of national, religious and ethnic groups. After Germany invaded Poland in 1939 he escaped to Sweden and reached the United States in 1941. Most of his family, including his parents, died in the Holocaust. In his book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe (1944) he coined the word genocide, from the Greek genos (people) and the Latin -cide (killing). He then lobbied the new United Nations until it adopted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide on 9 December 1948. He died, poor, in New York on 28 August 1959.","keyDates":[{"date":"1900","event":"Born near Wolkowysk on 24 June"},{"date":"1933","event":"Proposes an international law against the destruction of groups"},{"date":"1941","event":"Arrives in the United States"},{"date":"1944","event":"Coins the word genocide in Axis Rule in Occupied Europe"},{"date":"1948","event":"UN adopts the Genocide Convention on 9 December"},{"date":"1959","event":"Dies in New York on 28 August"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"jackson-nuremberg-opening-statement","url":"/works/jackson-nuremberg-opening-statement/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"universal-declaration-of-human-rights","url":"/works/universal-declaration-of-human-rights/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A Polish Jew deeply conscious of the persecution of Jews.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raphael_Lemkin","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["His 1933 Madrid proposal was submitted in writing; he did not attend in person."]},{"slug":"pope-leo-xiii","name":"Pope Leo XIII","url":"/great-lives/pope-leo-xiii/","dates":"1810–1903","born":1810,"died":1903,"era":"19th-century","categories":["theologians-church-fathers"],"knownFor":"Pope from 1878 to 1903, author of Rerum Novarum, the founding document of modern Catholic social teaching.","bio":"Vincenzo Gioacchino Pecci was born in 1810 in Carpineto Romano, near Rome, into a family of minor nobility. He was educated by the Jesuits at Viterbo and in Rome and studied at the Academy of Noble Ecclesiastics, which trained priests for diplomatic service. Ordained in 1837, he served as papal legate in Benevento and Perugia and as nuncio in Belgium, and in 1846 he became bishop of Perugia, where he remained for more than thirty years; he was made a cardinal in 1853. In 1878 he was elected pope, taking the name Leo XIII. He encouraged the study of Thomas Aquinas, opened the Vatican Archives to scholars, and sought better relations with governments. His encyclical Rerum Novarum (1891), on the condition of workers, defended private property while supporting fair wages, decent working conditions and workers' right to form unions, and it rejected both socialism and unrestricted capitalism. It became the founding document of modern Catholic social teaching. He also promoted devotion to the rosary. He died in Rome in 1903, aged 93, after one of the longest reigns in papal history.","keyDates":[{"date":"1810","event":"Born in Carpineto Romano"},{"date":"1837","event":"Ordained a priest"},{"date":"1846","event":"Bishop of Perugia"},{"date":"1853","event":"Made a cardinal"},{"date":"1878","event":"Elected pope"},{"date":"1891","event":"Rerum Novarum"},{"date":"1903","event":"Dies in Rome"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Pope Leo XIII","relatedWorks":["rerum-novarum"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"rerum-novarum","url":"/works/rerum-novarum/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"His favourite poets were Virgil and Dante.","source":{"title":"Pope Leo XIII (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Leo_XIII"}}],"records":[{"text":"He issued a record eleven encyclicals (official letters) on the rosary, earning him the title 'Rosary Pope'.","source":{"title":"Pope Leo XIII (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Leo_XIII"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Elected pope in 1878 and served until his death in 1903.","source":"https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09169a.htm","sourceName":"Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"leonardo-da-vinci","name":"Leonardo da Vinci","url":"/great-lives/leonardo-da-vinci/","dates":"1452–1519","born":1452,"died":1519,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["artists-composers-architects","inventors","scientists-mathematicians"],"knownFor":"Italian painter of the Mona Lisa and Last Supper, and a tireless inventor and observer of nature.","bio":"Leonardo was born in or near the town of Vinci in Tuscany, the son of a notary and a young countrywoman. As a teenager he was apprenticed to the painter and sculptor Verrocchio in Florence. He later worked for the Duke of Milan, Ludovico Sforza, as a painter, engineer and designer of festivals, and there painted The Last Supper on the wall of a monastery dining hall. Back in Florence he began the portrait now called the Mona Lisa, which he carried with him for years. Leonardo filled thousands of notebook pages, written in mirror script from right to left, with drawings and notes on anatomy, flight, water, plants, geology, optics and machines, including designs for flying machines, armored vehicles and canals. He dissected human bodies to draw muscles and the heart accurately. He finished relatively few paintings, as he often moved on to new studies. Invited by King Francis I of France, he spent his last years at Amboise, where he died in 1519. Many of his notebooks survive.","keyDates":[{"date":"1452","event":"Born near Vinci"},{"date":"c. 1466","event":"Apprenticed to Verrocchio"},{"date":"c. 1495–1498","event":"Paints The Last Supper"},{"date":"c. 1503","event":"Begins the Mona Lisa"},{"date":"1516","event":"Moves to France"},{"date":"1519","event":"Dies at Amboise"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["vasari-lives-of-the-artists"],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"book","title":"Who Was Leonardo da Vinci?","author":"Roberta Edwards","isbn13":"9780448443010","publisher":"Grosset & Dunlap","year":2005,"format":""},{"band":"3-5","kind":"book","title":"Leonardo da Vinci","author":"Diane Stanley","isbn13":"9780688161552","publisher":"HarperTrophy","year":2000,"format":"paperback"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"vasari-lives-of-the-artists","url":"/works/vasari-lives-of-the-artists/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"book","title":"Leonardo da Vinci","author":"Walter Isaacson","isbn13":"9781501139161","publisher":"Simon & Schuster","year":2018,"format":"paperback"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[{"text":"In 2017 his painting Salvator Mundi sold for US$450.3 million, the most ever paid for a painting at public auction.","source":{"title":"Leonardo da Vinci (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonardo_da_Vinci"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonardo_da_Vinci","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"bruno-leoni","name":"Bruno Leoni","url":"/great-lives/bruno-leoni/","dates":"1913–1967","born":1913,"died":1967,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["legal-scholars-lawgivers","philosophers"],"knownFor":"Italian legal philosopher and lawyer, author of Freedom and the Law, which compared legislation with judge-made law.","bio":"Bruno Leoni was born in Italy in 1913. He studied law and became a professor of the philosophy of law at the University of Pavia in 1945, and from 1948 to 1960 he was dean of its department of political sciences. During the Second World War he served with 'A Force', an organization that helped rescue prisoners of war in Italy after 1943. He founded and edited the political science journal Il Politico, and was active in the Mont Pelerin Society, an international association of free-market economists and thinkers, serving as its secretary and later its president. Influenced by the Austrian school of economics, Leoni argued in his best-known book, Freedom and the Law (1961), that just as a central planner lacks the knowledge spread through a market, a legislator lacks the knowledge that builds up in case law decided by judges. He held that law grown gradually through courts, as in the common law, is more predictable and better protects individual liberty. Leoni was killed by a business associate at Alpignano, near Turin, in 1967.","keyDates":[{"date":"1913","event":"Born in Italy"},{"date":"1945","event":"Professor of the philosophy of law at Pavia"},{"date":"1948–1960","event":"Dean of political sciences at Pavia"},{"date":"1961","event":"Freedom and the Law published"},{"date":"1967","event":"Dies at Alpignano, near Turin"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Bruno Leoni","relatedWorks":["freedom-and-the-law"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"freedom-and-the-law","url":"/works/freedom-and-the-law/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruno_Leoni","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"leonidas","name":"Leonidas I","url":"/great-lives/leonidas/","dates":"c. 540–480 BC","born":-540,"died":-480,"era":"ancient","categories":["military-leaders","kings-queens-emperors"],"knownFor":"Spartan king who led the stand at Thermopylae against the Persian army.","bio":"Leonidas was a king of Sparta, the Greek city-state famous for training its citizens from boyhood to be soldiers. He was a son of King Anaxandridas and came to the throne around 490 BC, after his half-brother Cleomenes died. In 480 BC the Persian king Xerxes invaded Greece with an enormous army and fleet. The Greek cities chose to block his advance at Thermopylae, a narrow pass between the mountains and the sea. Leonidas led about three hundred Spartans and several thousand other Greek soldiers there. For two days they held off repeated Persian attacks, including the king's elite troops, the Immortals. Then a local Greek named Ephialtes showed the Persians a mountain path around the pass. Learning they would be surrounded, Leonidas sent most of the allies away and stayed with the Spartans, the Thespians and the Thebans. They fought until nearly all were killed, and Leonidas died in the battle. The Persians went on to burn Athens, but the Greeks won at sea at Salamis that year and on land at Plataea the next.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 490 BC","event":"Becomes king of Sparta"},{"date":"480 BC","event":"Battle of Thermopylae; Leonidas killed"},{"date":"480 BC","event":"Greek naval victory at Salamis"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["the-histories"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-histories","url":"/works/the-histories/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"His name can mean 'son of a lion', since leon means 'lion' in Greek.","source":{"title":"Leonidas I (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonidas_I"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Practiced ancient Greek religion.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonidas_I","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"jeanne-marie-leprince-de-beaumont","name":"Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont","url":"/great-lives/jeanne-marie-leprince-de-beaumont/","dates":"1711–1780","born":1711,"died":1780,"era":"18th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"French writer and governess whose 1756 version of Beauty and the Beast became the best-known form of the tale.","bio":"Jeanne-Marie Leprince was born in Rouen, France, in 1711 and was educated at a convent school, where she later taught. After a brief, unhappy marriage to a man named Beaumont was annulled, she moved to London around 1748 and worked there for many years as a governess for the children of wealthy families. She began publishing works for the education of young people, especially girls, at a time when such books were rare. In 1756 she published Le Magasin des enfants, a book of dialogues between a governess and her pupils mixing lessons, Bible stories, history and fairy tales. Among them was her version of Beauty and the Beast, much shorter than an earlier novel-length version by Madame de Villeneuve. It tells of a merchant's kind youngest daughter who goes to live with a monstrous Beast to save her father, and whose love breaks the spell on him. Translated into English the following year, it became the form of the story most people know. She wrote some seventy books, returned to France, and died in 1780.","keyDates":[{"date":"1711","event":"Born in Rouen"},{"date":"c. 1748","event":"Moves to London as a governess"},{"date":"1756","event":"Le Magasin des enfants, with Beauty and the Beast"},{"date":"1757","event":"English translation published"},{"date":"1780","event":"Dies in France"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont","relatedWorks":["beaumont-beauty-and-the-beast"],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"library","work":"beaumont-beauty-and-the-beast","url":"/works/beaumont-beauty-and-the-beast/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne-Marie_Leprince_de_Beaumont","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"mikhail-lermontov","name":"Mikhail Lermontov","url":"/great-lives/mikhail-lermontov/","dates":"1814–1841","born":1814,"died":1841,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Russian Romantic poet and novelist, author of A Hero of Our Time, often called the poet of the Caucasus.","bio":"Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov was born in Moscow in 1814. His mother died when he was a small child, and he was raised by his wealthy grandmother on her estate, Tarkhany; childhood visits to the Caucasus made a lasting impression on him. He studied at Moscow University and then at the cadet school in St. Petersburg, becoming an officer of the Life Guard Hussars. When Pushkin died after a duel in 1837, Lermontov wrote an angry poem, The Death of the Poet, blaming the court circle; it circulated widely, and he was arrested and transferred to a regiment in the Caucasus. After a second duel in 1840 he was sent back there and took part in fierce fighting. His novel A Hero of Our Time appeared in 1840, and his narrative poems, including The Demon and Mtsyri, and his lyrics made him the leading Russian poet after Pushkin. In July 1841, at Pyatigorsk, he was killed in a duel with a fellow officer, Nikolai Martynov. He was twenty-six.","keyDates":[{"date":"1814","event":"Born in Moscow"},{"date":"1837","event":"Writes The Death of the Poet; exiled to the Caucasus"},{"date":"1840","event":"A Hero of Our Time published"},{"date":"1841","event":"Killed in a duel at Pyatigorsk"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Mikhail Lermontov","relatedWorks":["lermontov-a-hero-of-our-time"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"lermontov-a-hero-of-our-time","url":"/works/lermontov-a-hero-of-our-time/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Lermontov","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"gaston-leroux","name":"Gaston Leroux","url":"/great-lives/gaston-leroux/","dates":"1868–1927","born":1868,"died":1927,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"French journalist and novelist, author of The Phantom of the Opera and The Mystery of the Yellow Room.","bio":"Gaston Leroux was born in Paris in 1868 and grew up in Normandy. He studied law in Paris and briefly practiced it, but after spending an inheritance he turned to journalism, first as a court reporter and theater critic and then as an international correspondent for the newspaper Le Matin. He reported from Russia during the revolution of 1905 and traveled widely. In 1907 he left journalism to write fiction. His detective novel The Mystery of the Yellow Room (1907–1908), featuring the young reporter Joseph Rouletabille, is a celebrated 'locked room' mystery in which a crime seems to have been committed in a sealed room. The Phantom of the Opera (1909–1910), serialized before appearing as a book, tells of a masked, disfigured genius who haunts the Paris Opera House and falls in love with a young singer, Christine Daaé. It was later adapted many times, including the 1925 silent film starring Lon Chaney and Andrew Lloyd Webber's 1986 musical. Leroux founded a film company and died in Nice in 1927.","keyDates":[{"date":"1868","event":"Born in Paris"},{"date":"1905","event":"Reports on the Russian Revolution"},{"date":"1907","event":"Leaves journalism for fiction"},{"date":"1908","event":"The Mystery of the Yellow Room published"},{"date":"1910","event":"The Phantom of the Opera published"},{"date":"1927","event":"Dies in Nice"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Gaston Leroux","relatedWorks":["the-phantom-of-the-opera"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-phantom-of-the-opera","url":"/works/the-phantom-of-the-opera/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaston_Leroux","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"claude-levi-strauss","name":"Claude Lévi-Strauss","url":"/great-lives/claude-levi-strauss/","dates":"1908–2009","born":1908,"died":2009,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["philosophers","scientists-mathematicians"],"knownFor":"French anthropologist who founded structural anthropology and wrote Tristes Tropiques and Structural Anthropology.","bio":"Claude Lévi-Strauss was born in 1908 in Brussels to French Jewish parents and grew up in Paris. He studied law and philosophy at the Sorbonne and taught at a secondary school before going to Brazil in 1935 to teach sociology at the University of São Paulo. There he made field trips among Indigenous peoples of the interior, including the Bororo and Nambikwara. After serving in the French army in 1939–1940, he fled the anti-Jewish laws of Vichy France to New York, where he taught at the New School and met the linguist Roman Jakobson, whose structural linguistics deeply influenced him. Lévi-Strauss argued that myths, kinship systems and customs of all cultures can be understood through underlying patterns of thought, such as pairs of opposites. His books include The Elementary Structures of Kinship, the travel memoir Tristes Tropiques (1955), Structural Anthropology (1958) and the four-volume Mythologiques. He taught at the Collège de France and lived to be a hundred, dying in Paris in 2009.","keyDates":[{"date":"1908","event":"Born in Brussels"},{"date":"1935","event":"Goes to Brazil to teach in São Paulo"},{"date":"1941","event":"Escapes to New York"},{"date":"1949","event":"The Elementary Structures of Kinship"},{"date":"1955","event":"Tristes Tropiques published"},{"date":"1958","event":"Structural Anthropology published"},{"date":"2009","event":"Dies in Paris"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Claude Lévi-Strauss","relatedWorks":["levi-strauss-structural-anthropology"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"levi-strauss-structural-anthropology","url":"/works/levi-strauss-structural-anthropology/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Born to French-Jewish parents who had become agnostic; he was an atheist or agnostic in his adult life.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_L%C3%A9vi-Strauss","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"c-s-lewis","name":"C. S. Lewis","url":"/great-lives/c-s-lewis/","dates":"1898–1963","born":1898,"died":1963,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["theologians-church-fathers"],"knownFor":"Oxford scholar and author of The Chronicles of Narnia and Mere Christianity.","bio":"Clive Staples Lewis was born in Belfast, Ireland, and was called Jack by family and friends. His mother died when he was nine, and he was sent to English boarding schools he disliked. He served as an infantry officer in the First World War and was wounded in 1918. He studied at Oxford and became a fellow of Magdalen College, teaching English literature. Raised in the Church of Ireland, he had abandoned Christianity as a boy, but conversations with friends, including J. R. R. Tolkien, helped bring him back to belief in God in 1929 and to Christianity in 1931, a journey he described in Surprised by Joy. With Tolkien and others he met in a group called the Inklings. During the Second World War his radio talks on the BBC became Mere Christianity. He wrote The Screwtape Letters, science fiction novels, scholarly books on medieval literature, and the seven Chronicles of Narnia for children. In 1954 he became a professor at Cambridge. In 1956 he married the American writer Joy Davidman, who died of cancer in 1960. He died in 1963.","keyDates":[{"date":"1898","event":"Born in Belfast"},{"date":"1925","event":"Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford"},{"date":"1931","event":"Becomes a Christian"},{"date":"1942","event":"The Screwtape Letters; BBC talks"},{"date":"1950","event":"The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe"},{"date":"1963","event":"Dies in Oxford"}],"quotes":[],"author":"C. S. Lewis","relatedWorks":["the-lion-the-witch-and-the-wardrobe","mere-christianity","surprised-by-joy","the-screwtape-letters","lewis-the-abolition-of-man","the-horse-and-his-boy","the-last-battle","the-voyage-of-the-dawn-treader","that-hideous-strength","the-magicians-nephew","the-silver-chair","prince-caspian","till-we-have-faces"],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"library","work":"the-lion-the-witch-and-the-wardrobe","url":"/works/the-lion-the-witch-and-the-wardrobe/"},{"band":"3-5","kind":"library","work":"the-horse-and-his-boy","url":"/works/the-horse-and-his-boy/"},{"band":"3-5","kind":"library","work":"the-voyage-of-the-dawn-treader","url":"/works/the-voyage-of-the-dawn-treader/"},{"band":"3-5","kind":"library","work":"the-magicians-nephew","url":"/works/the-magicians-nephew/"},{"band":"3-5","kind":"library","work":"the-silver-chair","url":"/works/the-silver-chair/"},{"band":"3-5","kind":"library","work":"prince-caspian","url":"/works/prince-caspian/"},{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-last-battle","url":"/works/the-last-battle/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"mere-christianity","url":"/works/mere-christianity/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"surprised-by-joy","url":"/works/surprised-by-joy/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-screwtape-letters","url":"/works/the-screwtape-letters/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"that-hideous-strength","url":"/works/that-hideous-strength/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"till-we-have-faces","url":"/works/till-we-have-faces/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"lewis-the-abolition-of-man","url":"/works/lewis-the-abolition-of-man/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"When he was four, after his dog Jacksie died, Lewis took the dog's name and at first would answer to nothing else. Later he accepted 'Jack', the name his friends used all his life.","source":{"title":"C. S. Lewis (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._S._Lewis"}},{"text":"As a boy he loved Beatrix Potter's stories and wrote and illustrated his own tales about talking animals.","source":{"title":"C. S. Lewis (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._S._Lewis"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"His parents belonged to the Church of Ireland, in which he was baptized; he later became a noted Christian writer.","source":"https://www.britannica.com/biography/C-S-Lewis","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica","documented":true},"furtherReading":[{"series":"Very Short Introductions","title":"C. S. Lewis: A Very Short Introduction","author":"James Como","publisher":"Oxford University Press","year":2019,"isbn13":null,"url":null}],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"francis-lewis","name":"Francis Lewis","url":"/great-lives/francis-lewis/","dates":"1713–1802","born":1713,"died":1802,"era":"18th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"Welsh-born New York merchant who signed the Declaration; the British destroyed his home and imprisoned his wife.","bio":"Francis Lewis was born in 1713 in Llandaff, Wales, and came to New York as a young merchant. He built a successful business, served as a British army supply agent in the French and Indian War, and later settled his family at Whitestone, on Long Island. He represented New York in the Continental Congress and signed the Declaration of Independence. In 1776 British troops destroyed the Whitestone house and took his wife, Elizabeth Annesley Lewis, prisoner. She was later exchanged, but her health was broken, and she died in 1779. Lewis continued in Congress during the war, including work on the Board of Admiralty, and then retired from public life. He died in New York in 1802, having lived long enough to see the country he had helped to found securely independent.","keyDates":[{"date":"1713","event":"Born in Llandaff, Wales"},{"date":"1776","event":"Signs the Declaration of Independence"},{"date":"1776","event":"British troops destroy his Long Island home and imprison his wife"},{"date":"1779","event":"Elizabeth Lewis dies after her imprisonment"},{"date":"1802","event":"Dies in New York"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["the-founding-documents"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-founding-documents","url":"/works/the-founding-documents/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":null,"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"meriwether-lewis","name":"Meriwether Lewis and William Clark","url":"/great-lives/meriwether-lewis/","dates":"Lewis 1774–1809; Clark 1770–1838","born":1774,"died":1838,"era":"19th-century","categories":["explorers"],"knownFor":"Leaders of the Corps of Discovery, which crossed the American West to the Pacific and back.","bio":"Meriwether Lewis was a Virginia-born army officer who served as President Thomas Jefferson's private secretary. After the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, Jefferson asked him to lead an expedition up the Missouri River to find a route to the Pacific, map the land, study its plants and animals, and meet its native nations. Lewis chose as co-leader his friend William Clark, an experienced officer and mapmaker. Their Corps of Discovery of about thirty-three people, including York, an enslaved man owned by Clark, left the St. Louis area in May 1804. They wintered among the Mandan in present-day North Dakota, where they were joined by the Shoshone woman Sacagawea and her husband. They crossed the Rocky Mountains with Shoshone horses, nearly starved in the Bitterroot Mountains, and reached the Pacific Ocean in November 1805. They returned to St. Louis in September 1806, having lost only one man, to illness. Lewis became governor of the Louisiana Territory and died of gunshot wounds in 1809, probably by his own hand. Clark became an Indian agent and governor of Missouri Territory and died in 1838.","keyDates":[{"date":"1803","event":"Louisiana Purchase; Lewis chosen to lead"},{"date":"1804","event":"Expedition leaves the St. Louis area"},{"date":"1805","event":"Reaches the Pacific Ocean"},{"date":"1806","event":"Returns to St. Louis"},{"date":"1809","event":"Lewis dies"},{"date":"1838","event":"Clark dies"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["jefferson-selected-writings"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"book","title":"Undaunted Courage","author":"Stephen E. Ambrose","isbn13":"9780684826974","publisher":"Simon & Schuster","year":1997,"format":"paperback"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"He brought his dog, Seaman, along on the Lewis and Clark expedition.","source":{"title":"Meriwether Lewis (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meriwether_Lewis"}},{"text":"As a boy he would go hunting at night in the dead of winter with only his dog for company.","source":{"title":"Meriwether Lewis (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meriwether_Lewis"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meriwether_Lewis","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"sinclair-lewis","name":"Sinclair Lewis","url":"/great-lives/sinclair-lewis/","dates":"1885–1951","born":1885,"died":1951,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American novelist who satirized small-town and business life in Main Street and Babbitt; first American Nobel laureate in literature (1930).","bio":"Harry Sinclair Lewis was born in 1885 in Sauk Centre, Minnesota, the son of a country doctor. A bookish, awkward boy, he studied at Yale, where he wrote for the literary magazine, and spent some time at Upton Sinclair's socialist colony in New Jersey. After years of journalism and publishing work and several modest novels, he won sudden fame with Main Street (1920), a satire of a Minnesota town modeled on his own. Babbitt (1922) followed, giving the language a word for the complacent businessman. Arrowsmith (1925), about a young doctor and medical research, won the Pulitzer Prize, which Lewis declined. Elmer Gantry (1927) attacked a hypocritical preacher, and Dodsworth (1929) followed an American industrialist in Europe. In 1930 he became the first American awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. His later books, including It Can't Happen Here (1935), about a fascist takeover of the United States, were uneven. He struggled with alcoholism and two failed marriages, the second to the journalist Dorothy Thompson. He died in Rome in 1951.","keyDates":[{"date":"1885","event":"Born in Sauk Centre, Minnesota"},{"date":"1920","event":"Main Street published"},{"date":"1922","event":"Babbitt published"},{"date":"1926","event":"Declines the Pulitzer Prize for Arrowsmith"},{"date":"1930","event":"Awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature"},{"date":"1935","event":"It Can't Happen Here published"},{"date":"1951","event":"Dies in Rome"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Sinclair Lewis","relatedWorks":["lewis-main-street","lewis-babbitt","it-cant-happen-here"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"lewis-main-street","url":"/works/lewis-main-street/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"lewis-babbitt","url":"/works/lewis-babbitt/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"it-cant-happen-here","url":"/works/it-cant-happen-here/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Developed a religious enthusiasm as a student at Oberlin that waxed and waned; he later became an atheist.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_Lewis","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"abraham-lincoln","name":"Abraham Lincoln","url":"/great-lives/abraham-lincoln/","dates":"1809–1865","born":1809,"died":1865,"era":"19th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"Sixteenth President, who preserved the Union in the Civil War and ended slavery.","bio":"Abraham Lincoln was born in a log cabin in Kentucky and grew up on the frontier in Indiana and Illinois. He had less than a year of formal schooling but read every book he could borrow, taught himself law, and became a respected lawyer in Springfield, Illinois. He served in the state legislature and one term in Congress. In 1858 he debated Stephen Douglas across Illinois, arguing that slavery must not spread into new territories. Elected president in 1860, he took office as Southern states left the Union, and the Civil War began in April 1861. He issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, declaring enslaved people in the rebelling states free, and later pushed the Thirteenth Amendment through Congress to end slavery nationwide. His Gettysburg Address and Second Inaugural Address are among the most famous speeches in American history. Re-elected in 1864, he urged a generous peace. Five days after Lee's surrender, on Good Friday 1865, he was shot at Ford's Theatre by John Wilkes Booth and died the next morning.","keyDates":[{"date":"1809","event":"Born in Hardin County, Kentucky"},{"date":"1858","event":"Debates Stephen Douglas"},{"date":"1860","event":"Elected sixteenth President"},{"date":"1863","event":"Emancipation Proclamation; Gettysburg Address"},{"date":"1865","event":"Second Inaugural; assassinated in April"}],"quotes":[{"text":"Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.","work":"gettysburg-address","location":"Sentence 1","verified":true},{"text":"I believe this government cannot endure permanently, half slave and half free.","work":"house-divided-speech","location":"Paragraph 1","verified":true}],"author":"Abraham Lincoln","relatedWorks":["gettysburg-address","house-divided-speech","lincoln-second-inaugural-address","lincoln-douglas-debates","emancipation-proclamation","lincoln-first-inaugural-address"],"reading":[{"band":"K-2","kind":"book","title":"I am Abraham Lincoln","author":"Brad Meltzer","isbn13":"9780803740839","publisher":"Paperback","year":2014,"format":""},{"band":"3-5","kind":"library","work":"gettysburg-address","url":"/works/gettysburg-address/"},{"band":"3-5","kind":"book","title":"Who Was Abraham Lincoln?","author":"Janet B. Pascal","isbn13":"9780448448862","publisher":"Grosset & Dunlap","year":2008,"format":""},{"band":"6-8","kind":"book","title":"Lincoln: A Photobiography","author":"Russell Freedman","isbn13":"9780899193809","publisher":"Clarion Books","year":1987,"format":"hardcover"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"house-divided-speech","url":"/works/house-divided-speech/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"lincoln-second-inaugural-address","url":"/works/lincoln-second-inaugural-address/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"lincoln-douglas-debates","url":"/works/lincoln-douglas-debates/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"book","title":"Team of Rivals","author":"Doris Kearns Goodwin","isbn13":"9781451688092","publisher":"Simon & Schuster","year":2012,"format":"paperback"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"Lincoln did not grow his famous beard until 1860, after an 11-year-old girl named Grace Bedell suggested it.","source":{"title":"Abraham Lincoln (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln"}}],"records":[{"text":"Lincoln is the only U.S. president to hold a patent, for a device to help riverboats float over shallow water.","source":{"title":"Abraham Lincoln (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Raised by Separate Baptist parents; he did not join a church, and historians still debate his personal beliefs, though his later speeches used much biblical language.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[{"series":"Very Short Introductions","title":"Lincoln: A Very Short Introduction","author":"Allen C. Guelzo","publisher":"Oxford University Press","year":2009,"isbn13":"9780195367805","url":"https://bookshop.org/a/130650/9780195367805"}],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"james-lind","name":"James Lind","url":"/great-lives/james-lind/","dates":"1716–1794","born":1716,"died":1794,"era":"18th-century","categories":["physicians-medicine"],"knownFor":"Scottish naval surgeon whose 1747 comparison of treatments showed that citrus fruit cures scurvy.","bio":"James Lind was born in Edinburgh on 4 October 1716 and apprenticed to a surgeon before joining the Royal Navy as a surgeon's mate in 1739. Scurvy, caused by lack of vitamin C, killed more British sailors than enemy action on long voyages. In 1747, as surgeon of HMS Salisbury, Lind took twelve sailors with scurvy, kept them on the same diet and divided them into six pairs, each given a different remedy: cider, dilute sulphuric acid, vinegar, sea water, a paste of spices, or two oranges and a lemon a day. The pair given citrus fruit recovered rapidly, one fit for duty within about a week. This is often cited as one of the first controlled clinical trials. Lind left the navy, took his medical degree in Edinburgh and published A Treatise of the Scurvy in 1753. From 1758 he was chief physician of the Royal Naval Hospital at Haslar, where he also worked on shipboard hygiene and on distilling fresh water from sea water. The navy did not adopt lemon juice as a standard ration until 1795, the year after his death on 13 July 1794.","keyDates":[{"date":"1716","event":"Born in Edinburgh on 4 October"},{"date":"1747","event":"Comparative trial of scurvy remedies aboard HMS Salisbury"},{"date":"1753","event":"Publishes A Treatise of the Scurvy"},{"date":"1758","event":"Chief physician at Haslar Royal Naval Hospital"},{"date":"1794","event":"Dies at Gosport on 13 July"},{"date":"1795","event":"Royal Navy adopts lemon juice"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Lind","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"charles-lindbergh","name":"Charles Lindbergh","url":"/great-lives/charles-lindbergh/","dates":"1902–1974","born":1902,"died":1974,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["explorers"],"knownFor":"Aviator who made the first solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic in 1927.","bio":"Charles Lindbergh was born in Detroit and grew up in Little Falls, Minnesota, the son of a congressman. He left college to learn to fly, worked as a barnstorming stunt pilot, trained as an Army reserve pilot, and flew airmail between St. Louis and Chicago. In 1927 he competed for the Orteig Prize of 25,000 dollars, offered for the first nonstop flight between New York and Paris. With backing from St. Louis businessmen, he had a single-engine plane built, the Spirit of St. Louis, packed with fuel tanks so large he could see forward only through a periscope. On May 20–21, 1927, he flew alone for thirty-three and a half hours and landed at Le Bourget field near Paris before a huge crowd. He became one of the most famous people in the world and promoted aviation and air routes. In 1932 his baby son was kidnapped and killed, a crime that shocked the nation. Before World War II he spoke for America First against entering the war, which damaged his reputation; after Pearl Harbor he flew combat missions in the Pacific as a civilian.","keyDates":[{"date":"1927","event":"Solo flight from New York to Paris"},{"date":"1932","event":"Kidnapping of his son"},{"date":"1941","event":"Speaks for America First"},{"date":"1944","event":"Flies combat missions in the Pacific"},{"date":"1974","event":"Dies on Maui"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"A mountain range in Greenland, the Lindbergh Range, is named after him.","source":{"title":"Charles Lindbergh (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Lindbergh"}}],"records":[{"text":"In 1927 he made the first solo flight across the Atlantic, from New York to Paris, setting a world record for flight distance.","source":{"title":"Charles Lindbergh (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Lindbergh"}},{"text":"Time magazine named him its first Man of the Year, for 1927.","source":{"title":"Charles Lindbergh (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Lindbergh"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Lindbergh","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"carl-linnaeus","name":"Carl Linnaeus","url":"/great-lives/carl-linnaeus/","dates":"1707–1778","born":1707,"died":1778,"era":"18th-century","categories":["scientists-mathematicians"],"knownFor":"Swedish botanist who created the modern system of naming living things.","bio":"Carl Linnaeus was born in Råshult, in southern Sweden, the son of a Lutheran pastor who was a keen gardener. He studied medicine at Lund and Uppsala, though he was most interested in plants. In 1732 he traveled through Lapland in northern Sweden, collecting plants and recording the customs of the Sami people. He earned his medical degree in the Netherlands, and in 1735 he published Systema Naturae, a short book that sorted plants, animals and minerals into a clear order of classes, orders, genera and species. He became professor at Uppsala, where he was a lively teacher who led students on long botanical walks, and he sent his students, called apostles, around the world to collect specimens; several died on their travels. His greatest lasting contribution was binomial naming, giving each species a two-part Latin name, such as Homo sapiens for human beings, which he used consistently in Species Plantarum of 1753. Scientists still use this system today. He was ennobled in 1761 as Carl von Linné. He died in Uppsala in 1778.","keyDates":[{"date":"1732","event":"Expedition to Lapland"},{"date":"1735","event":"Systema Naturae"},{"date":"1741","event":"Professor at Uppsala"},{"date":"1753","event":"Species Plantarum introduces two-part names"},{"date":"1778","event":"Dies in Uppsala"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["the-natural-history-of-selborne"],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"His favourite flower was the little twinflower, which was given the scientific name Linnaea borealis in his honour.","source":{"title":"Carl Linnaeus (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Linnaeus"}}],"records":[{"text":"His system of naming living things was the first to group humans scientifically with apes.","source":{"title":"Carl Linnaeus (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Linnaeus"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Son of a Lutheran parish pastor in Sweden.","source":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Linnaeus","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica (1911) (via Wikisource)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"joseph-lister","name":"Joseph Lister","url":"/great-lives/joseph-lister/","dates":"1827–1912","born":1827,"died":1912,"era":"19th-century","categories":["physicians-medicine"],"knownFor":"British surgeon who introduced antiseptic surgery.","bio":"Joseph Lister was born in Upton, Essex, to a Quaker family; his father improved the microscope. He studied medicine at University College London and became a surgeon in Edinburgh and then professor of surgery in Glasgow. In his time, many patients who survived operations died afterward from infected wounds, a problem called hospital disease. In 1865 Lister read Louis Pasteur's work showing that fermentation and decay are caused by microscopic living things carried in the air. He reasoned that the same might be true of wound infections and decided to kill the germs before they could enter. He used carbolic acid, which had been used to treat sewage, on wounds, dressings and instruments, and later sprayed it in the operating room. His first success was with an eleven-year-old boy, James Greenlees, whose broken leg healed without infection. Deaths in his wards fell sharply. Many surgeons were slow to accept his methods, but by the end of his career antiseptic and then sterile surgery were standard. He became surgeon to Queen Victoria and was made a baron. He died in 1912.","keyDates":[{"date":"1861","event":"Surgeon at Glasgow Royal Infirmary"},{"date":"1865","event":"First antiseptic treatment with carbolic acid"},{"date":"1867","event":"Publishes on the antiseptic principle"},{"date":"1877","event":"Professor at King's College London"},{"date":"1912","event":"Dies in Walmer, Kent"}],"quotes":[{"text":"it occurred to me that decomposition in the injured part might be avoided without excluding the air","work":"pasteur-and-lister-germ-theory-papers","location":"Lister, On the Antiseptic Principle (1867)","verified":true}],"author":"Louis Pasteur and Joseph Lister","relatedWorks":["pasteur-and-lister-germ-theory-papers"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"pasteur-and-lister-germ-theory-papers","url":"/works/pasteur-and-lister-germ-theory-papers/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"As a child he had a stammer, which may be why he was taught at home until he was 11.","source":{"title":"Joseph Lister (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Lister"}},{"text":"The Lister Hospital in Stevenage, England, is named after him.","source":{"title":"Joseph Lister (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Lister"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Descended from members of the Society of Friends (Quakers).","source":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dictionary_of_National_Biography%2C_1927_supplement/Lister%2C_Joseph","sourceName":"Dictionary of National Biography (1885–1900) (via Wikisource)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"philip-livingston","name":"Philip Livingston","url":"/great-lives/philip-livingston/","dates":"1716–1778","born":1716,"died":1778,"era":"18th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"New York merchant and philanthropist who signed the Declaration and died the next year while Congress sat at York, Pennsylvania.","bio":"Philip Livingston was born in 1716 in Albany, New York, into a prominent landed family, graduated from Yale, and became a wealthy merchant in New York City. He helped found the college that became Columbia, supported a public hospital and the city's chamber of commerce, and entered politics as the imperial crisis grew. He sat in the Continental Congress, signed the Declaration of Independence, and continued to serve as the war began to go badly in the middle states. In 1778 Congress was meeting at York, Pennsylvania, after leaving Philadelphia. Livingston, already in poor health, died there on 12 June 1778, one of the few signers who did not live to see the end of the war. His family's property in New York suffered during the British occupation of the city.","keyDates":[{"date":"1716","event":"Born in Albany, New York"},{"date":"1774","event":"Sits in the First Continental Congress"},{"date":"1776","event":"Signs the Declaration of Independence"},{"date":"1778","event":"Dies at York, Pennsylvania, while serving in Congress"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["the-founding-documents"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-founding-documents","url":"/works/the-founding-documents/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":null,"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"david-livingstone","name":"David Livingstone","url":"/great-lives/david-livingstone/","dates":"1813–1873","born":1813,"died":1873,"era":"19th-century","categories":["explorers","physicians-medicine"],"knownFor":"Scottish missionary doctor who crossed Africa and campaigned against the slave trade.","bio":"David Livingstone was born in Blantyre, Scotland, and at ten went to work in a cotton mill, studying Latin and science in the evenings. He trained as a doctor and in 1841 went to southern Africa with the London Missionary Society. Restless with mission stations, he began exploring, and between 1853 and 1856 he crossed the continent from Luanda on the Atlantic to Quelimane on the Indian Ocean, the first European known to do so. On the way he saw the great waterfall that the local people called the Smoke That Thunders and named it Victoria Falls. His book Missionary Travels made him famous. He hoped that commerce and Christianity would end the Arab and Portuguese slave trade in East Africa, and his reports of its cruelty helped turn British opinion against it. From 1866 he searched for the source of the Nile. In 1871 the journalist Henry Morton Stanley found him at Ujiji. He died in 1873 in present-day Zambia; his attendants carried his body to the coast, and he was buried in Westminster Abbey.","keyDates":[{"date":"1841","event":"Arrives in southern Africa"},{"date":"1855","event":"Reaches Victoria Falls"},{"date":"1856","event":"Completes crossing of Africa"},{"date":"1857","event":"Publishes Missionary Travels"},{"date":"1871","event":"Found by Stanley at Ujiji"},{"date":"1873","event":"Dies in present-day Zambia"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"A lion once attacked him and crushed his left arm; he survived because a companion, Mebalwe, distracted the lion.","source":{"title":"David Livingstone (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Livingstone"}}],"records":[{"text":"He was the first European to see the great waterfall that local people called Mosi-oa-Tunya, 'the smoke that thunders', and he named it Victoria Falls after Queen Victoria.","source":{"title":"David Livingstone (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Livingstone"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Scottish Christian missionary in Africa.","source":"https://www.britannica.com/biography/David-Livingstone","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"livy","name":"Livy","url":"/great-lives/livy/","dates":"59 BC–AD 17","born":-59,"died":17,"era":"ancient","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Roman historian, author of a history of Rome from its founding, Ab Urbe Condita.","bio":"Titus Livius, known in English as Livy, was born in Patavium, now Padua, in northern Italy, probably in 59 BC. Patavium was then one of the wealthiest cities in Italy, and Livy often wrote of his affection for it. His teenage years were a time of civil wars across the Roman world. Little else is known of his life, except that he was married and had at least one son and one daughter. He was on good terms with the family of the emperor Augustus and encouraged the young Claudius, a future emperor, to write history. Livy spent much of his life writing a history of Rome titled Ab Urbe Condita, From the Founding of the City, in 142 books, beginning with the legends of Aeneas and Romulus and continuing to his own lifetime. Only 35 books survive, including the first ten, which tell the stories of early Rome, and those on the war with Hannibal. Livy wrote vividly, using speeches and moral examples to bring the past to life. He died in Patavium in AD 17.","keyDates":[{"date":"59 BC","event":"Born in Patavium (Padua)"},{"date":"c. 27 BC","event":"Begins publishing his history"},{"date":"AD 17","event":"Dies in Patavium"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Livy (Titus Livius)","relatedWorks":["livy-history-of-rome-books-i-v"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"livy-history-of-rome-books-i-v","url":"/works/livy-history-of-rome-books-i-v/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented beyond the Roman religion of his time.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Livy","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["Livy's birth year is probable rather than certain; the start date of his history is approximate."]},{"slug":"arnold-lobel","name":"Arnold Lobel","url":"/great-lives/arnold-lobel/","dates":"1933–1987","born":1933,"died":1987,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American author and illustrator of children's books, creator of Frog and Toad.","bio":"Arnold Lobel was born in Los Angeles in 1933 and grew up in Schenectady, New York, where he was raised by his grandparents and was often ill as a child. He studied art at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and married Anita Kempler, also an illustrator, with whom he sometimes worked. He began illustrating children's books in the early 1960s and went on to write and illustrate many of his own, especially easy-to-read books for beginning readers. The best known are the four books about two friends, Frog and Toad, beginning with Frog and Toad Are Friends (1970), which was a Caldecott Honor Book; Frog and Toad Together was a Newbery Honor Book. Other favorites include Mouse Soup, Owl at Home, Grasshopper on the Road and Mouse Tales. His collection Fables won the Caldecott Medal in 1981. He also illustrated books by other writers. Lobel died in New York in 1987.","keyDates":[{"date":"1933","event":"Born in Los Angeles"},{"date":"1970","event":"Frog and Toad Are Friends published"},{"date":"1981","event":"Fables wins the Caldecott Medal"},{"date":"1987","event":"Dies in New York"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Arnold Lobel","relatedWorks":["frog-and-toad-are-friends","mouse-soup","grasshopper-on-the-road","owl-at-home"],"reading":[{"band":"K-2","kind":"library","work":"frog-and-toad-are-friends","url":"/works/frog-and-toad-are-friends/"},{"band":"K-2","kind":"library","work":"mouse-soup","url":"/works/mouse-soup/"},{"band":"K-2","kind":"library","work":"grasshopper-on-the-road","url":"/works/grasshopper-on-the-road/"},{"band":"K-2","kind":"library","work":"owl-at-home","url":"/works/owl-at-home/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Raised by his German-Jewish grandparents; his personal beliefs are not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Lobel","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"john-locke","name":"John Locke","url":"/great-lives/john-locke/","dates":"1632–1704","born":1632,"died":1704,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["philosophers"],"knownFor":"English philosopher of natural rights and government by consent, admired by the American founders.","bio":"John Locke was born in Somerset, England, the son of a lawyer who fought for Parliament in the Civil War. He studied at Westminster School and Oxford, where he became interested in medicine and science and worked with the chemist Robert Boyle. He became physician and adviser to the Earl of Shaftesbury, a leading politician who opposed the Catholic heir to the throne, and when Shaftesbury fell, Locke fled to the Netherlands in 1683. He returned after the Glorious Revolution of 1688. In 1689 and 1690 he published his major works. His Two Treatises of Government argued that people have natural rights to life, liberty and property, that government exists by the consent of the governed to protect those rights, and that a government that violates them may be resisted. His Essay Concerning Human Understanding argued that the mind begins like a blank page and gains its ideas from experience. His Letter Concerning Toleration argued that the state should not force religious belief. He also wrote on education. His ideas strongly influenced the Declaration of Independence. He died in 1704.","keyDates":[{"date":"1632","event":"Born in Wrington, Somerset"},{"date":"1667","event":"Joins the Earl of Shaftesbury"},{"date":"1683","event":"Flees to the Netherlands"},{"date":"1689","event":"Returns; Letter Concerning Toleration"},{"date":"1689–90","event":"Two Treatises and the Essay published"},{"date":"1704","event":"Dies in Essex"}],"quotes":[{"text":"where there is no law, there is no freedom","work":"second-treatise-of-government","location":"Ch. VI, §57","verified":true},{"text":"No man can be forced to be Rich or Healthful, whether he will or no.","work":"a-letter-concerning-toleration","location":"Letter, on the magistrate's care of souls","verified":true}],"author":"John Locke","relatedWorks":["second-treatise-of-government","a-letter-concerning-toleration","an-essay-concerning-human-understanding","jefferson-selected-writings"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"second-treatise-of-government","url":"/works/second-treatise-of-government/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"a-letter-concerning-toleration","url":"/works/a-letter-concerning-toleration/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"an-essay-concerning-human-understanding","url":"/works/an-essay-concerning-human-understanding/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Raised in a Puritan family; a Christian who argued for religious toleration.","source":"https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/locke/","sourceName":"Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy","documented":true},"furtherReading":[{"series":"Very Short Introductions","title":"Locke: A Very Short Introduction","author":"John Dunn","publisher":"Oxford University Press","year":2003,"isbn13":"9780192803948","url":"https://bookshop.org/a/130650/9780192803948"}],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"jack-london","name":"Jack London","url":"/great-lives/jack-london/","dates":"1876–1916","born":1876,"died":1916,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American author of The Call of the Wild and White Fang, drawn from his time in the Klondike Gold Rush.","bio":"Jack London was born in San Francisco in 1876 and grew up in Oakland, California, in a working family. He left school at fourteen and worked in a cannery, as an oyster pirate on San Francisco Bay, as a sailor on a sealing ship and as a laborer, and he traveled across the country as a hobo and was jailed for vagrancy. Educating himself at the Oakland public library, he briefly attended the University of California. In 1897 he joined the Klondike Gold Rush in the Yukon in Canada; he found no gold and came back ill with scurvy, but he gathered material for his stories. The Call of the Wild (1903), about Buck, a dog stolen from California and sold as a sled dog in the north, made him one of the most famous writers in the world. White Fang (1906) tells the reverse story of a wild wolf-dog who becomes tame. He also wrote The Sea-Wolf, Martin Eden and many stories, including To Build a Fire. He died at his ranch near Glen Ellen, California, in 1916.","keyDates":[{"date":"1876","event":"Born in San Francisco"},{"date":"1893","event":"Sails on a sealing ship"},{"date":"1897","event":"Joins the Klondike Gold Rush"},{"date":"1903","event":"The Call of the Wild published"},{"date":"1906","event":"White Fang published"},{"date":"1916","event":"Dies near Glen Ellen, California"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Jack London","relatedWorks":["white-fang","the-call-of-the-wild","london-martin-eden","london-the-iron-heel"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"white-fang","url":"/works/white-fang/"},{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-call-of-the-wild","url":"/works/the-call-of-the-wild/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"london-martin-eden","url":"/works/london-martin-eden/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"london-the-iron-heel","url":"/works/london-the-iron-heel/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[{"text":"He was one of the first American authors to become an international celebrity and earn a large fortune from writing.","source":{"title":"Jack London (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_London"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_London","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"henry-wadsworth-longfellow","name":"Henry Wadsworth Longfellow","url":"/great-lives/henry-wadsworth-longfellow/","dates":"1807–1882","born":1807,"died":1882,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American poet and Harvard professor, author of Paul Revere's Ride, Evangeline and The Song of Hiawatha.","bio":"Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born in 1807 in Portland, Maine, then part of Massachusetts. He attended Bowdoin College, where Nathaniel Hawthorne was a classmate, and after graduating he traveled in Europe for three years to study languages so that he could teach them. He became a professor of modern languages at Bowdoin and, from 1836, at Harvard. His first wife, Mary, died during a journey in Europe in 1835; his second wife, Fanny Appleton, died in 1861 after her dress caught fire, and he was badly burned trying to save her. Longfellow's poems, with their clear rhythms and stories from history and legend, made him the most popular American poet of his century. They include The Wreck of the Hesperus, The Village Blacksmith, Evangeline (1847), about Acadian lovers separated when the British expelled their people, The Song of Hiawatha (1855), drawing on Ojibwe legends, The Courtship of Miles Standish and Paul Revere's Ride (1860). He also translated Dante's Divine Comedy. He died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1882.","keyDates":[{"date":"1807","event":"Born in Portland, Maine"},{"date":"1836","event":"Professor at Harvard"},{"date":"1847","event":"Evangeline published"},{"date":"1855","event":"The Song of Hiawatha published"},{"date":"1860","event":"Paul Revere's Ride written"},{"date":"1861","event":"Death of his wife Fanny"},{"date":"1882","event":"Dies in Cambridge, Massachusetts"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Henry Wadsworth Longfellow","relatedWorks":["the-song-of-hiawatha","paul-reveres-ride"],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"library","work":"paul-reveres-ride","url":"/works/paul-reveres-ride/"},{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-song-of-hiawatha","url":"/works/the-song-of-hiawatha/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"As a boy he spent his summers on his grandfather's farm in Hiram, Maine.","source":{"title":"Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Wadsworth_Longfellow"}},{"text":"After his face was injured in a fire he stopped shaving, and his beard became his trademark.","source":{"title":"Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Wadsworth_Longfellow"}}],"records":[{"text":"He was the first American to translate the whole of Dante's Divine Comedy.","source":{"title":"Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Wadsworth_Longfellow"}}],"livedPlaces":[{"name":"Longfellow House–Washington’s Headquarters","note":"Henry Wadsworth Longfellow raised his family and wrote many of his poems at this house in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The National Park Service provides classroom activities, primary sources, and field-trip information.","url":"https://www.nps.gov/long/learn/education/index.htm","urlLabel":"Longfellow House–Washington’s Headquarters — for educators"}],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Wadsworth_Longfellow","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"elias-lonnrot","name":"Elias Lönnrot","url":"/great-lives/elias-lonnrot/","dates":"1802–1884","born":1802,"died":1884,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets","physicians-medicine"],"knownFor":"Finnish physician and folklorist who compiled the Kalevala, the national epic of Finland, from traditional songs.","bio":"Elias Lönnrot was born in 1802 in Sammatti, in southern Finland, then part of Sweden, the son of a poor village tailor. Despite his family's poverty, he studied at the Academy of Turku and then at Helsinki, earning a degree in medicine, and he worked for about twenty years as a district physician in Kajaani in northern Finland. During his studies he became interested in the oral poetry of Finland, and he made many long journeys, mostly on foot, to remote villages in Finland and Karelia, writing down traditional songs from singers. From this material he compiled the Kalevala, published in 1835 and expanded in 1849. It weaves songs about heroes such as the old singer Väinämöinen and the smith Ilmarinen into a single epic. The Kalevala helped inspire a Finnish national movement and influenced artists such as the composer Jean Sibelius. Lönnrot also compiled the Kanteletar, a collection of lyric songs, and a Finnish–Swedish dictionary, and he was a professor of Finnish at Helsinki. He died in Sammatti in 1884.","keyDates":[{"date":"1802","event":"Born in Sammatti, Finland"},{"date":"1832","event":"Graduates in medicine"},{"date":"1830s","event":"District physician in Kajaani"},{"date":"1835","event":"First edition of the Kalevala"},{"date":"1849","event":"Expanded Kalevala"},{"date":"1884","event":"Dies in Sammatti"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Elias Lönnrot (compiler)","relatedWorks":["kalevala"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"kalevala","url":"/works/kalevala/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"The asteroid 2243 Lönnrot is named after him.","source":{"title":"Elias Lönnrot (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elias_L%C3%B6nnrot"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elias_L%C3%B6nnrot","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"louis-ix","name":"Louis IX of France","url":"/great-lives/louis-ix/","dates":"1214–1270","born":1214,"died":1270,"era":"medieval","categories":["kings-queens-emperors","saints-reformers"],"knownFor":"Crusader king of France, known for his justice and piety; Saint Louis.","bio":"Louis IX became king of France at twelve, and his mother, Blanche of Castile, governed for him until he came of age. He was known for his personal devotion, his care for the poor and sick, and his concern for justice; his biographer Jean de Joinville describes him hearing the complaints of ordinary people beneath an oak tree at Vincennes. He forbade private wars and trial by combat in his lands, sent inspectors to check on royal officials, and built the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris to hold relics he believed to be Christ's crown of thorns. He led two crusades. On the first, in Egypt, he was captured in 1250 and ransomed, then spent four years in the Holy Land. He also ordered the burning of copies of the Talmud and imposed restrictions on Jews in France. On his second crusade, to Tunis in North Africa in 1270, he died of disease in camp. He was declared a saint in 1297, and the city of St. Louis, Missouri, is named after him.","keyDates":[{"date":"1226","event":"Becomes king"},{"date":"1248","event":"Sainte-Chapelle consecrated; departs on the Seventh Crusade"},{"date":"1250","event":"Captured in Egypt and ransomed"},{"date":"1270","event":"Dies at Tunis"},{"date":"1297","event":"Canonized"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["golden-legend-popular-saints"],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"French king and crusader whose canonization as a saint was proclaimed in 1297.","source":"https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09368a.htm","sourceName":"Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"louis-xiv","name":"Louis XIV","url":"/great-lives/louis-xiv/","dates":"1638–1715","born":1638,"died":1715,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["kings-queens-emperors"],"knownFor":"The Sun King, who ruled France for 72 years and built the palace of Versailles.","bio":"Louis XIV became king of France in 1643 at the age of four, and reigned for seventy-two years, longer than any other European monarch. As a boy he lived through the Fronde, a series of revolts by nobles and courts, which left him determined to keep power in his own hands. After the death of his chief minister, Cardinal Mazarin, in 1661, he ruled without a first minister. He took the sun as his emblem and moved his court to the vast palace he built at Versailles, where great nobles were kept busy with ceremony. His minister Colbert built roads, canals, industries and a navy, and Louis supported the writers Molière and Racine and founded academies of science and the arts. He fought a series of costly wars to expand France's borders. In 1685 he revoked the Edict of Nantes, which had protected Protestants, and some two hundred thousand Huguenots fled the country. He died in 1715, and his great-grandson became Louis XV.","keyDates":[{"date":"1643","event":"Becomes king at four"},{"date":"1648–1653","event":"The Fronde revolts"},{"date":"1661","event":"Begins personal rule"},{"date":"1682","event":"Court moves to Versailles"},{"date":"1685","event":"Revokes the Edict of Nantes"},{"date":"1715","event":"Dies at Versailles"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"The king of Portugal sent him an African elephant as a gift.","source":{"title":"Louis XIV (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_XIV"}}],"records":[{"text":"He is the longest-reigning monarch in history, ruling for 72 years and 110 days.","source":{"title":"Louis XIV (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_XIV"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A Catholic king who revoked the Edict of Nantes in 1685.","source":"https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09371a.htm","sourceName":"Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"toussaint-louverture","name":"Toussaint Louverture","url":"/great-lives/toussaint-louverture/","dates":"c. 1743–1803","born":1743,"died":1803,"era":"18th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders","military-leaders"],"knownFor":"Leader of the Haitian Revolution, the only successful large-scale revolt of enslaved people.","bio":"Toussaint Louverture was born into slavery on a plantation in Saint-Domingue, the French colony that is now Haiti, then the world's richest sugar colony, where hundreds of thousands of enslaved Africans worked under brutal conditions. He learned to read, became a coachman and steward, and was freed in the 1770s. In 1791 the enslaved people of the northern plain rose in revolt, and Toussaint soon became its most skilled leader. After France abolished slavery in 1794, he fought for the French Republic, defeating Spanish and British invaders, and by 1801 he governed the whole island and issued a constitution naming himself governor for life. He was a devout Catholic and tried to restore the plantation economy with paid but strictly controlled labor. Napoleon, who meant to restore slavery, sent a large army in 1802. Toussaint was invited to a meeting, seized, and shipped to France, where he died in a cold prison in the Jura mountains in 1803. Haiti declared independence the next year.","keyDates":[{"date":"1791","event":"Revolt begins in Saint-Domingue"},{"date":"1794","event":"France abolishes slavery"},{"date":"1801","event":"Issues a constitution as governor"},{"date":"1802","event":"Seized and deported to France"},{"date":"1803","event":"Dies at Fort de Joux"},{"date":"1804","event":"Haiti declares independence"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"As a small, thin youth he was nicknamed Fatras-Bâton, 'sickly stick', though he later became known for his stamina and riding skill.","source":{"title":"Toussaint Louverture (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toussaint_Louverture"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A Catholic who identified as a loyal Christian and made Catholicism Saint-Domingue's only publicly professed faith.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toussaint_Louverture","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["Birth year is uncertain."]},{"slug":"h-p-lovecraft","name":"H. P. Lovecraft","url":"/great-lives/h-p-lovecraft/","dates":"1890–1937","born":1890,"died":1937,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American writer of weird and horror fiction, creator of the Cthulhu stories.","bio":"Howard Phillips Lovecraft was born in 1890 in Providence, Rhode Island. His father was hospitalized when Howard was three and died some years later, and he was raised by his mother and grandparents. A sickly child, he read widely in his grandfather's library, loving Gothic tales and astronomy. He did not finish high school and spent his early adult life largely at home. He began writing for amateur journalism groups and then for pulp magazines, especially Weird Tales. His stories mix horror with science fiction, describing ancient beings from beyond the stars who are indifferent to humanity and whose existence drives those who learn of it toward madness. The Call of Cthulhu (1928) introduced a creature that became the center of a shared mythology later called the Cthulhu Mythos, which friends and later writers expanded. Other stories include The Colour Out of Space and At the Mountains of Madness. He was married briefly and lived in New York before returning to Providence, where he died in poverty in 1937. His work became widely known only after his death.","keyDates":[{"date":"1890","event":"Born in Providence, Rhode Island"},{"date":"1923","event":"First story in Weird Tales"},{"date":"1928","event":"The Call of Cthulhu published"},{"date":"1936","event":"At the Mountains of Madness published"},{"date":"1937","event":"Dies in Providence"}],"quotes":[],"author":"H. P. Lovecraft","relatedWorks":["the-call-of-cthulhu-and-other-weird-stories"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-call-of-cthulhu-and-other-weird-stories","url":"/works/the-call-of-cthulhu-and-other-weird-stories/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Moved away from his parents' Protestantism and was an atheist as an adult.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._P._Lovecraft","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"ada-lovelace","name":"Ada Lovelace","url":"/great-lives/ada-lovelace/","dates":"1815–1852","born":1815,"died":1852,"era":"19th-century","categories":["scientists-mathematicians"],"knownFor":"English mathematician who wrote what is often called the first computer program.","bio":"Augusta Ada Byron was the only legitimate child of the poet Lord Byron and Annabella Milbanke. Her parents separated weeks after her birth, and she never knew her father, who died when she was eight. Her mother, who had studied mathematics, had her taught science and mathematics, partly hoping to steer her away from her father's moody, poetic temperament. As a girl Ada designed a flying machine. At seventeen she met Charles Babbage and saw a working part of his Difference Engine, and they became friends. In 1835 she married William King, later Earl of Lovelace. In 1843 she translated an article by the Italian engineer Luigi Menabrea about Babbage's planned Analytical Engine, and added notes three times longer than the article. The notes included a detailed method for the engine to calculate a series of numbers called Bernoulli numbers, often described as the first computer program, and suggested that such a machine might one day work with symbols and even music, not just numbers. She died of cancer in 1852, at thirty-six. A programming language, Ada, was named after her.","keyDates":[{"date":"1815","event":"Born in London"},{"date":"1833","event":"Meets Charles Babbage"},{"date":"1835","event":"Marries William King"},{"date":"1843","event":"Publishes her notes on the Analytical Engine"},{"date":"1852","event":"Dies in London"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Ada Lovelace","relatedWorks":["notes-on-menabreas-sketch-of-the-analytical-engine","passages-from-the-life-of-a-philosopher"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"notes-on-menabreas-sketch-of-the-analytical-engine","url":"/works/notes-on-menabreas-sketch-of-the-analytical-engine/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[{"text":"She was the first to point out that a computing machine could work with things besides numbers, such as music.","source":{"title":"Ada Lovelace (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Under her mother's influence she had a religious change of heart near the end of her life; her beliefs are otherwise not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"lois-lowry","name":"Lois Lowry","url":"/great-lives/lois-lowry/","dates":"born 1937","born":1937,"died":null,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American author of books for young readers, including The Giver and Number the Stars, both Newbery Medal winners.","bio":"Lois Lowry was born Lois Ann Hammersberg in 1937 in Honolulu, Hawaii. Her father was a United States Army dentist, and the family moved often: to Brooklyn, to her mother's hometown of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, during the Second World War, and later to Tokyo, Japan, where she attended the American School in Japan. She learned to read at three and dreamed of becoming a writer. She studied at Brown University, married a Navy officer, and raised a family before finishing her degree at the University of Southern Maine. She began her career writing for magazines and as a photographer, and her first novel, A Summer to Die, appeared in 1977. She went on to write many books for young readers, including the comic Anastasia series. Number the Stars (1989), about a Danish girl who helps her Jewish friend escape the Nazis, won the Newbery Medal in 1990. The Giver (1993), about a boy in a controlled future community who discovers the memories it has suppressed, won the Newbery Medal in 1994 and was followed by three companion novels.","keyDates":[{"date":"1937","event":"Born in Honolulu"},{"date":"1977","event":"A Summer to Die published"},{"date":"1989","event":"Number the Stars published"},{"date":"1990","event":"Newbery Medal for Number the Stars"},{"date":"1993","event":"The Giver published"},{"date":"1994","event":"Newbery Medal for The Giver"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Lois Lowry","relatedWorks":["the-giver","number-the-stars"],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"library","work":"number-the-stars","url":"/works/number-the-stars/"},{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-giver","url":"/works/the-giver/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lois_Lowry","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"lucretius","name":"Lucretius","url":"/great-lives/lucretius/","dates":"c. 99–55 BC","born":-94,"died":-55,"era":"ancient","categories":["philosophers","writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Roman poet and philosopher, author of On the Nature of Things, a poem explaining Epicurean philosophy.","bio":"Titus Lucretius Carus was a Roman poet and philosopher who lived in the first century BC, probably from about 99 to 55 BC. Almost nothing is known about his life; the only certainty is that he was a friend or client of Gaius Memmius, a Roman politician to whom his poem is addressed. His only known work, De rerum natura, usually translated On the Nature of Things or On the Nature of the Universe, is a long poem in six books that sets out the teachings of the Greek philosopher Epicurus. It explains that everything is made of tiny atoms moving through empty space, that the soul dies with the body, and that people should therefore not fear death or the gods, and it describes the origins of the world, of life and of human society. The poem influenced the poets Virgil and Horace. It was almost lost during the Middle Ages, but a manuscript was rediscovered in a German monastery in 1417 by the Italian scholar Poggio Bracciolini, and it later influenced early modern thinkers about atoms.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 99 BC","event":"Probable birth"},{"date":"1st century BC","event":"Writes De rerum natura, addressed to Gaius Memmius"},{"date":"c. 55 BC","event":"Probable death"},{"date":"1417","event":"Manuscript rediscovered by Poggio Bracciolini"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Lucretius","relatedWorks":["on-the-nature-of-the-universe"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"on-the-nature-of-the-universe","url":"/works/on-the-nature-of-the-universe/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[{"text":"He is believed to be the first to describe the ages of tools: first wood and stone, then copper and bronze, and finally iron.","source":{"title":"Lucretius (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucretius"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"An Epicurean philosopher who taught that the gods do not intervene in the world.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucretius","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["Lucretius's dates are uncertain; c. 99–55 BC is the conventional estimate."]},{"slug":"martin-luther","name":"Martin Luther","url":"/great-lives/martin-luther/","dates":"1483–1546","born":1483,"died":1546,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["theologians-church-fathers","saints-reformers"],"knownFor":"German monk and professor whose challenge to the Church began the Protestant Reformation.","bio":"Martin Luther was the son of a copper miner in Saxony. He was studying law when, caught in a violent thunderstorm in 1505, he vowed to become a monk, and he entered an Augustinian monastery. He became a professor of the Bible at the University of Wittenberg. Troubled about how a sinner could be right with God, he came to believe from Paul's letters that people are made righteous by God's grace through faith, not by their own works. In 1517 he wrote the Ninety-Five Theses against the sale of indulgences. The printing press spread his writings across Germany. Refusing to take back his books at the Diet of Worms in 1521, he was declared an outlaw; his prince, Frederick the Wise, hid him in Wartburg Castle, where he translated the New Testament into German. He married a former nun, Katharina von Bora, wrote hymns such as A Mighty Fortress Is Our God, and wrote catechisms for families. His late writings against the Jews were harsh and are widely rejected today. He died in 1546.","keyDates":[{"date":"1483","event":"Born at Eisleben"},{"date":"1505","event":"Enters the monastery"},{"date":"1517","event":"Ninety-Five Theses"},{"date":"1521","event":"Diet of Worms"},{"date":"1522","event":"German New Testament published"},{"date":"1546","event":"Dies at Eisleben"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Martin Luther","relatedWorks":["luther-selected-sermons-and-treatises","luther-bondage-of-the-will","leipzig-disputation"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"luther-selected-sermons-and-treatises","url":"/works/luther-selected-sermons-and-treatises/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"luther-bondage-of-the-will","url":"/works/luther-bondage-of-the-will/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"leipzig-disputation","url":"/works/leipzig-disputation/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"book","title":"Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther","author":"Roland H. Bainton","isbn13":"9781426775963","publisher":"Abingdon Press","year":2013,"format":""}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Former Augustinian monk who became the central figure of the Protestant Reformation.","source":"https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/luther/","sourceName":"Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy","documented":true},"furtherReading":[{"series":"Very Short Introductions","title":"Martin Luther: A Very Short Introduction","author":"Scott H. Hendrix","publisher":"Oxford University Press","year":2010,"isbn13":"9780199574339","url":"https://bookshop.org/a/130650/9780199574339"}],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"charles-lyell","name":"Charles Lyell","url":"/great-lives/charles-lyell/","dates":"1797–1875","born":1797,"died":1875,"era":"19th-century","categories":["scientists-mathematicians"],"knownFor":"Scottish geologist whose Principles of Geology argued that the earth was shaped slowly by forces still at work today.","bio":"Charles Lyell was born in 1797 at Kinnordy, Scotland, the son of a botanist, and grew up mainly in the south of England. At Oxford he attended the geology lectures of William Buckland and became fascinated by the subject. He trained as a lawyer but gave up law for geology, traveling widely in Europe to study rocks, volcanoes and fossils. His Principles of Geology, published in three volumes from 1830 to 1833, argued that the earth's surface had been formed gradually over immense periods by the same processes, such as erosion, deposition and volcanic activity, that can be observed today, an approach called uniformitarianism. Charles Darwin read the first volume on the voyage of the Beagle, and Lyell later became his friend and supporter. Lyell also named the geological periods Eocene, Miocene and Pliocene. He made two long trips to North America and wrote about the antiquity of humans. He was knighted and later made a baronet, and he died in London in 1875.","keyDates":[{"date":"1797","event":"Born at Kinnordy, Scotland"},{"date":"1830–1833","event":"Principles of Geology published"},{"date":"1841","event":"First journey to North America"},{"date":"1863","event":"Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man"},{"date":"1875","event":"Dies in London; buried in Westminster Abbey"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Charles Lyell","relatedWorks":["lyell-principles-of-geology"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"lyell-principles-of-geology","url":"/works/lyell-principles-of-geology/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"Mount Lyell, the highest peak in Yosemite National Park, and craters on the Moon and Mars are named after him.","source":{"title":"Charles Lyell (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Lyell"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A deeply religious man who struggled to reconcile his beliefs with Darwin's theory of evolution.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Lyell","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"thomas-lynch-jr","name":"Thomas Lynch Jr.","url":"/great-lives/thomas-lynch-jr/","dates":"1749–c. 1779","born":1749,"died":1779,"era":"18th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"South Carolina signer, as young as Edward Rutledge, who was lost at sea about 1779 on a voyage to France.","bio":"Thomas Lynch Jr. was born in 1749 in Prince George's Parish, South Carolina, educated in England, and called to the English bar before returning home. His father, Thomas Lynch, was a member of the Continental Congress but was disabled by a stroke and could not sign the Declaration. The son was elected in his place, arrived in time to sign, and was, with Edward Rutledge, among the two youngest of the fifty-six. His own health was poor. In 1779 he sailed for France, hoping the climate would restore him; the ship was lost at sea, and he and his wife perished, probably in 1779. He was a young planter and lawyer in a slaveholding society, and he did not live long enough to leave a large public record after the signing. The empty date of his death is itself part of the story: not every signer came home from the Revolution.","keyDates":[{"date":"1749","event":"Born in Prince George's Parish, South Carolina"},{"date":"1776","event":"Takes his father's place in Congress and signs the Declaration"},{"date":"c. 1779","event":"Is lost at sea on a voyage to France"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["the-founding-documents"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-founding-documents","url":"/works/the-founding-documents/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":null,"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"douglas-macarthur","name":"Douglas MacArthur","url":"/great-lives/douglas-macarthur/","dates":"1880–1964","born":1880,"died":1964,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["military-leaders"],"knownFor":"American general who commanded in the Pacific in World War II and in Korea.","bio":"Douglas MacArthur was born in Little Rock, Arkansas, the son of a Civil War hero and general. In World War I he led troops in France, often from the front, and was decorated many times. He later served as superintendent of West Point and Army chief of staff, and then went to the Philippines as military adviser. When Japan invaded in December 1941, his forces were driven onto the Bataan Peninsula. Ordered to leave for Australia in 1942, he promised to return. Commanding Allied forces in the Southwest Pacific, he advanced along New Guinea, and in October 1944 he waded ashore at Leyte in the Philippines. He accepted Japan's surrender aboard the USS Missouri in September 1945 and then governed occupied Japan, overseeing a new constitution and land reform. When North Korea invaded South Korea in 1950, he commanded United Nations forces and made a bold landing at Inchon. After China entered the war, he publicly disagreed with President Truman's policy of limited war, and Truman relieved him of command in 1951. He died in 1964.","keyDates":[{"date":"1903","event":"Graduates first in his class at West Point"},{"date":"1942","event":"Leaves the Philippines for Australia"},{"date":"1944","event":"Returns to the Philippines at Leyte"},{"date":"1945","event":"Accepts Japan's surrender"},{"date":"1950","event":"Inchon landing in Korea"},{"date":"1951","event":"Relieved of command by Truman"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"He wrote that he learned to ride and shoot 'even before I could read or write—indeed, almost before I could walk and talk.'","source":{"title":"Douglas MacArthur (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_MacArthur"}}],"records":[{"text":"In 1925, at 45, he became the U.S. Army's youngest major general; he is one of only five people to hold the rank of General of the Army.","source":{"title":"Douglas MacArthur (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_MacArthur"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_MacArthur%27s_escape_from_the_Philippines","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"george-macdonald","name":"George MacDonald","url":"/great-lives/george-macdonald/","dates":"1824–1905","born":1824,"died":1905,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets","theologians-church-fathers"],"knownFor":"Scottish novelist, poet and minister whose fantasies The Princess and the Goblin and At the Back of the North Wind influenced C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien.","bio":"George MacDonald was born in 1824 in Huntly, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, the son of a farmer, and studied at King's College, Aberdeen. He trained for the ministry at a Congregational college in London and became pastor of a church in Arundel, Sussex, but some of the congregation disliked his theology and he left. He then supported his large family by lecturing, preaching and writing. In 1851 he married Louisa Powell, and they had eleven children. His fantasy Phantastes (1858) was followed by many novels of Scottish life and by fairy tales for children, including At the Back of the North Wind, The Princess and the Goblin (1872), about Princess Irene and the miner boy Curdie, its sequel The Princess and Curdie, and The Wise Woman. His friends included Lewis Carroll and John Ruskin. In poor health, he spent many winters in Bordighera, Italy. His writings greatly influenced later writers, including C. S. Lewis, who called MacDonald his master, and J. R. R. Tolkien. He died in Surrey in 1905.","keyDates":[{"date":"1824","event":"Born in Huntly, Scotland"},{"date":"1851","event":"Marries Louisa Powell"},{"date":"1858","event":"Phantastes published"},{"date":"1872","event":"The Princess and the Goblin published"},{"date":"1883","event":"The Princess and Curdie published"},{"date":"1905","event":"Dies in Surrey"}],"quotes":[],"author":"George MacDonald","relatedWorks":["the-wise-woman","the-princess-and-curdie","the-princess-and-the-goblin"],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"library","work":"the-wise-woman","url":"/works/the-wise-woman/"},{"band":"3-5","kind":"library","work":"the-princess-and-curdie","url":"/works/the-princess-and-curdie/"},{"band":"3-5","kind":"library","work":"the-princess-and-the-goblin","url":"/works/the-princess-and-the-goblin/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Raised under the influence of the Congregational Church in a Calvinist atmosphere; his books broadened spiritual ideals.","source":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Macdonald%2C_George","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica (1911) (via Wikisource)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"ernst-mach","name":"Ernst Mach","url":"/great-lives/ernst-mach/","dates":"1838–1916","born":1838,"died":1916,"era":"19th-century","categories":["scientists-mathematicians","philosophers"],"knownFor":"Austrian physicist and philosopher of science whose name is used for the Mach number, the ratio of a speed to the speed of sound.","bio":"Ernst Mach was born in 1838 in Chrlice, near Brno in Moravia (now the Czech Republic), and was educated largely at home by his father. He studied physics and mathematics at the University of Vienna, then taught at Graz and, from 1867, at Prague, where he was professor of experimental physics for nearly thirty years and served as rector of the university. He studied hearing, vision and the senses, and in the 1880s he took some of the first photographs of shock waves around speeding bullets; the ratio of an object's speed to the speed of sound is now called its Mach number in his honor. Mach argued that science should describe what can be observed and measured, and his criticism of Newton's ideas of absolute space and time in The Science of Mechanics (1883) influenced the young Albert Einstein. His Popular Scientific Lectures explained science for general audiences. From 1895 he held a chair in philosophy at Vienna. After a stroke he retired, and he died near Munich in 1916.","keyDates":[{"date":"1838","event":"Born in Chrlice, Moravia"},{"date":"1867","event":"Professor of experimental physics at Prague"},{"date":"1883","event":"The Science of Mechanics published"},{"date":"1887","event":"Photographs shock waves around a bullet"},{"date":"1895","event":"Professor at the University of Vienna"},{"date":"1916","event":"Dies in Germany"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Ernst Mach","relatedWorks":["mach-popular-scientific-lectures"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"mach-popular-scientific-lectures","url":"/works/mach-popular-scientific-lectures/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"The Mach number used for speeds faster than sound is named after him, and so are an asteroid, a crater on the Moon and even Speed Racer's car, the Mach Five.","source":{"title":"Ernst Mach (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Mach"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Baptized as a child; later became a socialist and an atheist.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Mach","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"niccolo-machiavelli","name":"Niccolò Machiavelli","url":"/great-lives/niccolo-machiavelli/","dates":"1469–1527","born":1469,"died":1527,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["philosophers","statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"Florentine diplomat and political philosopher, author of The Prince and the Discourses on Livy.","bio":"Niccolò Machiavelli was born in Florence in 1469, the son of a lawyer, and received a humanist education in Latin. In 1498, after the fall of the preacher Girolamo Savonarola, he became secretary of the Second Chancery of the Florentine Republic, responsible for diplomacy and defense. For fourteen years he traveled on missions to the courts of France, the pope, the Holy Roman Emperor and Cesare Borgia, whose methods he studied closely, and he organized a citizen militia for Florence. When the Medici family returned to power in 1512, he lost his post, and the next year he was accused of conspiracy, imprisoned and tortured, then released. Retiring to his farm near San Casciano, he wrote The Prince (1513), a short book advising rulers how to gain and keep power, which became famous for its frank view that rulers must sometimes act against conventional morality. He also wrote the Discourses on Livy, a study of republics, The Art of War, a History of Florence, and the comic play The Mandrake. He died in Florence in 1527. The adjective 'Machiavellian' later came to mean cunning and unscrupulous.","keyDates":[{"date":"1469","event":"Born in Florence"},{"date":"1498","event":"Secretary of the Second Chancery"},{"date":"1512","event":"Loses office after the Medici return"},{"date":"1513","event":"Imprisoned; writes The Prince"},{"date":"1521","event":"The Art of War published"},{"date":"1527","event":"Dies in Florence"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Niccolo Machiavelli","relatedWorks":["the-prince","the-art-of-war-machiavelli","machiavelli-discourses-on-livy"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-prince","url":"/works/the-prince/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-art-of-war-machiavelli","url":"/works/the-art-of-war-machiavelli/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"machiavelli-discourses-on-livy","url":"/works/machiavelli-discourses-on-livy/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Scholars debate whether his writings overturn the Christian understanding of the virtues.","source":"https://iep.utm.edu/machiave/","sourceName":"Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy","documented":true},"furtherReading":[{"series":"Very Short Introductions","title":"Machiavelli: A Very Short Introduction","author":"Quentin Skinner","publisher":"Oxford University Press","year":2019,"isbn13":null,"url":null}],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"alasdair-macintyre","name":"Alasdair MacIntyre","url":"/great-lives/alasdair-macintyre/","dates":"1929–2025","born":1929,"died":2025,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["philosophers"],"knownFor":"Philosopher who revived the ethics of the virtues in After Virtue.","bio":"Alasdair MacIntyre was born in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1929. He studied classics in London and philosophy at Manchester and Oxford, and taught at several British universities. As a young man he was active in Marxist politics, and his early books examined Marxism, Christianity and the history of ethics. In 1970 he moved to the United States, where he taught at Brandeis, Boston University, Vanderbilt, Duke and, for many years, the University of Notre Dame. In 1981 he published After Virtue, which argued that modern moral debate is confused because it has lost the idea of the virtues found in Aristotle. The book helped start a revival of virtue ethics. Soon afterwards he became a Catholic, and in later books such as Whose Justice? Which Rationality? he joined Aristotle's ethics with the thought of Thomas Aquinas. He died in 2025 at the age of 96.","keyDates":[{"date":"1929","event":"Born in Glasgow"},{"date":"1970","event":"Moves to the United States"},{"date":"1981","event":"Publishes After Virtue"},{"date":"1988","event":"Whose Justice? Which Rationality?"},{"date":"2025","event":"Dies aged 96"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Alasdair MacIntyre","relatedWorks":["macintyre-after-virtue"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"macintyre-after-virtue","url":"/works/macintyre-after-virtue/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Raised in Scotland; after a Marxist period he became a Roman Catholic in the early 1980s and wrote as a Thomist philosopher.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alasdair_MacIntyre","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"patricia-maclachlan","name":"Patricia MacLachlan","url":"/great-lives/patricia-maclachlan/","dates":"1938–2022","born":1938,"died":2022,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American children's author of Sarah, Plain and Tall, winner of the Newbery Medal.","bio":"Patricia MacLachlan was born Patricia Pritzkau in 1938 in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Her father was a professor of the philosophy of education and her mother an English teacher. When she was five the family moved to Rochester, Minnesota, and later to Connecticut. She studied English at the University of Connecticut, graduating in 1962, the year she married Robert MacLachlan; they had three children. From 1963 to 1979 she taught English at a junior high school in Connecticut. She began writing at the age of 35, after her children had started school, and published her first book, The Sick Day, in 1979. Sarah, Plain and Tall, about a woman from Maine who answers a widowed prairie farmer's advertisement for a wife and comes to meet his children, won the Newbery Medal in 1986. It was made into a television film in 1991, with MacLachlan as one of the screenwriters, and was followed by sequels. She wrote more than sixty books, some with her daughter Emily, and received a National Humanities Medal in 2002. She died in Williamsburg, Massachusetts, in 2022.","keyDates":[{"date":"1938","event":"Born in Cheyenne, Wyoming"},{"date":"1962","event":"Graduates from the University of Connecticut; marries"},{"date":"1979","event":"The Sick Day published"},{"date":"1986","event":"Newbery Medal"},{"date":"2002","event":"National Humanities Medal"},{"date":"2022","event":"Dies in Williamsburg, Massachusetts"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Patricia MacLachlan","relatedWorks":["sarah-plain-and-tall"],"reading":[{"band":"K-2","kind":"library","work":"sarah-plain-and-tall","url":"/works/sarah-plain-and-tall/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patricia_MacLachlan","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"james-madison","name":"James Madison","url":"/great-lives/james-madison/","dates":"1751–1836","born":1751,"died":1836,"era":"18th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"Chief architect of the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights; fourth President.","bio":"James Madison was a small, quiet Virginian who studied at the College of New Jersey, now Princeton, and read deeply in history and government. Before the Constitutional Convention of 1787 he studied ancient and modern confederacies, and his Virginia Plan became the starting point for the Constitution; his careful notes are the main record of the debates. With Alexander Hamilton and John Jay he wrote The Federalist essays urging ratification, including Federalist No. 10 on factions and No. 51 on checks and balances. In the first Congress he drafted the amendments that became the Bill of Rights. He also worked with Jefferson for religious freedom in Virginia and later founded the Democratic-Republican party with him. He served as Jefferson's Secretary of State and became the fourth president in 1809. His presidency included the War of 1812 against Britain, during which British troops burned Washington. His wife Dolley became famous as a hostess. Madison owned enslaved people throughout his life. He was the last of the Constitution's framers to die.","keyDates":[{"date":"1787","event":"Virginia Plan and notes at the Constitutional Convention"},{"date":"1787–88","event":"Co-writes The Federalist"},{"date":"1789","event":"Drafts the Bill of Rights"},{"date":"1809","event":"Becomes fourth President"},{"date":"1812","event":"War of 1812 begins"},{"date":"1836","event":"Dies at Montpelier"}],"quotes":[{"text":"If men were angels, no government would be necessary.","work":"the-federalist-papers","location":"Federalist No. 51","verified":true}],"author":"James Madison","relatedWorks":["madison-selected-writings","the-federalist-papers","virginia-and-kentucky-resolutions","madison-first-inaugural-address","madison-second-inaugural-address"],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"book","title":"The Great Little Madison","author":"Jean Fritz","isbn13":"9780698116214","publisher":"Putnam Juvenile","year":1998,"format":"paperback"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"madison-selected-writings","url":"/works/madison-selected-writings/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-federalist-papers","url":"/works/the-federalist-papers/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"virginia-and-kentucky-resolutions","url":"/works/virginia-and-kentucky-resolutions/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"book","title":"James Madison","author":"Richard Brookhiser","isbn13":"9780465063802","publisher":"Basic Books","year":2013,"format":""}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Raised Anglican; he championed religious freedom and the disestablishment of Virginia's Anglican Church. His personal beliefs are not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Madison","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"ferdinand-magellan","name":"Ferdinand Magellan","url":"/great-lives/ferdinand-magellan/","dates":"c. 1480–1521","born":1480,"died":1521,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["explorers"],"knownFor":"Portuguese navigator whose Spanish expedition made the first voyage around the world.","bio":"Ferdinand Magellan was born in northern Portugal to a noble family and served as a page at the royal court. After quarreling with King Manuel, he went to Spain and convinced King Charles I to back a plan to reach the Spice Islands by sailing west, around the Americas. In September 1519 he left Spain with five ships and about 270 men. He put down a mutiny in Patagonia, and in late 1520 found the narrow, stormy passage at the tip of South America now called the Strait of Magellan. He named the calm ocean beyond it the Pacific. The crossing took more than three months, and many sailors died of scurvy and starvation, eating leather and sawdust. In the Philippines, Magellan converted local rulers to Christianity, but in April 1521 he was killed in battle on the island of Mactan by warriors led by the chief Lapulapu. Juan Sebastián Elcano led the last ship, the Victoria, back to Spain in 1522 with eighteen survivors, completing the first voyage around the world.","keyDates":[{"date":"1519","event":"Sails from Spain"},{"date":"1520","event":"Passes through the Strait of Magellan"},{"date":"1521","event":"Crosses the Pacific; killed on Mactan"},{"date":"1522","event":"The Victoria completes the circumnavigation"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"book","title":"Who Was Ferdinand Magellan?","author":"S. A. Kramer","isbn13":"9780448431055","publisher":"Grosset & Dunlap","year":2004,"format":""}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[{"text":"His expedition was the first known European crossing of the Pacific Ocean, and he was the first European to sail through the strait now named after him, the Strait of Magellan.","source":{"title":"Ferdinand Magellan (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_Magellan"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A Catholic who tried to convert the people he met in the Philippines to Christianity.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_Magellan","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"maimonides","name":"Maimonides","url":"/great-lives/maimonides/","dates":"1138–1204","born":1138,"died":1204,"era":"medieval","categories":["physicians-medicine","philosophers","legal-scholars-lawgivers"],"knownFor":"Jewish philosopher, legal scholar and court physician in Egypt, author of the Mishneh Torah, the Guide for the Perplexed and medical treatises.","bio":"Moses ben Maimon, known as Maimonides, was born in Córdoba in Muslim Spain, usually dated 1138. When the Almohad rulers began persecuting Jews and Christians, his family left Córdoba and after years of wandering settled in Fez, then briefly in the land of Israel, and finally in Fustat (Old Cairo) in Egypt. After his brother David, a merchant who supported the family, drowned in the Indian Ocean, Maimonides earned his living as a physician and rose to serve the household of Saladin's vizier al-Qadi al-Fadil and later Saladin's son. He wrote medical works in Arabic, including Medical Aphorisms and a Regimen of Health, stressing diet, exercise, moderation and the health of the soul. He was also the leading Jewish legal scholar of his age: his Mishneh Torah, completed around 1180, arranged the whole of Jewish law in fourteen books, and his Guide for the Perplexed sought to reconcile Scripture with Aristotle's philosophy. Thomas Aquinas cited him with respect. He died in Fustat in 1204.","keyDates":[{"date":"1138","event":"Born in Córdoba (some sources give 1135)"},{"date":"c. 1168","event":"Settles in Fustat, Egypt"},{"date":"c. 1180","event":"Completes the Mishneh Torah"},{"date":"c. 1190","event":"Completes the Guide for the Perplexed"},{"date":"1204","event":"Dies in Fustat"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"The greatest Jewish philosopher of the medieval period, author of the Mishneh Torah, a compendium of Jewish law.","source":"https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/maimonides/","sourceName":"Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy","documented":true},"furtherReading":[{"series":"Very Short Introductions","title":"Moses Maimonides: A Very Short Introduction","author":"Ross Bran","publisher":"Oxford University Press","year":2025,"isbn13":null,"url":null}],"needsVerification":["Birth year is given as 1138 in most sources and 1135 in some.","Burial in Tiberias is traditional and is omitted."]},{"slug":"thomas-malory","name":"Thomas Malory","url":"/great-lives/thomas-malory/","dates":"d. 1471","born":1405,"died":1471,"era":"medieval","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"English knight and author of Le Morte d'Arthur, the classic English telling of the legend of King Arthur.","bio":"Sir Thomas Malory was the author of Le Morte d'Arthur, the best-known English telling of the legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Much about his life is uncertain. In his book he called himself a 'knight prisoner'. Most scholars identify him with Sir Thomas Malory of Newbold Revel in Warwickshire, a knight and member of Parliament who was imprisoned several times during the troubled years of the Wars of the Roses, both on criminal charges and possibly for political reasons; others have proposed different men of the same name. He seems to have written his book while in prison. Drawing mainly on French romances, which he translated and shortened, he told the whole story of Arthur, from his birth and the sword in the stone through the adventures of knights such as Lancelot, Gareth and Tristram and the quest for the Holy Grail, to the fall of the Round Table and Arthur's death. Malory died in 1471 and was buried in London. In 1485 the printer William Caxton published the book.","keyDates":[{"date":"1471","event":"Dies in London"},{"date":"1485","event":"William Caxton prints Le Morte d'Arthur"},{"date":"1934","event":"The Winchester Manuscript is discovered"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Thomas Malory","relatedWorks":["le-morte-darthur"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"le-morte-darthur","url":"/works/le-morte-darthur/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Malory","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["Malory's identity is not certain; dates follow the usual identification with Sir Thomas Malory of Newbold Revel, whose birth year is unknown; estimates range from the 1390s to about 1418."]},{"slug":"nelson-mandela","name":"Nelson Mandela","url":"/great-lives/nelson-mandela/","dates":"1918–2013","born":1918,"died":2013,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["statesmen-founders","saints-reformers"],"knownFor":"South African anti-apartheid leader, imprisoned for 27 years, who became the country's first Black president.","bio":"Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was born in 1918 in Mvezo, in South Africa's Eastern Cape, into the royal family of the Thembu people; a teacher gave him the English name Nelson. After his father's death he was raised by the Thembu regent. He studied at the University of Fort Hare and the University of the Witwatersrand and became a lawyer in Johannesburg, opening the country's first Black law firm with Oliver Tambo. He joined the African National Congress and campaigned against apartheid, the system of racial segregation introduced from 1948. In 1961 he co-founded the armed group Umkhonto we Sizwe. He was arrested in 1962 and, at the Rivonia Trial, sentenced in 1964 to life imprisonment; his statement from the dock, 'I am prepared to die', became famous. He spent 27 years in prison, mostly on Robben Island. Released in 1990, he negotiated an end to apartheid with President F. W. de Klerk, and the two shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993. In 1994 he was elected South Africa's first Black president. His autobiography is Long Walk to Freedom (1994). He died in Johannesburg in 2013.","keyDates":[{"date":"1918","event":"Born in Mvezo"},{"date":"1943","event":"Joins the African National Congress"},{"date":"1964","event":"Sentenced to life imprisonment at the Rivonia Trial"},{"date":"1990","event":"Released from prison"},{"date":"1993","event":"Nobel Peace Prize"},{"date":"1994","event":"Elected president of South Africa"},{"date":"2013","event":"Dies in Johannesburg"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Nelson Mandela","relatedWorks":["long-walk-to-freedom","i-am-prepared-to-die"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"long-walk-to-freedom","url":"/works/long-walk-to-freedom/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"i-am-prepared-to-die","url":"/works/i-am-prepared-to-die/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"The Lycée Nelson Mandela, a school in Nantes, France, opened in 2014 and is named after him.","source":{"title":"Nelson Mandela (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelson_Mandela"}}],"records":[{"text":"He was South Africa's first black head of state and the first elected in a fully representative democratic election.","source":{"title":"Nelson Mandela (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelson_Mandela"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Baptised a Methodist; he said Communism's atheism conflicted with his Christian faith, though biographers describe his belief as never robust.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelson_Mandela","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[{"series":"Very Short Introductions","title":"Nelson Mandela: A Very Short Introduction","author":"Elleke Boehmer","publisher":"Oxford University Press","year":2008,"isbn13":"9780192893444","url":"https://bookshop.org/a/130650/9780192893444"}],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"thomas-mann","name":"Thomas Mann","url":"/great-lives/thomas-mann/","dates":"1875–1955","born":1875,"died":1955,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"German novelist, author of Buddenbrooks and The Magic Mountain, and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature.","bio":"Thomas Mann was born in 1875 in Lübeck, in northern Germany, into a wealthy merchant family; his father was a grain merchant and city senator. After his father's death the family firm was dissolved, and the family moved to Munich, where Thomas began writing. His first novel, Buddenbrooks (1901), traces the decline of a merchant family over four generations, much like his own. In 1905 he married Katia Pringsheim, and they had six children, several of whom also became writers. His novella Death in Venice appeared in 1912. The Magic Mountain (1924), set in a Swiss sanatorium before the First World War, explores ideas about time, illness and European society. In 1929 he received the Nobel Prize in Literature. When Hitler came to power in 1933 he fled to Switzerland, and in 1939 he moved to the United States, teaching at Princeton and later living in Los Angeles. During the war he broadcast radio talks to Germany. His later novels include Joseph and His Brothers and Doctor Faustus. In 1952 he returned to Switzerland, where he died in 1955.","keyDates":[{"date":"1875","event":"Born in Lübeck, Germany"},{"date":"1901","event":"Buddenbrooks published"},{"date":"1912","event":"Death in Venice published"},{"date":"1924","event":"The Magic Mountain published"},{"date":"1929","event":"Nobel Prize in Literature"},{"date":"1933","event":"Goes into exile"},{"date":"1955","event":"Dies in Switzerland"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Thomas Mann","relatedWorks":["mann-death-in-venice"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"mann-death-in-venice","url":"/works/mann-death-in-venice/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Baptised Lutheran, his father's religion.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Mann","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"katherine-mansfield","name":"Katherine Mansfield","url":"/great-lives/katherine-mansfield/","dates":"1888–1923","born":1888,"died":1923,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"New Zealand-born modernist writer of short stories, author of Bliss and The Garden Party.","bio":"Katherine Mansfield was born Kathleen Mansfield Beauchamp in 1888 in Wellington, New Zealand, the daughter of a banker. She was educated in Wellington and at Queen's College in London, and she studied the cello. After returning briefly to New Zealand, she moved permanently to London in 1908 to become a writer. Her first collection, In a German Pension (1911), drew on a stay in Bavaria. She met the critic John Middleton Murry, whom she later married, and became friends with writers such as D. H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf. The death of her younger brother Leslie in the First World War in 1915 led her to write about her childhood in New Zealand, in stories such as 'Prelude' and 'At the Bay'. Her stories, which often focus on small moments and the inner lives of their characters, helped shape the modern short story. Bliss and Other Stories was published in 1920 and The Garden Party and Other Stories in 1922. In 1917 she was diagnosed with tuberculosis. She died at Fontainebleau, France, in 1923, aged 34.","keyDates":[{"date":"1888","event":"Born in Wellington, New Zealand"},{"date":"1908","event":"Moves to London"},{"date":"1911","event":"In a German Pension published"},{"date":"1917","event":"Diagnosed with tuberculosis"},{"date":"1920","event":"Bliss and Other Stories published"},{"date":"1922","event":"The Garden Party published"},{"date":"1923","event":"Dies at Fontainebleau"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Katherine Mansfield","relatedWorks":["bliss-and-other-stories"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"bliss-and-other-stories","url":"/works/bliss-and-other-stories/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"A street in Menton, France, where she lived and wrote, is named after her.","source":{"title":"Katherine Mansfield (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katherine_Mansfield"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katherine_Mansfield","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"lord-mansfield","name":"Lord Mansfield","url":"/great-lives/lord-mansfield/","dates":"1705–1793","born":1705,"died":1793,"era":"18th-century","categories":["legal-scholars-lawgivers"],"knownFor":"Lord Chief Justice of England who ruled in Somerset's case (1772) that a slave could not be forced out of England.","bio":"William Murray was born on 2 March 1705 at Scone Palace in Perthshire, Scotland, a younger son of Viscount Stormont. He was educated at Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford, and called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn. A brilliant advocate, he became Solicitor General in 1742 and Attorney General in 1754. In 1756 he was appointed Lord Chief Justice of the Court of King's Bench and created Baron Mansfield; he served for more than thirty years. Mansfield modernized English commercial law, drawing on the customs of merchants and on Roman and international law to settle questions of contracts, insurance and bills of exchange. In 1772, in the case of James Somerset, an enslaved man who had escaped in London and been seized to be shipped to Jamaica, he ruled that no law of England allowed a master to force him abroad, and Somerset went free. In the Zong case of 1783 he ordered a new trial of an insurance claim for enslaved Africans thrown overboard. His great-niece Dido Elizabeth Belle, the daughter of an enslaved woman, was raised in his household. He died on 20 March 1793.","keyDates":[{"date":"1705","event":"Born at Scone, Perthshire, on 2 March"},{"date":"1756","event":"Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench"},{"date":"1772","event":"Judgment in Somerset v. Stewart"},{"date":"1776","event":"Created Earl of Mansfield"},{"date":"1783","event":"Hears the Zong insurance case"},{"date":"1793","event":"Dies on 20 March"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["somerset-v-stewart"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"somerset-v-stewart","url":"/works/somerset-v-stewart/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Murray%2C_1st_Earl_of_Mansfield","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"ammianus-marcellinus","name":"Ammianus Marcellinus","url":"/great-lives/ammianus-marcellinus/","dates":"c. 330–c. 395","born":330,"died":395,"era":"ancient","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Roman soldier and historian whose Res Gestae is a chief source for the Roman Empire in the fourth century.","bio":"Ammianus Marcellinus was born around 330, probably in Antioch in Syria, into a Greek-speaking family. As a young man he served as an officer in the Roman army on the staff of the general Ursicinus, and he took part in campaigns in the eastern and western parts of the empire. He was at the siege of Amida by the Persians in 359 and escaped when the city fell. He later served under the emperor Julian in the east, during Julian's war against Persia. After leaving the army he traveled and eventually settled in Rome, where he wrote a history of the Roman Empire in Latin, continuing the work of Tacitus from the year 96. Only the later books survive, covering the years 353 to 378 and ending with the Roman defeat by the Goths at Adrianople. His history is valued for its eyewitness accounts, its portraits of emperors such as Julian, and its descriptions of the peoples and places of the empire. He probably died in the 390s.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 330","event":"Born, probably in Antioch"},{"date":"359","event":"At the siege of Amida"},{"date":"378","event":"His history ends with the Battle of Adrianople"},{"date":"390s","event":"Dies, probably in Rome"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Ammianus Marcellinus","relatedWorks":["ammianus-marcellinus-roman-history"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"ammianus-marcellinus-roman-history","url":"/works/ammianus-marcellinus-roman-history/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A pagan who nonetheless criticized the emperor Julian's religious policies.","source":"https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ammianus-Marcellinus","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["His birth and death dates are approximate."]},{"slug":"guglielmo-marconi","name":"Guglielmo Marconi","url":"/great-lives/guglielmo-marconi/","dates":"1874–1937","born":1874,"died":1937,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["inventors"],"knownFor":"Italian inventor who developed long-distance radio communication.","bio":"Guglielmo Marconi was born in Bologna, Italy, to an Italian landowner and an Irish-Scottish mother. Educated mostly at home, he read about Heinrich Hertz's experiments with electromagnetic waves and began trying to send signals without wires at his family's estate. By 1895 he could send signals over a hill more than a mile away. Finding little interest in Italy, he went to England, patented his system in 1896, and founded a wireless company. He steadily increased the range, sending signals across the English Channel in 1899, and on 12 December 1901 at St. John's, Newfoundland, he reported receiving the letter S in Morse code sent from Cornwall across the Atlantic. Ships began carrying Marconi wireless sets, and in 1912 the operators on the sinking Titanic used one to call for help, bringing the ship Carpathia to rescue the survivors. He shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1909 with Karl Ferdinand Braun. In later life he supported Mussolini's government in Italy. He died in Rome in 1937.","keyDates":[{"date":"1895","event":"First wireless experiments"},{"date":"1896","event":"Patents his system in Britain"},{"date":"1901","event":"Transatlantic signal reported"},{"date":"1909","event":"Nobel Prize in Physics"},{"date":"1912","event":"Titanic's wireless calls bring rescue"},{"date":"1937","event":"Dies in Rome"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"A large crater on the far side of the Moon and the asteroid 1332 Marconia are named after him.","source":{"title":"Guglielmo Marconi (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guglielmo_Marconi"}}],"records":[{"text":"On 13 May 1897 he sent the first wireless message ever over open sea, across the Bristol Channel in Britain.","source":{"title":"Guglielmo Marconi (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guglielmo_Marconi"}},{"text":"On 12 December 1901 he announced that a radio signal from Cornwall had been received across the Atlantic in Newfoundland, using an antenna held up by a kite.","source":{"title":"Guglielmo Marconi (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guglielmo_Marconi"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Baptized Catholic but brought up Anglican; later he was confirmed in the Catholic faith and became a devout member.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guglielmo_Marconi","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"marcus-aurelius","name":"Marcus Aurelius","url":"/great-lives/marcus-aurelius/","dates":"121–180","born":121,"died":180,"era":"ancient","categories":["kings-queens-emperors","philosophers"],"knownFor":"Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher, author of the Meditations.","bio":"Marcus Aurelius was adopted into the imperial family as a boy and carefully educated in Greek and Latin literature, rhetoric and philosophy. He became emperor in 161, at first sharing power with his adopted brother Lucius Verus, and is counted as the last of the so-called Five Good Emperors. His reign was hard. A plague brought back by soldiers from the East killed huge numbers across the empire, and much of his later life was spent on the Danube frontier fighting Germanic peoples such as the Marcomanni. In his tent during these campaigns he wrote private notes to himself in Greek, now known as the Meditations. They record his effort to live by Stoic philosophy: to do his duty, accept what he could not control, and treat others with patience and justice. Christians were persecuted in some cities during his reign. He died in 180, probably at Vindobona, modern Vienna, and his son Commodus, a far less able ruler, succeeded him.","keyDates":[{"date":"121","event":"Born in Rome"},{"date":"161","event":"Becomes emperor"},{"date":"c. 165","event":"Antonine Plague spreads"},{"date":"170s","event":"Campaigns on the Danube and writes the Meditations"},{"date":"180","event":"Dies on campaign"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Marcus Aurelius","relatedWorks":["meditations"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"meditations","url":"/works/meditations/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"book","title":"How to Think Like a Roman Emperor","author":"Donald Robertson","isbn13":"9781250621436","publisher":"St. Martin's Griffin","year":2020,"format":"paperback"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A Roman emperor who was also a Stoic philosopher.","source":"https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marcus-aurelius/","sourceName":"Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"maria-theresa","name":"Maria Theresa","url":"/great-lives/maria-theresa/","dates":"1717–1780","born":1717,"died":1780,"era":"18th-century","categories":["kings-queens-emperors"],"knownFor":"Habsburg ruler of Austria, Hungary and Bohemia who reformed her lands and defended her inheritance.","bio":"Maria Theresa was the eldest daughter of Emperor Charles VI, who had no sons and spent years getting Europe's rulers to accept that she would inherit his lands. When he died in 1740 and she became ruler at twenty-three, Prussia and others attacked anyway, starting the War of the Austrian Succession. She lost the rich province of Silesia to Frederick the Great but held the rest of her lands, partly by winning the loyalty of the Hungarian nobles. Her husband, Francis Stephen, was elected Holy Roman Emperor. She then reorganized the government, the army and taxation, made primary schooling compulsory in 1774, and reduced the labor peasants owed to their lords. She was a devout Catholic and expelled Jews from Prague for a time. She had sixteen children, among them the emperor Joseph II and Marie Antoinette, queen of France. After her husband's death in 1765 she wore mourning for the rest of her life, and she ruled with her son Joseph until her death in 1780.","keyDates":[{"date":"1740","event":"Inherits the Habsburg lands"},{"date":"1740–1748","event":"War of the Austrian Succession"},{"date":"1756–1763","event":"Seven Years' War"},{"date":"1774","event":"Introduces compulsory schooling"},{"date":"1780","event":"Dies in Vienna"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A Catholic empress who defended unity of faith in her state and restricted Protestants.","source":"https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09662d.htm","sourceName":"Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"marie-de-france","name":"Marie de France","url":"/great-lives/marie-de-france/","dates":"fl. c. 1160–1215","born":1160,"died":1215,"era":"medieval","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Medieval poet who wrote in French in England, author of the Lais, short verse romances.","bio":"Marie de France was a poet who lived and wrote in England in the late twelfth century and was probably born in France. Virtually nothing is known of her life. Her name comes from a line in one of her works, 'Marie ai num, si sui de France', 'My name is Marie, and I am from France'; scholars have proposed several noblewomen and abbesses of the time as her identity, but none has been proven. Her works were almost certainly known at the court of King Henry II of England. She wrote in Old French, probably the Anglo-Norman form used in England, and she also knew Latin and English. She is considered the first woman known to have written verse in French. Her Lais are twelve short poems in rhyming couplets, based on Breton tales, about love, loyalty and adventure, sometimes with magical elements such as a knight who turns into a werewolf. She also translated a collection of Aesop's fables and wrote a poem about the legend of St Patrick's Purgatory. Her Lais influenced later medieval romance.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 1160–1215","event":"Period of her literary activity"},{"date":"Late 12th century","event":"Writes the Lais"},{"date":"Late 12th century","event":"Translates Aesop's fables"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Marie de France","relatedWorks":["the-lais-of-marie-de-france"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-lais-of-marie-de-france","url":"/works/the-lais-of-marie-de-france/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[{"text":"Scholars consider her the first woman known to write poetry in French.","source":{"title":"Marie de France (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_de_France"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_de_France","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["Marie de France's identity and dates are unknown; fl. c. 1160–1215 is the scholarly estimate, and born/died fields use those bounds."]},{"slug":"christopher-marlowe","name":"Christopher Marlowe","url":"/great-lives/christopher-marlowe/","dates":"1564–1593","born":1564,"died":1593,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Elizabethan playwright and poet whose Tamburlaine and Doctor Faustus made blank verse the voice of English tragedy.","bio":"Christopher Marlowe was born in Canterbury in 1564, the son of a shoemaker, two months before William Shakespeare. He won a scholarship to the King's School and another to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where he took his degrees. The university at first hesitated to grant his master's degree because of his absences until the Privy Council intervened, stating that he had done the queen good service, a hint that he may have worked for the government's intelligence network. In London he wrote Tamburlaine the Great, whose thundering blank verse, praised by Ben Jonson as 'Marlowe's mighty line', transformed the English stage. Doctor Faustus, The Jew of Malta and Edward the Second followed, along with the poem Hero and Leander and a translation of Ovid. His life was turbulent: he was involved in a street fight in which a man died, and he was accused of atheism. In May 1593, at a house in Deptford, he was stabbed to death by Ingram Frizer in a quarrel over a bill, at twenty-nine. His plays deeply influenced the young Shakespeare.","keyDates":[{"date":"1564","event":"Born in Canterbury"},{"date":"1587","event":"Leaves Cambridge with his M.A.; Tamburlaine staged"},{"date":"c. 1592","event":"Doctor Faustus and Edward the Second"},{"date":"1593","event":"Killed at Deptford"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Christopher Marlowe","relatedWorks":["marlowe-doctor-faustus","marlowe-tamburlaine-the-great","marlowe-the-jew-of-malta","marlowe-edward-the-second"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"marlowe-doctor-faustus","url":"/works/marlowe-doctor-faustus/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"marlowe-tamburlaine-the-great","url":"/works/marlowe-tamburlaine-the-great/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"marlowe-the-jew-of-malta","url":"/works/marlowe-the-jew-of-malta/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"marlowe-edward-the-second","url":"/works/marlowe-edward-the-second/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Accused of atheism and blasphemy in his lifetime; some historians think these accusations, like rumours of Catholic sympathies, may reflect his work as a government spy. His beliefs are disputed.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Marlowe","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"john-marshall","name":"John Marshall","url":"/great-lives/john-marshall/","dates":"1755–1835","born":1755,"died":1835,"era":"19th-century","categories":["legal-scholars-lawgivers","statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"Fourth Chief Justice of the United States, who established judicial review.","bio":"John Marshall was born in a log cabin on the Virginia frontier, the eldest of fifteen children, and was taught mostly by his father. He served as an officer in the Continental Army, including the hard winter at Valley Forge, an experience that convinced him of the need for a strong national government. After brief legal training at the College of William and Mary, he became a leading Richmond lawyer, argued for ratifying the Constitution in Virginia, served as an envoy to France, as a congressman, and as Secretary of State under John Adams. In 1801 Adams appointed him Chief Justice, and he served for thirty-four years, the longest of any chief justice. In Marbury v. Madison in 1803 the Court under Marshall held that it could strike down laws that conflict with the Constitution. In McCulloch v. Maryland, Gibbons v. Ogden and other cases he upheld broad federal power and the sanctity of contracts. He persuaded the justices to issue single opinions of the Court. He also wrote a biography of George Washington. Marshall owned enslaved people. He died in 1835.","keyDates":[{"date":"1777–78","event":"Serves at Valley Forge"},{"date":"1800","event":"Secretary of State"},{"date":"1801","event":"Becomes Chief Justice"},{"date":"1803","event":"Marbury v. Madison"},{"date":"1819","event":"McCulloch v. Maryland"},{"date":"1835","event":"Dies in Philadelphia"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["marbury-v-madison","mcculloch-v-maryland","gibbons-v-ogden","fletcher-v-peck","dartmouth-college-v-woodward","worcester-v-georgia"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"marbury-v-madison","url":"/works/marbury-v-madison/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"mcculloch-v-maryland","url":"/works/mcculloch-v-maryland/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"gibbons-v-ogden","url":"/works/gibbons-v-ogden/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"book","title":"John Marshall: The Man Who Made the Supreme Court","author":"Richard Brookhiser","isbn13":"9780465096220","publisher":"","year":2018,"format":""}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"He was the oldest of 15 children and grew up in a two-room log cabin.","source":{"title":"John Marshall (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Marshall"}},{"text":"A sculpture called The Chess Players in John Marshall Park, Washington D.C., remembers his love of chess.","source":{"title":"John Marshall (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Marshall"}}],"records":[{"text":"He is the longest-serving Chief Justice in U.S. history.","source":{"title":"John Marshall (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Marshall"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Not religious; he never formally joined a church, did not believe Jesus was divine, and wrote of a deist 'Creator'.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Marshall","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"thurgood-marshall","name":"Thurgood Marshall","url":"/great-lives/thurgood-marshall/","dates":"1908–1993","born":1908,"died":1993,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["legal-scholars-lawgivers"],"knownFor":"Civil rights lawyer who won Brown v. Board of Education and became the first African American justice of the Supreme Court.","bio":"Thurgood Marshall was born in Baltimore on 2 July 1908, the son of a railway porter and a schoolteacher. As a schoolboy he was made to read the Constitution as a punishment and came to know it well. He studied at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania and, barred by his race from the University of Maryland's law school, at Howard University's law school, where he graduated first in his class in 1933. His mentor Charles Hamilton Houston trained a generation of Black lawyers to attack segregation through the courts. Marshall's early victory in Murray v. Pearson (1936) opened Maryland's law school to Black students. As chief counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, founded in 1940, he travelled the segregated South, often at personal risk, and argued dozens of cases, winning most of them before the Supreme Court. His greatest victory was Brown v. Board of Education (1954), which held segregated public schools unconstitutional. He became a federal appeals judge in 1961, Solicitor General in 1965, and in 1967 the first African American justice of the Supreme Court, serving until 1991. An Episcopalian, he died on 24 January 1993.","keyDates":[{"date":"1908","event":"Born in Baltimore on 2 July"},{"date":"1933","event":"Graduates first in his class at Howard University law school"},{"date":"1940","event":"Directs the new NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund"},{"date":"1954","event":"Wins Brown v. Board of Education"},{"date":"1967","event":"Sworn in as Supreme Court justice"},{"date":"1993","event":"Dies on 24 January"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["brown-v-board-of-education"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"brown-v-board-of-education","url":"/works/brown-v-board-of-education/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"sweatt-v-painter","url":"/works/sweatt-v-painter/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"An Episcopalian; the Episcopal Church added him to its calendar of commemorations.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thurgood_Marshall","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["His record before the Supreme Court is often given as 29 wins in 32 cases; counts vary, so the bio says \"most of them\"."]},{"slug":"martin-of-tours","name":"Martin of Tours","url":"/great-lives/martin-of-tours/","dates":"c. 316–397","born":316,"died":397,"era":"ancient","categories":["saints-reformers"],"knownFor":"Roman soldier turned monk and bishop, remembered for sharing his cloak with a beggar.","bio":"Martin was born at Savaria in the province of Pannonia, now Hungary, and grew up in Pavia in Italy, the son of a Roman army officer. As the son of a veteran he was required to join the army. Stationed at Amiens in Gaul on a bitterly cold winter day, he met a nearly naked beggar at the city gate, cut his military cloak in half with his sword and gave half to the man. That night, according to his biographer, he dreamed of Christ wearing the half-cloak. He was baptized and later asked to leave the army, saying he was a soldier of Christ. He became a disciple of Hilary, bishop of Poitiers, and founded a community of hermits at Ligugé, one of the first monasteries in Gaul. In 371 the people of Tours chose him as their bishop, though he was reluctant. He lived simply in a monastery he founded at Marmoutier, traveled the countryside preaching, and opened churches. He also pleaded with the emperor against executing heretics. He died in 397. His life was written by his friend Sulpicius Severus.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 316","event":"Born at Savaria, Pannonia"},{"date":"c. 334","event":"The cloak at Amiens, by tradition"},{"date":"c. 361","event":"Founds a monastery at Ligugé"},{"date":"371","event":"Becomes bishop of Tours"},{"date":"397","event":"Dies at Candes"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["life-of-st-martin","golden-legend-popular-saints"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"life-of-st-martin","url":"/works/life-of-st-martin/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"golden-legend-popular-saints","url":"/works/golden-legend-popular-saints/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Christian hermit and monk who became bishop of Tours; venerated as a saint.","source":"https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09732b.htm","sourceName":"Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"karl-marx","name":"Karl Marx","url":"/great-lives/karl-marx/","dates":"1818–1883","born":1818,"died":1883,"era":"19th-century","categories":["philosophers"],"knownFor":"German philosopher, economist and revolutionary, co-author of The Communist Manifesto and author of Capital.","bio":"Karl Marx was born in 1818 in Trier, in the Prussian Rhineland, the son of a lawyer. He studied law and philosophy at the universities of Bonn and Berlin, where he was influenced by the philosophy of Hegel, and received a doctorate from the University of Jena. He became a journalist, editing a newspaper in Cologne that the Prussian government shut down. In 1843 he married Jenny von Westphalen and moved to Paris, where he began a lifelong friendship and collaboration with Friedrich Engels. Expelled from France, he moved to Brussels, and in 1848 he and Engels published The Communist Manifesto, which argued that history is a story of struggles between social classes and called on workers to overthrow capitalism. After the revolutions of 1848 he settled in London, where he lived for the rest of his life, often in poverty, supported by Engels and by writing for newspapers. He studied economics in the British Museum reading room and published the first volume of Capital in 1867. His ideas later inspired communist and socialist movements and governments. He died in London in 1883.","keyDates":[{"date":"1818","event":"Born in Trier"},{"date":"1843","event":"Marries Jenny von Westphalen"},{"date":"1848","event":"The Communist Manifesto published"},{"date":"1849","event":"Settles in London"},{"date":"1867","event":"First volume of Capital published"},{"date":"1883","event":"Dies in London"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels","relatedWorks":["the-communist-manifesto","marx-capital-volume-i"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-communist-manifesto","url":"/works/the-communist-manifesto/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"marx-capital-volume-i","url":"/works/marx-capital-volume-i/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"bohm-bawerk-karl-marx-and-the-close-of-his-system","url":"/works/bohm-bawerk-karl-marx-and-the-close-of-his-system/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Born to parents of Jewish heritage; he wrote 'On the Jewish Question' (1843).","source":"https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marx/","sourceName":"Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy","documented":true},"furtherReading":[{"series":"Very Short Introductions","title":"Marx: A Very Short Introduction","author":"Peter Singer","publisher":"Oxford University Press","year":2018,"isbn13":"9780198821076","url":"https://bookshop.org/a/130650/9780198821076"}],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"george-mason","name":"George Mason","url":"/great-lives/george-mason/","dates":"1725–1792","born":1725,"died":1792,"era":"18th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"Virginia planter and Founding Father who wrote the Virginia Declaration of Rights and refused to sign the Constitution without a bill of rights.","bio":"George Mason was born in 1725 in Fairfax County, Virginia, into a family of wealthy planters. His father drowned when he was ten, and he was educated with the help of his uncle's large library. He managed Gunston Hall, his plantation on the Potomac River, which was worked by enslaved people, and served in local offices and briefly in the Virginia House of Burgesses. A neighbor and friend of George Washington, he wrote much of the Fairfax Resolves (1774), which protested British policies. In 1776 he was the principal author of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, which declared that all men are by nature equally free and independent and listed rights such as freedom of the press and of religion; it influenced the Declaration of Independence and later the Bill of Rights. He also helped write Virginia's first constitution. At the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787 he was one of three delegates who refused to sign, objecting chiefly that it lacked a bill of rights. He died at Gunston Hall in 1792.","keyDates":[{"date":"1725","event":"Born in Fairfax County, Virginia"},{"date":"1774","event":"Fairfax Resolves"},{"date":"1776","event":"Virginia Declaration of Rights"},{"date":"1787","event":"Refuses to sign the Constitution"},{"date":"1791","event":"Bill of Rights ratified"},{"date":"1792","event":"Dies at Gunston Hall"}],"quotes":[],"author":"George Mason","relatedWorks":["virginia-declaration-of-rights"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"virginia-declaration-of-rights","url":"/works/virginia-declaration-of-rights/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented; he championed religious toleration in Virginia's Declaration of Rights.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Mason","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"massasoit","name":"Massasoit (Ousamequin)","url":"/great-lives/massasoit/","dates":"c. 1581–1661","born":1581,"died":1661,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"Wampanoag sachem who made the 1621 peace with Plymouth and kept it through the rest of his life.","bio":"Massasoit, whose personal name was Ousamequin, was the sachem of the Pokanoket and the leading chief of the Wampanoag people when the Mayflower passengers settled at Patuxet, the place they called Plymouth. His birth year is uncertain; later writers have given dates around 1581 or 1590. In March 1621 he made a formal peace with the new colony, whose terms William Bradford later wrote down and said had lasted twenty-four years. In December 1621, according to Edward Winslow’s letter in Mourt’s Relation, he came to the harvest gathering with some ninety men and stayed three days. In March 1623, when word came that he was near death, Winslow visited him at Sowams and later wrote that he recovered quickly and called the English his friends. The peace did not erase later tension over land and power. Massasoit died in 1661. He did not live to see the death of his son Wamsutta (Alexander) the next year, or the war led by his son Metacom (King Philip) in 1675.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 1581","event":"Born about this year according to some later writers; the year is uncertain"},{"date":"1621","event":"Makes a formal peace with Plymouth Colony in March"},{"date":"1621","event":"Attends the harvest gathering at Plymouth in December, with some ninety men"},{"date":"1623","event":"Falls dangerously ill; Edward Winslow visits him at Sowams"},{"date":"1661","event":"Dies; later succeeded in turn by his sons Wamsutta and Metacom"}],"quotes":[{"text":"“O Winslow, I shall never see thee again.”","work":"good-newes-from-new-england","location":"March 1623, at Massassowat’s bedside","verified":true},{"text":"Now I see the English are my friends and love me; and whilst I live, I will never forget this kindness they have showed me.","work":"good-newes-from-new-england","location":"March 1623, after his recovery","verified":true}],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["mourts-relation","good-newes-from-new-england","of-plymouth-plantation"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"mourts-relation","url":"/works/mourts-relation/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"good-newes-from-new-england","url":"/works/good-newes-from-new-england/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"of-plymouth-plantation","url":"/works/of-plymouth-plantation/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"His personal name was Ousamequin; English writers usually call him Massasoit.","source":{"title":"Massasoit (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massasoit"}},{"text":"Bradford later wrote that the peace made with him in 1621 had by then continued twenty-four years, and he listed its six terms.","source":{"title":"Of Plimoth Plantation, 1898 official edition (Project Gutenberg #24950)","url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/24950"}}],"records":[{"text":"The peace treaty with Plymouth was negotiated in March 1621 and bound him to leaders including William Bradford and Edward Winslow.","source":{"title":"Massasoit (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massasoit"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":null,"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"henry-maudsley","name":"Henry Maudsley","url":"/great-lives/henry-maudsley/","dates":"1835–1918","born":1835,"died":1918,"era":"19th-century","categories":["physicians-medicine"],"knownFor":"English psychiatrist after whom the Maudsley Hospital in London is named.","bio":"Henry Maudsley was born in 1835 on an isolated farm near Giggleswick, Yorkshire, and was educated at Giggleswick School. His mother died when he was young, and an aunt cared for him. He studied medicine at University College London, winning many gold medals, and graduated in 1857. He meant to become a surgeon, but after working for some months at the West Riding Asylum in Wakefield he turned to the treatment of mental illness, and at twenty-three he became superintendent of the Manchester Royal Lunatic Asylum. He later moved to London, married the daughter of the psychiatrist John Conolly, and became a professor of medical jurisprudence at University College and an editor of the Journal of Mental Science. In books such as The Physiology and Pathology of Mind and Body and Mind (1870), he argued that mental disorders arise from the body and brain. In 1907 he gave money to the London County Council to found a hospital for the early treatment of mental illness and for research; the Maudsley Hospital opened after the First World War. He died in 1918.","keyDates":[{"date":"1835","event":"Born near Giggleswick, Yorkshire"},{"date":"1857","event":"Graduates in medicine"},{"date":"Late 1850s","event":"Superintendent of the Manchester asylum"},{"date":"1870","event":"Body and Mind published"},{"date":"1907","event":"Funds the hospital later named after him"},{"date":"1918","event":"Dies"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Henry Maudsley","relatedWorks":["body-and-mind"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"body-and-mind","url":"/works/body-and-mind/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"An agnostic who was critical of religion.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Maudsley","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"w-somerset-maugham","name":"W. Somerset Maugham","url":"/great-lives/w-somerset-maugham/","dates":"1874–1965","born":1874,"died":1965,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"British playwright, novelist and short-story writer, author of Of Human Bondage.","bio":"William Somerset Maugham was born in 1874 in Paris, where his father was a prosperous solicitor. His mother died just after his eighth birthday and his father two and a half years later, and he was sent to England to live with an uncle, the vicar of Whitstable in Kent. There he became shy and developed a lifelong stammer. He studied in Heidelberg, Germany, and then trained as a doctor at St Thomas' Hospital in London. He qualified in 1897 but never practised; his first novel, Liza of Lambeth (1897), drew on the slums around the hospital. By 1908 he had four plays running in London at the same time. During the First World War he was a volunteer ambulance driver in France and later worked for British intelligence. His partly autobiographical novel Of Human Bondage (1915) is considered his finest work. He travelled widely in Asia and the South Seas, which provided settings for many of his short stories and for The Moon and Sixpence (1919). From the late 1920s he lived mainly at Cap Ferrat, on the French Riviera. He died in 1965.","keyDates":[{"date":"1874","event":"Born in Paris"},{"date":"1897","event":"Liza of Lambeth published"},{"date":"1915","event":"Of Human Bondage published"},{"date":"1919","event":"The Moon and Sixpence published"},{"date":"1965","event":"Dies"}],"quotes":[],"author":"W. Somerset Maugham","relatedWorks":["the-razors-edge"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-razors-edge","url":"/works/the-razors-edge/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Lost his childhood faith after his prayers went unanswered.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Somerset_Maugham","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"guy-de-maupassant","name":"Guy de Maupassant","url":"/great-lives/guy-de-maupassant/","dates":"1850–1893","born":1850,"died":1893,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"French writer of the nineteenth century and a master of the short story, author of Boule de Suif and The Necklace.","bio":"Guy de Maupassant was born in 1850 in Normandy, France, and grew up near the coast at Étretat. His parents separated when he was a child. He studied law in Paris, but his studies were interrupted when he volunteered for the army in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871. Afterward he worked as a clerk in government ministries in Paris. His mother's friend, the novelist Gustave Flaubert, became his mentor, reading his work and introducing him to other writers. His story Boule de Suif (1880), about a group of travelers fleeing the Prussian army, was an immediate success, and he soon left his job to write full time. In about ten years he wrote some three hundred short stories, six novels, travel books and poems. His stories, such as The Necklace, about a woman who borrows a necklace and loses it, are known for their clear style, sharp observation of ordinary people and surprising endings. His novels include Bel-Ami. He suffered from serious illness, and after a mental breakdown he died in a clinic in Paris in 1893.","keyDates":[{"date":"1850","event":"Born in Normandy"},{"date":"1870–1871","event":"Serves in the Franco-Prussian War"},{"date":"1880","event":"Boule de Suif published"},{"date":"1884","event":"The Necklace published"},{"date":"1885","event":"Bel-Ami published"},{"date":"1893","event":"Dies in Paris"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Guy de Maupassant","relatedWorks":["maupassant-selected-short-stories"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"maupassant-selected-short-stories","url":"/works/maupassant-selected-short-stories/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Kept a lifelong hostility to religion from his church-school education.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_de_Maupassant","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"james-clerk-maxwell","name":"James Clerk Maxwell","url":"/great-lives/james-clerk-maxwell/","dates":"1831–1879","born":1831,"died":1879,"era":"19th-century","categories":["scientists-mathematicians"],"knownFor":"Scottish physicist who showed that light is an electromagnetic wave.","bio":"James Clerk Maxwell was born in Edinburgh and grew up on his family's estate at Glenlair in southwestern Scotland. His mother died when he was eight. At school his country clothes and accent earned him the nickname Dafty, but at fourteen he published a paper on drawing oval curves. He studied at Edinburgh and Cambridge and held professorships at Aberdeen, King's College London and Cambridge. He showed that Saturn's rings must be made of many small particles, and he made the first color photograph, of a tartan ribbon, in 1861. His greatest work joined electricity, magnetism and light. Building on Faraday's lines of force, he wrote a set of equations, now called Maxwell's equations, describing how electric and magnetic fields behave, and found that they predicted waves traveling at the speed of light; he concluded that light itself is an electromagnetic wave. This led later to radio. He also helped found the theory of gases. A devout Christian, he was the first director of the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge. He died of cancer in 1879, at forty-eight.","keyDates":[{"date":"1831","event":"Born in Edinburgh"},{"date":"1859","event":"Explains Saturn's rings"},{"date":"1861","event":"First color photograph"},{"date":"1865","event":"A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field"},{"date":"1874","event":"Opens the Cavendish Laboratory"},{"date":"1879","event":"Dies in Cambridge"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["faraday-experimental-researches-in-electricity"],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"At eight he could recite long passages of John Milton's poetry and the whole of Psalm 119, all 176 verses.","source":{"title":"James Clerk Maxwell (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Clerk_Maxwell"}},{"text":"He turned up for his first day at school in homemade shoes and a tunic, and the other boys nicknamed him 'Daftie'.","source":{"title":"James Clerk Maxwell (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Clerk_Maxwell"}}],"records":[{"text":"He was the first to work out the Maxwell–Boltzmann distribution, which describes how fast the particles in a gas move.","source":{"title":"James Clerk Maxwell (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Clerk_Maxwell"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"An evangelical Presbyterian who had a conversion experience in 1853 and later became an elder of the Church of Scotland.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Clerk_Maxwell","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"robert-mccloskey","name":"Robert McCloskey","url":"/great-lives/robert-mccloskey/","dates":"1914–2003","born":1914,"died":2003,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["writers-poets","artists-composers-architects"],"knownFor":"American author and illustrator of Make Way for Ducklings and Blueberries for Sal, winner of two Caldecott Medals.","bio":"Robert McCloskey was born in 1914 in Hamilton, Ohio, where he grew up with two sisters. At sixteen, as a summer camp counselor, he carved a totem pole that stood at the camp for more than fifty years, and at nineteen he made decorative relief panels for the Hamilton Municipal Building. He won a scholarship to the Vesper George Art School in Boston and later studied at the National Academy of Design in New York. Make Way for Ducklings (1941), about a family of mallard ducks who settle in the Boston Public Garden, won the Caldecott Medal in 1942. He also wrote Homer Price, about a boy in a small Ohio town. In 1940 he married Peggy Durand, daughter of the children's writer Ruth Sawyer, and they had two daughters. The family spent summers on Scott Island, off Deer Isle in Maine, the setting of four of his picture books; his wife and daughter Sarah were the models for Blueberries for Sal (1948). Time of Wonder won him a second Caldecott Medal in 1958. He died on Deer Isle in 2003.","keyDates":[{"date":"1914","event":"Born in Hamilton, Ohio"},{"date":"1940","event":"Marries Peggy Durand"},{"date":"1941","event":"Make Way for Ducklings published"},{"date":"1942","event":"Caldecott Medal"},{"date":"1948","event":"Blueberries for Sal published"},{"date":"1958","event":"Second Caldecott Medal, for Time of Wonder"},{"date":"2003","event":"Dies on Deer Isle, Maine"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Robert McCloskey","relatedWorks":["make-way-for-ducklings","homer-price"],"reading":[{"band":"K-2","kind":"library","work":"make-way-for-ducklings","url":"/works/make-way-for-ducklings/"},{"band":"3-5","kind":"library","work":"homer-price","url":"/works/homer-price/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"A bronze statue of Mrs. Mallard and her ducklings from Make Way for Ducklings stands in Boston, where thousands of children climb on it every year, and there is a Make Way for Ducklings parade every Mother's Day.","source":{"title":"Robert McCloskey (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_McCloskey"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_McCloskey","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"cyrus-mccormick","name":"Cyrus McCormick","url":"/great-lives/cyrus-mccormick/","dates":"1809–1884","born":1809,"died":1884,"era":"19th-century","categories":["inventors","titans-of-industry"],"knownFor":"American inventor and manufacturer of the mechanical reaper.","bio":"Cyrus Hall McCormick was born on a farm in Rockbridge County, Virginia. His father, Robert, had spent years trying to build a machine to cut grain. Cyrus took up the problem and in 1831 demonstrated a horse-drawn reaper with a cutting blade, a reel to hold the stalks, and a platform to catch the cut grain. Enslaved workers on the McCormick farm, including a man named Jo Anderson, helped build and test it. He patented the reaper in 1834. At first sales were slow, but in 1847 McCormick moved his business to Chicago, close to the wide prairies of the Midwest, and built a large factory. He sold reapers on credit, offered written guarantees, used advertising and trained agents, and provided repair parts, methods that later became common in American business. One man with a reaper could harvest as much wheat as several men with hand tools, which helped open the prairies to large-scale farming. His factory burned in the Chicago fire of 1871 and was rebuilt. He died in 1884.","keyDates":[{"date":"1831","event":"Demonstrates the reaper"},{"date":"1834","event":"Receives a patent"},{"date":"1847","event":"Opens a factory in Chicago"},{"date":"1851","event":"Reaper wins a medal at London's Great Exhibition"},{"date":"1884","event":"Dies in Chicago"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Active in the Presbyterian church; he endowed the McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago.","source":"https://www.britannica.com/biography/Cyrus-McCormick","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"john-mccrae","name":"John McCrae","url":"/great-lives/john-mccrae/","dates":"1872–1918","born":1872,"died":1918,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets","physicians-medicine"],"knownFor":"Canadian poet, physician and soldier, author of In Flanders Fields.","bio":"John McCrae was born in 1872 in Guelph, Ontario, the son of a military officer. He studied at the University of Toronto, earning a degree in medicine, and trained further at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. He served as an artillery officer in the Second Boer War in South Africa, then returned to medicine in Montreal, where he taught pathology at McGill University and worked at several hospitals. When the First World War began in 1914 he enlisted in the Canadian army as a brigade surgeon. In 1915, during the Second Battle of Ypres in Belgium, he treated the wounded for weeks under heavy fire. After the death of his friend Alexis Helmer, he wrote 'In Flanders Fields', a short poem spoken by the dead soldiers buried beneath the poppies. It was published in the magazine Punch in December 1915 and became one of the best-known poems of the war; it helped make the poppy a symbol of remembrance. McCrae later commanded a military hospital in France. He died of pneumonia and meningitis in 1918.","keyDates":[{"date":"1872","event":"Born in Guelph, Ontario"},{"date":"1914","event":"Enlists in the Canadian army"},{"date":"1915","event":"Writes In Flanders Fields at Ypres"},{"date":"1915","event":"Poem published in Punch"},{"date":"1918","event":"Dies in France"}],"quotes":[],"author":"John McCrae","relatedWorks":["in-flanders-fields"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"in-flanders-fields","url":"/works/in-flanders-fields/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McCrae","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"warren-mcculloch","name":"Warren McCulloch","url":"/great-lives/warren-mcculloch/","dates":"1898–1969","born":1898,"died":1969,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["scientists-mathematicians","physicians-medicine"],"knownFor":"American neurophysiologist and pioneer of cybernetics who, with Walter Pitts, created the first mathematical model of a neural network.","bio":"Warren Sturgis McCulloch was born in Orange, New Jersey, in 1898. As a young man he planned to join the Christian ministry. He attended Haverford College and then studied philosophy and psychology at Yale University, graduating in 1921, and earned a master's degree at Columbia University in 1923 and a medical degree there in 1927. After working in New York hospitals, he returned to research in 1934 at Yale's Laboratory for Neurophysiology. In 1941 he became a professor of psychiatry at the University of Illinois at Chicago. There he invited the young logician Walter Pitts to live with his family, and together they wrote 'A Logical Calculus of the Ideas Immanent in Nervous Activity' (1943), which described how networks of simple model neurons could compute. It became a foundation of neural network theory and the theory of computation. McCulloch chaired the Macy conferences on cybernetics and from 1952 worked at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He also wrote sonnets and built a dam on his farm in Connecticut. He married Ruth Metzger in 1924, and they had three children. He died in 1969.","keyDates":[{"date":"1898","event":"Born in Orange, New Jersey"},{"date":"1927","event":"Medical degree from Columbia University"},{"date":"1941","event":"Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago"},{"date":"1943","event":"A Logical Calculus published with Walter Pitts"},{"date":"1952","event":"Joins MIT"},{"date":"1969","event":"Dies in Cambridge, Massachusetts"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Warren McCulloch and Walter Pitts","relatedWorks":["logical-calculus-of-ideas-immanent-in-nervous-activity"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"logical-calculus-of-ideas-immanent-in-nervous-activity","url":"/works/logical-calculus-of-ideas-immanent-in-nervous-activity/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Originally planned to join the Christian ministry and was mentored by the Quaker Rufus Jones.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Sturgis_McCulloch","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"david-mccullough","name":"David McCullough","url":"/great-lives/david-mccullough/","dates":"1933–2022","born":1933,"died":2022,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American historian and biographer, twice winner of the Pulitzer Prize, for Truman and John Adams.","bio":"David McCullough was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1933. He studied English literature at Yale University, where he met writers such as Thornton Wilder, and then worked for Time and Life magazines, for the United States Information Agency, and for the magazine American Heritage. His first book, The Johnstown Flood (1968), told of the 1889 dam collapse in Pennsylvania. It was followed by The Great Bridge, about the building of the Brooklyn Bridge, and The Path Between the Seas, about the Panama Canal, which won the National Book Award. His biographies Truman (1992) and John Adams (2001) both won the Pulitzer Prize, and John Adams was later made into a television series. Other books include 1776, The Greater Journey and The Wright Brothers. McCullough was also widely known as the narrator of documentaries, including Ken Burns's The Civil War, and as host of the PBS series American Experience. He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2006 and died in Massachusetts in 2022.","keyDates":[{"date":"1933","event":"Born in Pittsburgh"},{"date":"1968","event":"The Johnstown Flood published"},{"date":"1992","event":"Truman; first Pulitzer Prize"},{"date":"2001","event":"John Adams; second Pulitzer Prize"},{"date":"2006","event":"Presidential Medal of Freedom"},{"date":"2022","event":"Dies"}],"quotes":[],"author":"David McCullough","relatedWorks":["mccullough-john-adams"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"mccullough-john-adams","url":"/works/mccullough-john-adams/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_McCullough","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"thomas-mckean","name":"Thomas McKean","url":"/great-lives/thomas-mckean/","dates":"1734–1817","born":1734,"died":1817,"era":"18th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders","legal-scholars-lawgivers"],"knownFor":"Delaware delegate who voted for independence, signed later than most, and went on to be chief justice and governor of Pennsylvania.","bio":"Thomas McKean was born in 1734 in Chester County, Pennsylvania, studied law, and represented Delaware in the Continental Congress. On 2 July 1776 he voted for independence and sent for Caesar Rodney so that Delaware's delegation would not be tied. He was often away from Philadelphia after that summer, and his name was not on the first published list of signers; most historians conclude that he added his signature later than the 2 August signing, perhaps much later. McKean later served as president of Congress and, for a generation, as chief justice of Pennsylvania, then as that state's governor. He could be a fierce partisan, and his long hold on office drew criticism as well as praise. He died in Philadelphia in 1817, one of the last surviving signers. His career shows how a single generation might help found a nation and then spend decades arguing over how it should be governed.","keyDates":[{"date":"1734","event":"Born in Chester County, Pennsylvania"},{"date":"2 July 1776","event":"Votes for independence and summons Caesar Rodney"},{"date":"1776–1777","event":"Signs the Declaration, later than most of the other delegates"},{"date":"1777","event":"Becomes chief justice of Pennsylvania"},{"date":"1799","event":"Becomes governor of Pennsylvania"},{"date":"1817","event":"Dies in Philadelphia"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["the-founding-documents"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-founding-documents","url":"/works/the-founding-documents/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":null,"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"emperor-meiji","name":"Emperor Meiji","url":"/great-lives/emperor-meiji/","dates":"1852–1912","born":1852,"died":1912,"era":"19th-century","categories":["kings-queens-emperors"],"knownFor":"Emperor of Japan during its rapid transformation into a modern industrial state.","bio":"Mutsuhito, known after his death as Emperor Meiji, came to the throne of Japan in 1867 at fourteen. For more than two centuries real power had rested with the shogun, a military ruler, while the emperor lived in seclusion in Kyoto. In 1868, a group of young samurai from southwestern Japan overthrew the shogun in the name of the emperor, an event called the Meiji Restoration. The capital moved to Edo, renamed Tokyo. In the emperor's name, the new leaders abolished the feudal domains and the samurai class, built railways, telegraphs and factories, introduced compulsory schooling and a conscript army, and sent students abroad to learn Western science, law and industry. The Charter Oath of 1868 promised that knowledge would be sought throughout the world. In 1889 the emperor granted a constitution creating a parliament. Japan defeated China in 1895 and Russia in 1905 and annexed Korea in 1910. Meiji wrote many thousands of short poems. He died in 1912, and his reign gave its name to the era.","keyDates":[{"date":"1867","event":"Becomes emperor"},{"date":"1868","event":"Meiji Restoration; Charter Oath"},{"date":"1871","event":"Feudal domains abolished"},{"date":"1889","event":"Meiji Constitution"},{"date":"1905","event":"Japan defeats Russia"},{"date":"1912","event":"Dies in Tokyo"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Shinto; as emperor he was the central figure of Japan's state religion.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor_Meiji","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"philip-melanchthon","name":"Philip Melanchthon","url":"/great-lives/philip-melanchthon/","dates":"1497–1560","born":1497,"died":1560,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["theologians-church-fathers","saints-reformers"],"knownFor":"German humanist scholar, Martin Luther's chief colleague at Wittenberg and author of the Augsburg Confession.","bio":"Philip Melanchthon was born Philipp Schwartzerdt in 1497 at Bretten in the Palatinate; his great-uncle, the scholar Johann Reuchlin, gave him the Greek form of his surname. A brilliant student of Greek at Heidelberg and Tübingen, he was appointed professor of Greek at Wittenberg in 1518 at the age of twenty-one and quickly became Martin Luther's closest ally. His Loci Communes (1521) was the first systematic Protestant theology. In 1530 he drafted the Augsburg Confession, presented to Emperor Charles V as a statement of Lutheran belief, and soon afterwards its Apology. Gentler than Luther, he sought agreement with Catholics and with Reformed theologians, which drew criticism from stricter Lutherans after Luther's death. A reformer of schools and universities across Protestant Germany, he was called the Teacher of Germany (Praeceptor Germaniae). He died in Wittenberg in 1560 and is buried beside Luther in the Castle Church. His Augsburg Confession remains the chief Lutheran statement of faith.","keyDates":[{"date":"1497","event":"Born at Bretten"},{"date":"1518","event":"Professor of Greek at Wittenberg"},{"date":"1521","event":"Loci Communes"},{"date":"1530","event":"Augsburg Confession"},{"date":"1560","event":"Dies in Wittenberg"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Philip Melanchthon","relatedWorks":["luther-selected-sermons-and-treatises","augsburg-confession"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"augsburg-confession","url":"/works/augsburg-confession/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"luther-selected-sermons-and-treatises","url":"/works/luther-selected-sermons-and-treatises/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Collaborator and friend of Martin Luther, whom he called his intellectual father in theology.","source":"https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10151a.htm","sourceName":"Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"herman-melville","name":"Herman Melville","url":"/great-lives/herman-melville/","dates":"1819–1891","born":1819,"died":1891,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American novelist and poet, author of Moby-Dick and Billy Budd.","bio":"Herman Melville was born in New York City in 1819. His father's import business failed and he died when Herman was twelve, leaving the family in debt. Melville worked as a bank clerk, teacher and farmhand, and in 1839 he sailed on a merchant ship to Liverpool. In 1841 he joined the crew of the whaling ship Acushnet, bound for the Pacific. He deserted in the Marquesas Islands, lived for a time among the Taipi people, and later served on other ships, including a United States Navy frigate. His novels based on these adventures, Typee (1846) and Omoo, were popular. While living on a farm in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, where he became friends with Nathaniel Hawthorne, he wrote Moby-Dick (1851), the story of Captain Ahab's obsessive hunt for a white whale, narrated by the sailor Ishmael. It sold poorly, and his later books, including Bartleby, the Scrivener, were also little noticed. For nineteen years he worked as a customs inspector in New York. He died there in 1891, leaving Billy Budd unfinished; it was published in 1924.","keyDates":[{"date":"1819","event":"Born in New York City"},{"date":"1841","event":"Sails on the whaler Acushnet"},{"date":"1846","event":"Typee published"},{"date":"1851","event":"Moby-Dick published"},{"date":"1866","event":"Becomes a customs inspector in New York"},{"date":"1891","event":"Dies in New York"},{"date":"1924","event":"Billy Budd published"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Herman Melville","relatedWorks":["moby-dick","billy-budd-and-other-stories","melville-typee"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"moby-dick","url":"/works/moby-dick/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"billy-budd-and-other-stories","url":"/works/billy-budd-and-other-stories/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"melville-typee","url":"/works/melville-typee/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[{"text":"His poem Clarel is among the longest single poems in American literature.","source":{"title":"Herman Melville (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herman_Melville"}}],"livedPlaces":[{"name":"Herman Melville’s Arrowhead","note":"Melville lived at Arrowhead in Pittsfield, Massachusetts from 1850 to 1863 and wrote Moby-Dick there. The Berkshire County Historical Society explains the preserved house and the landscapes that inspired him.","url":"https://berkshirehistory.org/herman-melville-arrowhead/melville-trail/","urlLabel":"Herman Melville’s Arrowhead — house and literary landscape"}],"faith":{"note":"Raised in a home shaped by his mother's strict Dutch Reformed (Calvinist) faith; his own later beliefs were questioning and are debated.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herman_Melville","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[{"series":"Very Short Introductions","title":"Herman Melville: A Very Short Introduction","author":"Maurice S. Lee","publisher":"Oxford University Press","year":2026,"isbn13":null,"url":null}],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"gregor-mendel","name":"Gregor Mendel","url":"/great-lives/gregor-mendel/","dates":"1822–1884","born":1822,"died":1884,"era":"19th-century","categories":["scientists-mathematicians"],"knownFor":"Augustinian friar whose pea-plant experiments founded genetics.","bio":"Johann Mendel was born to a farming family in Heinzendorf, in Austrian Silesia, now the Czech Republic. Bright but poor, he struggled to pay for his education, and in 1843 he joined the Augustinian abbey of St. Thomas in Brno, taking the name Gregor. The abbey sent him to the University of Vienna to study physics, mathematics and natural science, and he then taught at a local school. Between 1856 and 1863, in the abbey garden, he grew and crossed about 28,000 pea plants, tracking seven traits such as tall or short stems, round or wrinkled seeds, and flower color. Counting the results carefully, he found regular ratios, such as three to one, and concluded that traits are passed on as separate units, now called genes, one from each parent, with some dominant and others recessive. He presented his work in 1865 and published it in 1866, but its importance was not recognized. In 1868 he was elected abbot, and administrative duties took up his later years. He died in 1884. In 1900 three scientists independently rediscovered his laws.","keyDates":[{"date":"1843","event":"Enters the abbey at Brno"},{"date":"1856–1863","event":"Pea-plant experiments"},{"date":"1866","event":"Publishes his results"},{"date":"1868","event":"Elected abbot"},{"date":"1884","event":"Dies in Brno"},{"date":"1900","event":"His work rediscovered"}],"quotes":[{"text":"The value and utility of any experiment are determined by the fitness of the material to the purpose for which it is used","work":"mendel-experiments-in-plant-hybridisation","location":"Mendel, Experiments in Plant Hybridisation, Selection of the Experimental Plants","verified":true}],"author":"Gregor Mendel; William Bateson","relatedWorks":["mendel-experiments-in-plant-hybridisation"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"mendel-experiments-in-plant-hybridisation","url":"/works/mendel-experiments-in-plant-hybridisation/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"Mount Mendel in New Zealand was named after him in 1970.","source":{"title":"Gregor Mendel (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregor_Mendel"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Augustinian friar and Catholic priest who later became abbot of St Thomas's Abbey in Brno.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregor_Mendel","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"dmitri-mendeleev","name":"Dmitri Mendeleev","url":"/great-lives/dmitri-mendeleev/","dates":"1834–1907","born":1834,"died":1907,"era":"19th-century","categories":["scientists-mathematicians"],"knownFor":"Russian chemist who created the periodic table and predicted undiscovered elements.","bio":"Dmitri Mendeleev was born in Tobolsk, Siberia, the youngest of many children. His father, a teacher, went blind and died, and his mother ran a glass factory until it burned down. Determined that her son be educated, she took him thousands of miles to Moscow and then St. Petersburg, where he was admitted to study science; she died soon after. Mendeleev became a professor of chemistry at the University of St. Petersburg. While writing a textbook, he looked for a way to organize the sixty-three elements then known. In 1869 he arranged them in order of atomic weight in a table where elements with similar properties fell into the same columns. Most boldly, he left gaps for elements not yet discovered and predicted their properties. When gallium, scandium and germanium were found in the following years with properties close to his predictions, his periodic table was widely accepted. He also studied gases, solutions and petroleum, and worked to modernize Russian industry and agriculture. He later directed Russia's bureau of weights and measures. He died in 1907. Element 101, mendelevium, is named for him.","keyDates":[{"date":"1834","event":"Born in Tobolsk"},{"date":"1869","event":"Presents the periodic table"},{"date":"1875","event":"Gallium discovered, fitting his prediction"},{"date":"1893","event":"Directs the bureau of weights and measures"},{"date":"1907","event":"Dies in St. Petersburg"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["lavoisier-elements-of-chemistry"],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"He was the youngest of 17 children.","source":{"title":"Dmitri Mendeleev (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitri_Mendeleev"}},{"text":"A large crater on the far side of the Moon is named Mendeleev.","source":{"title":"Dmitri Mendeleev (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitri_Mendeleev"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Raised an Orthodox Christian; his grandfather was a Russian Orthodox priest. His adult beliefs are not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitri_Mendeleev","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"carl-menger","name":"Carl Menger","url":"/great-lives/carl-menger/","dates":"1840–1921","born":1840,"died":1921,"era":"19th-century","categories":["philosophers"],"knownFor":"Austrian economist who founded the Austrian School and helped launch the marginal revolution with his subjective theory of value.","bio":"Carl Menger was born in 1840 in Neu-Sandez, in the Austrian province of Galicia, now Nowy Sącz in Poland. He studied law at the universities of Vienna and Prague and received his doctorate from Kraków in 1867. Working as an economic journalist and in the press office of the Austrian government, he noticed that the prices he reported did not fit the theories in the textbooks. His Principles of Economics (1871) explained value by the importance people attach to goods for satisfying their needs, and with Jevons and Walras he is credited with the marginal revolution in economics. He taught at the University of Vienna from 1873, became full professor in 1879 and tutored Crown Prince Rudolf. In the 1880s he defended economic theory against the German historical school in the Methodenstreit. His students and followers, including Böhm-Bawerk, Wieser and later Ludwig von Mises and F. A. Hayek, formed the Austrian School. He died in Vienna in 1921.","keyDates":[{"date":"1840","event":"Born in Neu-Sandez, Galicia"},{"date":"1867","event":"Doctorate in law at Kraków"},{"date":"1871","event":"Principles of Economics published"},{"date":"1879","event":"Full professor at the University of Vienna"},{"date":"1883","event":"Investigations into Method begins the Methodenstreit"},{"date":"1903","event":"Retires from teaching"},{"date":"1921","event":"Dies in Vienna"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Carl Menger","relatedWorks":["menger-principles-of-economics","mises-human-action","mises-socialism","hayek-the-road-to-serfdom"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"menger-principles-of-economics","url":"/works/menger-principles-of-economics/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"mises-human-action","url":"/works/mises-human-action/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"mises-socialism","url":"/works/mises-socialism/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"mises-economic-calculation-in-the-socialist-commonwealth","url":"/works/mises-economic-calculation-in-the-socialist-commonwealth/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"hayek-the-road-to-serfdom","url":"/works/hayek-the-road-to-serfdom/"}],"majorWorks":[{"title":"Principles of Economics (Grundsätze der Volkswirthschaftslehre)","year":"1871","note":null,"work":"menger-principles-of-economics","url":"/works/menger-principles-of-economics/"},{"title":"Investigations into the Method of the Social Sciences (Untersuchungen über die Methode der Socialwissenschaften)","year":"1883","note":"Began the Methodenstreit, the dispute over method with the German Historical School","work":null,"url":null},{"title":"The Errors of Historicism (Die Irrthümer des Historismus)","year":"1884","note":"His reply to Gustav Schmoller in that dispute","work":null,"url":null},{"title":"On the Origin of Money","year":"1892","note":"Essay in the Economic Journal explaining money as an unplanned product of trade","work":null,"url":null}],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Menger","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"eric-metaxas","name":"Eric Metaxas","url":"/great-lives/eric-metaxas/","dates":"born 1963","born":1963,"died":null,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American author and radio host, writer of biographies of William Wilberforce, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Luther.","bio":"Eric Metaxas was born in 1963 in the Astoria neighborhood of Queens, New York City, to a Greek father and a German mother, and grew up in Danbury, Connecticut, in the Eastern Orthodox Church. He graduated from Yale University in 1984 with a degree in English, having edited the college humor magazine The Yale Record. He began his career writing humor and children's books, and he wrote scripts and stories for the VeggieTales video series. He became best known for his biographies: Amazing Grace (2007), about William Wilberforce and the campaign to end the British slave trade, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy (2010), about the German pastor executed for his resistance to the Nazis, and Martin Luther (2017). He also founded a public conversation series in New York called Socrates in the City and hosts a nationally syndicated radio program. Other books include If You Can Keep It, about American liberty, and a memoir, Fish Out of Water. He has written more than thirty books for children.","keyDates":[{"date":"1963","event":"Born in Queens, New York"},{"date":"1984","event":"Graduates from Yale"},{"date":"2007","event":"Amazing Grace published"},{"date":"2010","event":"Bonhoeffer published"},{"date":"2017","event":"Martin Luther published"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Eric Metaxas","relatedWorks":["metaxas-bonhoeffer"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"metaxas-bonhoeffer","url":"/works/metaxas-bonhoeffer/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[{"text":"At Yale he edited The Yale Record, the oldest college humor magazine in the United States.","source":{"title":"Eric Metaxas (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Metaxas"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A Christian author who writes on themes common to Protestants, Catholics and Orthodox.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Metaxas","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"michelangelo","name":"Michelangelo","url":"/great-lives/michelangelo/","dates":"1475–1564","born":1475,"died":1564,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["artists-composers-architects"],"knownFor":"Italian sculptor, painter and architect of the David, the Sistine Chapel ceiling and St. Peter's dome.","bio":"Michelangelo Buonarroti was born at Caprese, near Arezzo, and grew up in Florence. Apprenticed to the painter Ghirlandaio, he soon joined the household of Lorenzo de' Medici, where he studied ancient sculpture. In his early twenties he carved the Pietà in St. Peter's in Rome, showing Mary holding the dead Christ, and in 1504 he finished the giant marble David for Florence. Pope Julius II then called him to Rome and, though Michelangelo thought of himself as a sculptor, had him paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Working from 1508 to 1512, he covered it with scenes from Genesis, including the Creation of Adam, and prophets and sibyls. Years later he painted The Last Judgment on the chapel's altar wall. He also designed the Medici Chapel and the Laurentian Library in Florence and, in old age, took charge of building St. Peter's Basilica, designing its great dome. He wrote poetry too. He worked almost until his death in Rome in 1564, at eighty-eight, and was buried in Florence.","keyDates":[{"date":"1475","event":"Born at Caprese"},{"date":"1499","event":"Completes the Pietà"},{"date":"1504","event":"Completes the David"},{"date":"1508–1512","event":"Paints the Sistine Chapel ceiling"},{"date":"1536–1541","event":"Paints The Last Judgment"},{"date":"1546","event":"Takes charge of St. Peter's"},{"date":"1564","event":"Dies in Rome"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["vasari-lives-of-the-artists"],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"book","title":"Who Was Michelangelo?","author":"Kirsten Anderson","isbn13":"9780399543951","publisher":"Paperback","year":2022,"format":""},{"band":"3-5","kind":"book","title":"Michelangelo","author":"Diane Stanley","isbn13":"9780688150853","publisher":"HarperCollins","year":2000,"format":"hardcover"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"vasari-lives-of-the-artists","url":"/works/vasari-lives-of-the-artists/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"book","title":"Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling","author":"Ross King","isbn13":"9781620408407","publisher":"Bloomsbury USA","year":2014,"format":"paperback"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A devout Catholic whose faith deepened at the end of his life.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelangelo","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"arthur-middleton","name":"Arthur Middleton","url":"/great-lives/arthur-middleton/","dates":"1742–1787","born":1742,"died":1787,"era":"18th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"South Carolina planter who signed the Declaration, was imprisoned at St. Augustine after the fall of Charleston, and died in 1787.","bio":"Arthur Middleton was born in 1742 near Charleston, educated in England, and inherited Middleton Place, a great plantation on the Ashley River. He was a determined patriot in the provincial congress, sat in the Continental Congress, and signed the Declaration of Independence. In 1780, after the fall of Charleston, he was captured and imprisoned at St. Augustine with Edward Rutledge and Thomas Heyward Jr. His plantation suffered during the war. After his exchange he served in the state legislature. Middleton was a major slaveholder, and the wealth that gave him leisure for politics was built on enslaved labor. He died in 1787, at forty-four. The three South Carolina signers who went to St. Augustine shared a common cost; they also shared a common stake in a social order that the Declaration's language would, in time, call into question.","keyDates":[{"date":"1742","event":"Born near Charleston, South Carolina"},{"date":"1776","event":"Signs the Declaration of Independence"},{"date":"1780","event":"Is captured at Charleston and imprisoned at St. Augustine"},{"date":"1787","event":"Dies at Middleton Place"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["the-founding-documents"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-founding-documents","url":"/works/the-founding-documents/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":null,"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"john-stuart-mill","name":"John Stuart Mill","url":"/great-lives/john-stuart-mill/","dates":"1806–1873","born":1806,"died":1873,"era":"19th-century","categories":["philosophers"],"knownFor":"English philosopher and economist, author of On Liberty and Utilitarianism.","bio":"John Stuart Mill was born in London in 1806, the eldest son of the Scottish philosopher and historian James Mill, who educated him at home in a famously demanding program: he began Greek at three and Latin at eight. He was raised to carry on the ideas of his father's friend Jeremy Bentham. At twenty he suffered a mental crisis, from which he recovered partly by reading poetry, especially Wordsworth. He worked for the East India Company for over thirty years. In 1830 he met Harriet Taylor, who became a close friend and intellectual partner; they married in 1851, after the death of her husband. His books include A System of Logic (1843), Principles of Political Economy (1848), On Liberty (1859), which defends freedom of thought and action except where it harms others, Considerations on Representative Government (1861) and Utilitarianism (1863). As a member of Parliament from 1865 to 1868 he proposed giving women the vote, and The Subjection of Women (1869) argued for their legal equality. He died in Avignon, France, in 1873.","keyDates":[{"date":"1806","event":"Born in London"},{"date":"1843","event":"A System of Logic published"},{"date":"1851","event":"Marries Harriet Taylor"},{"date":"1859","event":"On Liberty published"},{"date":"1863","event":"Utilitarianism published"},{"date":"1865–1868","event":"Member of Parliament"},{"date":"1873","event":"Dies in Avignon"}],"quotes":[],"author":"John Stuart Mill","relatedWorks":["mill-system-of-logic-book-iii","mill-considerations-on-representative-government","utilitarianism","the-subjection-of-women","on-liberty","mill-principles-of-political-economy"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"mill-system-of-logic-book-iii","url":"/works/mill-system-of-logic-book-iii/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"mill-considerations-on-representative-government","url":"/works/mill-considerations-on-representative-government/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"utilitarianism","url":"/works/utilitarianism/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-subjection-of-women","url":"/works/the-subjection-of-women/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"on-liberty","url":"/works/on-liberty/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"mill-principles-of-political-economy","url":"/works/mill-principles-of-political-economy/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"By the age of ten he could read the Greek writers Plato and Demosthenes with ease.","source":{"title":"John Stuart Mill (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stuart_Mill"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Brought up without religion; he said he had 'not thrown off religious belief, but never had it'.","source":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dictionary_of_National_Biography%2C_1885-1900/Mill%2C_John_Stuart","sourceName":"Dictionary of National Biography (1885–1900) (via Wikisource)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[{"series":"Very Short Introductions","title":"John Stuart Mill: A Very Short Introduction","author":"Gregory Claeys","publisher":"Oxford University Press","year":2022,"isbn13":"9780198749998","url":"https://bookshop.org/a/130650/9780198749998"}],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"arthur-miller","name":"Arthur Miller","url":"/great-lives/arthur-miller/","dates":"1915–2005","born":1915,"died":2005,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American playwright, author of Death of a Salesman and The Crucible.","bio":"Arthur Miller was born in New York City in 1915. His father's clothing business was ruined in the Depression, and the family moved to Brooklyn. Miller worked in a warehouse to pay for college and studied at the University of Michigan, where he began writing plays and won student prizes. His first Broadway success was All My Sons (1947), about a manufacturer who sold faulty airplane parts during the war. Death of a Salesman (1949), the story of the aging traveling salesman Willy Loman and his family, won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and is among the most performed American plays. The Crucible (1953) is set during the Salem witch trials of 1692 and was written during the era of congressional investigations of suspected communists; Miller himself was later called before the House Un-American Activities Committee and refused to name others. His other plays include A View from the Bridge. He was married from 1956 to 1961 to the actress Marilyn Monroe. He died in Connecticut in 2005.","keyDates":[{"date":"1915","event":"Born in New York City"},{"date":"1947","event":"All My Sons on Broadway"},{"date":"1949","event":"Death of a Salesman; Pulitzer Prize"},{"date":"1953","event":"The Crucible staged"},{"date":"1955","event":"A View from the Bridge staged"},{"date":"2005","event":"Dies in Connecticut"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Arthur Miller","relatedWorks":["death-of-a-salesman","a-view-from-the-bridge"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"death-of-a-salesman","url":"/works/death-of-a-salesman/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"a-view-from-the-bridge","url":"/works/a-view-from-the-bridge/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"A minor planet, 3769 Arthurmiller, is named after him.","source":{"title":"Arthur Miller (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Miller"}}],"records":[{"text":"In 1965 he became the first American president of PEN International, the worldwide writers' association.","source":{"title":"Arthur Miller (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Miller"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Born into a Jewish family; Jewish identity is a theme of some of his plays.","source":"https://www.britannica.com/biography/Arthur-Miller-American-playwright","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"a-a-milne","name":"A. A. Milne","url":"/great-lives/a-a-milne/","dates":"1882–1956","born":1882,"died":1956,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"English writer best known for the Winnie-the-Pooh stories about his son Christopher Robin and his toys.","bio":"Alan Alexander Milne was born in London in 1882 and grew up at a small school run by his father, where one of the teachers was H. G. Wells. He studied mathematics at Trinity College, Cambridge, and edited the student magazine Granta before becoming a humorous writer for Punch, where he was later assistant editor. He served as an officer in the British Army during the First World War and afterward wrote successful plays and a detective novel. His son, Christopher Robin Milne, was born in 1920, and the boy's stuffed animals gave Milne the characters for Winnie-the-Pooh (1926) and The House at Pooh Corner (1928), illustrated by E. H. Shepard. He also published two books of children's verse, When We Were Very Young and Now We Are Six. The Pooh books became world famous, somewhat overshadowing his other writing. Milne lived for many years at Cotchford Farm in Sussex and died in 1956.","keyDates":[{"date":"1882","event":"Born in London"},{"date":"1906","event":"Joins the staff of Punch"},{"date":"1920","event":"Son Christopher Robin born"},{"date":"1926","event":"Winnie-the-Pooh published"},{"date":"1928","event":"The House at Pooh Corner published"},{"date":"1956","event":"Dies in Sussex"}],"quotes":[],"author":"A. A. Milne","relatedWorks":["winnie-the-pooh","the-house-at-pooh-corner"],"reading":[{"band":"K-2","kind":"library","work":"winnie-the-pooh","url":"/works/winnie-the-pooh/"},{"band":"K-2","kind":"library","work":"the-house-at-pooh-corner","url":"/works/the-house-at-pooh-corner/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"Milne taught himself to read at the age of two.","source":{"title":"A. A. Milne (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._A._Milne"}},{"text":"Winnie-the-Pooh got his name from Winnie, a Canadian black bear at London Zoo that had been a military mascot in the First World War. Christopher Robin's teddy bear was first called Edward.","source":{"title":"A. A. Milne (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._A._Milne"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented; he said little in public about religion, and his best-known remarks were critical of parts of the Old Testament.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._A._Milne","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"john-milton","name":"John Milton","url":"/great-lives/john-milton/","dates":"1608–1674","born":1608,"died":1674,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"English poet and pamphleteer, author of Paradise Lost.","bio":"John Milton was born in London in 1608, the son of a scrivener who was also a composer. He studied at Christ's College, Cambridge, and then spent years in private study, writing poems such as the masque Comus and the elegy Lycidas. He toured Italy in 1638–1639, where he met the astronomer Galileo. During the English Civil War he wrote prose pamphlets supporting the Puritan and republican cause, defending divorce, and, in Areopagitica (1644), arguing against the licensing of books before publication. After the execution of King Charles I he served the Commonwealth government as Secretary for Foreign Tongues and defended the king's execution in print. By 1652 he had gone completely blind; his sonnet 'On His Blindness' reflects on this. After the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 he was briefly arrested. Working by dictation, he completed Paradise Lost, an epic poem about the fall of Satan and of Adam and Eve, published in 1667. It was followed by Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes in 1671. He died in London in 1674.","keyDates":[{"date":"1608","event":"Born in London"},{"date":"1638","event":"Travels in Italy and meets Galileo"},{"date":"1644","event":"Areopagitica published"},{"date":"1652","event":"Completely blind"},{"date":"1667","event":"Paradise Lost published"},{"date":"1674","event":"Dies in London"}],"quotes":[],"author":"John Milton","relatedWorks":["on-his-blindness","areopagitica","paradise-lost","milton-shorter-poems-and-samson-agonistes"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"on-his-blindness","url":"/works/on-his-blindness/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"areopagitica","url":"/works/areopagitica/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"paradise-lost","url":"/works/paradise-lost/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"milton-shorter-poems-and-samson-agonistes","url":"/works/milton-shorter-poems-and-samson-agonistes/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A Protestant whose grandfather adhered to the old Roman Catholic religion.","source":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Milton%2C_John","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica (1911) (via Wikisource)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"else-holmelund-minarik","name":"Else Holmelund Minarik","url":"/great-lives/else-holmelund-minarik/","dates":"1920–2012","born":1920,"died":2012,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Danish-born American children's author, creator of the Little Bear easy-reader books.","bio":"Else Holmelund was born in 1920 in Fredericia, Denmark, where as a young child she heard the stories of Hans Christian Andersen. She moved to the United States with her family at the age of four. She married Walter Minarik and graduated from Queens College in New York in 1942. During the Second World War she worked as a journalist for the Daily Sentinel newspaper in Rome, New York. She later lived on Long Island and taught first grade in the Commack school district. Wanting to give her pupils books they could read by themselves, she wrote stories using simple words. The result was Little Bear (1957), illustrated by Maurice Sendak, one of the first titles in the I Can Read series of books for beginning readers. It was followed by Father Bear Comes Home, Little Bear's Friend, Little Bear's Visit and A Kiss for Little Bear, all illustrated by Sendak, and the stories were later adapted for television. She wrote more than forty children's books in all and died in 2012.","keyDates":[{"date":"1920","event":"Born in Fredericia, Denmark"},{"date":"1924","event":"Moves to the United States"},{"date":"1942","event":"Graduates from Queens College"},{"date":"1957","event":"Little Bear published"},{"date":"2012","event":"Dies"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Else Holmelund Minarik","relatedWorks":["little-bear"],"reading":[{"band":"K-2","kind":"library","work":"little-bear","url":"/works/little-bear/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"She wrote her first book, Little Bear, because she wanted something her own first-grade students could read by themselves.","source":{"title":"Else Holmelund Minarik (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Else_Holmelund_Minarik"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Else_Holmelund_Minarik","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"ludwig-von-mises","name":"Ludwig von Mises","url":"/great-lives/ludwig-von-mises/","dates":"1881–1973","born":1881,"died":1973,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["philosophers"],"knownFor":"Austrian-American economist of the Austrian School, a defender of free markets and critic of socialism.","bio":"Ludwig von Mises was born in 1881 in Lemberg, in Austria-Hungary, now Lviv in Ukraine, into an Austrian-Jewish family. He studied law and economics at the University of Vienna, where he was influenced by Carl Menger's Principles of Economics and attended the lectures of Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk. His book The Theory of Money and Credit appeared in 1912. He served as an artillery officer in the First World War and then worked for many years as an economist for the Vienna Chamber of Commerce, while teaching a famous private seminar. In Socialism (1922) he argued that without market prices a socialist economy could not calculate costs rationally. He also wrote Liberalism (1927). In 1934 he moved to Geneva to teach, and in 1940, fearing the Nazis, he emigrated to the United States, where he published Bureaucracy and Omnipotent Government (1944) and his major work, Human Action (1949). He taught at New York University from 1945 until 1969, influencing a new generation of free-market economists. He died in New York City in 1973.","keyDates":[{"date":"1881","event":"Born in Lemberg"},{"date":"1912","event":"The Theory of Money and Credit published"},{"date":"1922","event":"Socialism published"},{"date":"1940","event":"Emigrates to the United States"},{"date":"1949","event":"Human Action published"},{"date":"1973","event":"Dies in New York City"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Ludwig von Mises","relatedWorks":["mises-socialism","mises-bureaucracy","mises-liberalism","mises-human-action","mises-economic-calculation-in-the-socialist-commonwealth"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"mises-socialism","url":"/works/mises-socialism/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"mises-bureaucracy","url":"/works/mises-bureaucracy/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"mises-liberalism","url":"/works/mises-liberalism/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"mises-human-action","url":"/works/mises-human-action/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"mises-economic-calculation-in-the-socialist-commonwealth","url":"/works/mises-economic-calculation-in-the-socialist-commonwealth/"}],"majorWorks":[{"title":"The Theory of Money and Credit","year":"1912","note":"Applied Menger's theory of value to money and explained booms and busts by bank credit","work":null,"url":null},{"title":"Nation, State, and Economy","year":"1919","note":"On the causes of the First World War and the postwar order","work":null,"url":null},{"title":"Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth","year":"1920","note":null,"work":"mises-economic-calculation-in-the-socialist-commonwealth","url":"/works/mises-economic-calculation-in-the-socialist-commonwealth/"},{"title":"Socialism","year":"1922","note":null,"work":"mises-socialism","url":"/works/mises-socialism/"},{"title":"Liberalism","year":"1927","note":null,"work":"mises-liberalism","url":"/works/mises-liberalism/"},{"title":"Omnipotent Government","year":"1944","note":"On the rise of the total state and total war","work":null,"url":null},{"title":"Bureaucracy","year":"1944","note":null,"work":"mises-bureaucracy","url":"/works/mises-bureaucracy/"},{"title":"Human Action","year":"1949","note":null,"work":"mises-human-action","url":"/works/mises-human-action/"},{"title":"The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality","year":"1956","note":"Short essay on why many people resent the market","work":null,"url":null},{"title":"Theory and History","year":"1957","note":"On method in economics and history","work":null,"url":null}],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Born into an Austrian-Jewish family; his personal beliefs are not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_von_Mises","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"moliere","name":"Molière","url":"/great-lives/moliere/","dates":"1622–1673","born":1622,"died":1673,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"French playwright and actor, author of comedies such as The Misanthrope and Tartuffe.","bio":"Molière was the stage name of Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, born in Paris in 1622, the son of a prosperous upholsterer who served the royal household. He was educated at the Jesuit Collège de Clermont and studied law, but in 1643 he gave up his father's position and helped found a theater company, the Illustre Théâtre, with the actress Madeleine Béjart. The company soon went bankrupt, and he was briefly jailed for debt. He then spent many years touring the French provinces with a traveling troupe, writing and acting in comedies. In 1658 the company performed before King Louis XIV, who gave them his support and a theater in Paris. Molière's comedies, including The School for Wives, Tartuffe, Don Juan, The Misanthrope, The Miser and The Imaginary Invalid, mock hypocrisy, greed, pretension and the follies of doctors and society. Tartuffe, about a religious hypocrite, offended church authorities and was banned for several years. In 1673, while playing the title role in The Imaginary Invalid, he was taken ill on stage, and he died in Paris a few hours later.","keyDates":[{"date":"1622","event":"Born in Paris"},{"date":"1643","event":"Founds the Illustre Théâtre"},{"date":"1658","event":"Performs before Louis XIV"},{"date":"1664","event":"Tartuffe first performed"},{"date":"1666","event":"The Misanthrope first performed"},{"date":"1673","event":"Dies in Paris"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Molière","relatedWorks":["the-misanthrope-and-other-plays","moliere-the-miser-and-the-would-be-gentleman","moliere-school-for-wives-and-don-juan"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-misanthrope-and-other-plays","url":"/works/the-misanthrope-and-other-plays/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"moliere-the-miser-and-the-would-be-gentleman","url":"/works/moliere-the-miser-and-the-would-be-gentleman/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"moliere-school-for-wives-and-don-juan","url":"/works/moliere-school-for-wives-and-don-juan/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented; the Catholic Church in France denounced his play Tartuffe.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moli%C3%A8re","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"claude-monet","name":"Claude Monet","url":"/great-lives/claude-monet/","dates":"1840–1926","born":1840,"died":1926,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["artists-composers-architects"],"knownFor":"French painter whose Impression, Sunrise gave Impressionism its name.","bio":"Claude Monet was born in Paris and grew up in the port of Le Havre, where as a teenager he sold caricatures of local people. The painter Eugène Boudin encouraged him to paint outdoors, directly from nature. In Paris he befriended Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley and Frédéric Bazille, and they worked side by side, trying to capture the changing effects of light with quick, visible brushstrokes and bright color. Rejected by the official Salon, he and his friends held their own exhibition in 1874. A critic mocked his painting Impression, Sunrise, calling the whole group Impressionists, and the name stuck. In 1883 Monet settled at Giverny, west of Paris. He painted series of the same subject at different times of day: haystacks, poplars, and the front of Rouen Cathedral. He created a flower garden and a water garden with a Japanese-style bridge and water lilies, which he painted about 250 times. In his last years, despite cataracts, he painted huge water lily panels that he gave to France; they hang in the Orangerie in Paris. He died at Giverny in 1926.","keyDates":[{"date":"1874","event":"First Impressionist exhibition"},{"date":"1883","event":"Settles at Giverny"},{"date":"1890–1891","event":"Haystacks series"},{"date":"1899","event":"Begins the water lily paintings"},{"date":"1926","event":"Dies at Giverny"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"book","title":"Linnea in Monet's Garden","author":"Christina Björk","isbn13":"9781402277290","publisher":"Sourcebooks Explore","year":2012,"format":"hardcover"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"To paint outdoors, he labelled his paint tubes, kept a strict order on his palette and wore a straw hat to cut the glare.","source":{"title":"Claude Monet (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Monet"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Baptized Catholic; later became an atheist.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Monet","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"james-monroe","name":"James Monroe","url":"/great-lives/james-monroe/","dates":"1758–1831","born":1758,"died":1831,"era":"18th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"Fifth president of the United States, who announced the Monroe Doctrine in 1823.","bio":"James Monroe was born in 1758 in Westmoreland County, Virginia, the son of a planter. He left the College of William & Mary to join the Continental Army, crossed the Delaware with George Washington, and was wounded at the Battle of Trenton in 1776. Afterward he studied law under Thomas Jefferson, who became his mentor and friend. Monroe served in the Continental Congress, as a senator, as governor of Virginia, and as a diplomat in France, where he helped negotiate the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, and in Britain and Spain. Under President James Madison he was secretary of state and also secretary of war during the War of 1812. He was elected president in 1816 and reelected in 1820 almost without opposition, in a period called the 'Era of Good Feelings'. During his presidency the United States acquired Florida from Spain and the Missouri Compromise was passed. In 1823 he declared that the Americas were closed to further European colonization, a policy later called the Monroe Doctrine. He died in New York City on July 4, 1831.","keyDates":[{"date":"1758","event":"Born in Westmoreland County, Virginia"},{"date":"1776","event":"Wounded at the Battle of Trenton"},{"date":"1803","event":"Helps negotiate the Louisiana Purchase"},{"date":"1817–1825","event":"President of the United States"},{"date":"1823","event":"Announces the Monroe Doctrine"},{"date":"1831","event":"Dies in New York City"}],"quotes":[],"author":"James Monroe","relatedWorks":["monroe-doctrine","monroe-first-inaugural-address"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"monroe-doctrine","url":"/works/monroe-doctrine/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"He was the last U.S. president to wear a powdered wig, a three-cornered hat and knee-breeches, which earned him the nickname 'The Last Cocked Hat'.","source":{"title":"James Monroe (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Monroe"}}],"records":[{"text":"He ran for re-election unopposed, the only president other than George Washington to do so.","source":{"title":"James Monroe (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Monroe"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Raised Anglican; historians say less is known about his religious views than any other president's.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Monroe","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"michel-de-montaigne","name":"Michel de Montaigne","url":"/great-lives/michel-de-montaigne/","dates":"1533–1592","born":1533,"died":1592,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["philosophers","writers-poets"],"knownFor":"French writer who invented the essay as a literary form.","bio":"Michel Eyquem de Montaigne was born in 1533 at the Château de Montaigne, near Bordeaux, France, into a wealthy family of merchants who had recently become nobles. His father had him raised with Latin as his first language, by a German tutor. He studied at the Collège de Guyenne in Bordeaux and then law, and became a magistrate in the parlement of Bordeaux, where he formed a close friendship with Étienne de La Boétie; his essay 'On Friendship' describes their bond and La Boétie's early death in 1563. In 1571 he retired to his estate and his library tower and began writing the Essays, short prose pieces on subjects ranging from cannibals, cruelty and education to sleep and thumbs, in which he examined his own thoughts and experiences; the French word essai means an attempt or trial. His motto was 'What do I know?' The first two books appeared in 1580. He traveled through Germany and Italy, served two terms as mayor of Bordeaux, and tried to mediate in France's religious wars between Catholics and Protestants. He died at his château in 1592.","keyDates":[{"date":"1533","event":"Born at the Château de Montaigne"},{"date":"1563","event":"Death of his friend Étienne de La Boétie"},{"date":"1571","event":"Retires to write"},{"date":"1580","event":"First two books of the Essays"},{"date":"1581–1585","event":"Mayor of Bordeaux"},{"date":"1592","event":"Dies at his château"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Michel de Montaigne","relatedWorks":["essays-montaigne","on-friendship"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"essays-montaigne","url":"/works/essays-montaigne/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"on-friendship","url":"/works/on-friendship/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"As a boy his father hired only servants who could speak Latin and ordered them always to speak to him in Latin.","source":{"title":"Michel de Montaigne (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_de_Montaigne"}}],"records":[{"text":"His longest essay contains his famous motto, 'What do I know?'","source":{"title":"Michel de Montaigne (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_de_Montaigne"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Remained a Catholic during the wars of religion, although several members of his family converted to Protestantism.","source":"https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/montaigne/","sourceName":"Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy","documented":true},"furtherReading":[{"series":"Very Short Introductions","title":"Montaigne: A Very Short Introduction","author":"William M. Hamlin","publisher":"Oxford University Press","year":2020,"isbn13":"9780190848774","url":"https://bookshop.org/a/130650/9780190848774"}],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"montesquieu","name":"Montesquieu","url":"/great-lives/montesquieu/","dates":"1689–1755","born":1689,"died":1755,"era":"18th-century","categories":["legal-scholars-lawgivers","philosophers"],"knownFor":"French political philosopher who described the separation of powers.","bio":"Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu, was born near Bordeaux in France to a noble family. At his baptism a beggar was chosen as his godfather, so he would remember his duty to the poor. He studied law and inherited from his uncle the office of president of the regional court, the Parlement of Bordeaux. In 1721 he published the Persian Letters, a witty novel in which two Persian visitors write home about the strange customs of France, poking fun at French society, the Church and the king. He later sold his judicial office, traveled across Europe, and spent nearly two years in England, which he admired. In 1748 he published The Spirit of the Laws, the work of twenty years. It compared governments around the world and argued that laws must suit a people's climate, customs and religion. Most famously, he argued that liberty is safest when the legislative, executive and judicial powers are held by separate bodies that check one another. James Madison and other American framers cited him often. He was nearly blind in his last years and died in Paris in 1755.","keyDates":[{"date":"1716","event":"Becomes president of the Parlement of Bordeaux"},{"date":"1721","event":"Persian Letters"},{"date":"1729–1731","event":"Lives in England"},{"date":"1748","event":"The Spirit of the Laws"},{"date":"1755","event":"Dies in Paris"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Montesquieu","relatedWorks":["the-spirit-of-the-laws","persian-letters","the-federalist-papers"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-spirit-of-the-laws","url":"/works/the-spirit-of-the-laws/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"persian-letters","url":"/works/persian-letters/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Married a practicing Protestant; he wrote that Protestantism suits republics and Catholicism monarchies.","source":"https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/montesquieu/","sourceName":"Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"l-m-montgomery","name":"L. M. Montgomery","url":"/great-lives/l-m-montgomery/","dates":"1874–1942","born":1874,"died":1942,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Canadian author of Anne of Green Gables and its sequels.","bio":"Lucy Maud Montgomery was born in 1874 in New London, Prince Edward Island, Canada. Her mother died before she was two, and her father moved west, so she was raised by her strict grandparents in Cavendish, on the island's north shore. She loved books and nature and began writing as a child. She trained as a teacher at Prince of Wales College in Charlottetown, studied literature at Dalhousie University in Halifax, and taught in island schools. After her grandfather died she returned to Cavendish to look after her grandmother. There she wrote Anne of Green Gables (1908), about Anne Shirley, a talkative, red-haired orphan sent by mistake to an elderly brother and sister who had wanted a boy. It was an immediate success, and Montgomery wrote many sequels and other novels, including the Emily books. In 1911 she married the Presbyterian minister Ewen Macdonald and moved to Ontario, where they raised two sons. She kept detailed journals all her life, later published. She died in Toronto in 1942.","keyDates":[{"date":"1874","event":"Born in New London, Prince Edward Island"},{"date":"1908","event":"Anne of Green Gables published"},{"date":"1911","event":"Marries Ewen Macdonald and moves to Ontario"},{"date":"1923","event":"Emily of New Moon published"},{"date":"1942","event":"Dies in Toronto"}],"quotes":[],"author":"L. M. Montgomery","relatedWorks":["anne-of-green-gables"],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"library","work":"anne-of-green-gables","url":"/works/anne-of-green-gables/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"On a trip to England she visited places linked to her favourite writers, including Wordsworth's Lake District and Shakespeare's house in Stratford-upon-Avon.","source":{"title":"Lucy Maud Montgomery (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_Maud_Montgomery"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A Presbyterian, married to a Presbyterian minister.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_Maud_Montgomery","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"dwight-l-moody","name":"Dwight L. Moody","url":"/great-lives/dwight-l-moody/","dates":"1837–1899","born":1837,"died":1899,"era":"19th-century","categories":["theologians-church-fathers","saints-reformers"],"knownFor":"American evangelist who led large revival meetings in Britain and the United States and founded schools and the Moody Bible Institute.","bio":"Dwight Lyman Moody was born in 1837 in Northfield, Massachusetts, one of nine children; his father died when he was four. He had little formal schooling, and at seventeen he went to work in his uncle's shoe store in Boston, where a Sunday school teacher led him to Christian faith. In 1856 he moved to Chicago, where he sold shoes successfully and started a Sunday school for poor children that grew into a large church. He worked with the YMCA and, during the Civil War, ministered to soldiers. From 1873 to 1875 he and the singer Ira Sankey held revival meetings across Britain that drew huge crowds, and they repeated them in American cities. Moody preached in simple, direct language and was never ordained. He founded the Northfield Seminary for girls and the Mount Hermon School for boys in his hometown, and in 1886 a training school in Chicago that became the Moody Bible Institute. He died at Northfield in 1899.","keyDates":[{"date":"1837","event":"Born in Northfield, Massachusetts"},{"date":"1856","event":"Moves to Chicago"},{"date":"1873–1875","event":"Revival campaign in Britain with Ira Sankey"},{"date":"1879","event":"Founds the Northfield Seminary for girls"},{"date":"1886","event":"Founds the Chicago school later named Moody Bible Institute"},{"date":"1899","event":"Dies in Northfield"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Dwight L. Moody","relatedWorks":["moody-selected-sermons"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"moody-selected-sermons","url":"/works/moody-selected-sermons/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"President Dwight D. Eisenhower, born in 1890, was named after him.","source":{"title":"Dwight L. Moody (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwight_L._Moody"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Converted from Unitarianism to evangelical Christianity as a young man in Boston; a leading evangelist.","source":"https://www.britannica.com/biography/Dwight-L-Moody","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"ralph-moody","name":"Ralph Moody","url":"/great-lives/ralph-moody/","dates":"1898–1982","born":1898,"died":1982,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American author of Little Britches and other memoirs of growing up on a Colorado ranch and in the West.","bio":"Ralph Moody was born in 1898 in East Rochester, New Hampshire. In 1906, when he was eight, his family moved to a ranch near Littleton, Colorado, hoping that the dry climate would help his father, Charles, who had tuberculosis. He described these years in Little Britches: Father and I Were Ranchers (1950). After his father died, eleven-year-old Ralph became the 'man of the house', and with his sister Grace he took odd jobs to help their mother. The family later returned to New England, and Ralph went to live on his grandfather's farm in Maine, the subject of The Fields of Home. As a young man he roamed the West, working as a farmhand and performing horse falls for films. In 1922 he married Edna Hudgins, and they had three children. He worked in business in Kansas City and California. His formal schooling was limited, but at fifty he enrolled in a writing class, which led to his first book. He wrote seventeen books, mostly about the American West. He died in 1982.","keyDates":[{"date":"1898","event":"Born in East Rochester, New Hampshire"},{"date":"1906","event":"Family moves to Colorado"},{"date":"1922","event":"Marries Edna Hudgins"},{"date":"1950","event":"Little Britches published"},{"date":"1953","event":"The Fields of Home published"},{"date":"1982","event":"Dies"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Ralph Moody","relatedWorks":["little-britches"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"little-britches","url":"/works/little-britches/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":null,"sourceName":null,"documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"thomas-more","name":"Thomas More","url":"/great-lives/thomas-more/","dates":"1478–1535","born":1478,"died":1535,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["statesmen-founders","saints-reformers"],"knownFor":"English lawyer, author of Utopia and Lord Chancellor, executed for refusing to accept Henry VIII as head of the Church.","bio":"Thomas More was the son of a London judge. He studied at Oxford and trained as a lawyer, and for a while lived with Carthusian monks, considering the religious life, before deciding to marry. A close friend of the scholar Erasmus, he wrote Utopia in 1516, a book in Latin describing an imaginary island society, which gave its name to all ideal commonwealths. He gave his daughters the same classical education as a son, which was unusual at the time. He became a trusted servant of King Henry VIII and in 1529 Lord Chancellor, the highest office in the law. As chancellor he pursued Protestants as heretics, and several were burned. When Henry broke with Rome to end his marriage, More resigned. He refused to swear the oath accepting the king as head of the Church, was imprisoned in the Tower of London, convicted of treason on false testimony, and beheaded in 1535. He is reported to have said he died the king's good servant, but God's first. He was declared a saint in 1935.","keyDates":[{"date":"1478","event":"Born in London"},{"date":"1516","event":"Publishes Utopia"},{"date":"1529","event":"Becomes Lord Chancellor"},{"date":"1532","event":"Resigns"},{"date":"1535","event":"Executed on Tower Hill"},{"date":"1935","event":"Canonized"}],"quotes":[{"text":"there are many things in the commonwealth of Utopia that I rather wish, than hope, to see followed in our governments.","work":"utopia","location":"Book II, Of the Religions of the Utopians (closing words)","verified":true}],"author":"Thomas More","relatedWorks":["utopia"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"utopia","url":"/works/utopia/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"He could joke and chat in Latin as easily as in English.","source":{"title":"Thomas More (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_More"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A Catholic who studied the Church Fathers to find the consensus of the Catholic Church on disputed questions.","source":"https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/thomas-more/","sourceName":"Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy","documented":true},"furtherReading":[{"series":"Very Short Introductions","title":"Thomas More: A Very Short Introduction","author":"Peter Marshall","publisher":"Oxford University Press","year":2026,"isbn13":null,"url":null}],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"j-p-morgan","name":"J. P. Morgan","url":"/great-lives/j-p-morgan/","dates":"1837–1913","born":1837,"died":1913,"era":"19th-century","categories":["titans-of-industry"],"knownFor":"American banker who financed railroads and steel and twice helped steady the U.S. economy.","bio":"John Pierpont Morgan was born in Hartford, Connecticut, the son of a wealthy banker, and was educated in Boston, Switzerland and Germany. He joined his father's banking business and set up his own firm in New York, later known as J. P. Morgan and Company. He became the most powerful banker in America. He reorganized struggling railroads, combining rival lines, and helped create giant companies including General Electric and, in 1901, United States Steel, the first company valued at over a billion dollars, built partly on Andrew Carnegie's mills. Critics accused him of creating monopolies, and President Theodore Roosevelt's government sued to break up one of his railroad combinations. In 1895 he arranged a gold loan to the U.S. Treasury, and in the financial panic of 1907 he gathered bankers in his library and organized loans to stop the collapse of banks and trust companies; that experience helped lead to the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913. He collected art and rare books, now in the Morgan Library. He died in Rome in 1913.","keyDates":[{"date":"1871","event":"Founds what became J. P. Morgan and Company"},{"date":"1895","event":"Arranges a gold loan to the Treasury"},{"date":"1901","event":"Forms U.S. Steel"},{"date":"1907","event":"Organizes the rescue in the Panic of 1907"},{"date":"1913","event":"Dies in Rome"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A prominent member of the Protestant Episcopal Church.","source":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Morgan%2C_John_Pierpont","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica (1911) (via Wikisource)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"lewis-morris","name":"Lewis Morris","url":"/great-lives/lewis-morris/","dates":"1726–1798","born":1726,"died":1798,"era":"18th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"Lord of the manor of Morrisania who signed the Declaration; his Westchester estate was badly damaged in the war.","bio":"Lewis Morris was born in 1726 at the family manor of Morrisania, in what is now the Bronx, and inherited that estate. He served in the colonial assembly, sat in the New York provincial congress, and became a member of the Continental Congress. He was away from Philadelphia for part of the summer of 1776 and added his name to the Declaration after the 2 August signing. During the war Morrisania lay in disputed ground near British-held New York City; the property was plundered and the house damaged. Morris served as a militia officer and later in the New York Senate, and he supported ratification of the Constitution. He was a landed proprietor in a colony where enslaved labor was common on large estates. He died at Morrisania in 1798. His half-brother Gouverneur Morris later helped write the final wording of the Constitution.","keyDates":[{"date":"1726","event":"Born at Morrisania, Westchester County, New York"},{"date":"1776","event":"Signs the Declaration of Independence"},{"date":"1776–1783","event":"Morrisania is damaged during the British occupation of New York"},{"date":"1788","event":"Supports ratification of the Constitution in New York"},{"date":"1798","event":"Dies at Morrisania"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["the-founding-documents"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-founding-documents","url":"/works/the-founding-documents/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":null,"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"robert-morris","name":"Robert Morris","url":"/great-lives/robert-morris/","dates":"1734–1806","born":1734,"died":1806,"era":"18th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"English-born Philadelphia merchant who signed the Declaration and the Constitution and later went to debtors' prison after failed land speculation.","bio":"Robert Morris was born in 1734 in Liverpool, England, and came to Pennsylvania as a boy. He became one of Philadelphia's greatest merchants and, during the Revolution, the leading financier of the American cause, using his credit to find money, supplies, and ships when the Congress had little of its own. He abstained from the July 1776 vote on independence, thinking the moment premature, but he signed the Declaration and later signed both the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution. As superintendent of finance under the Articles he tried to put the government's accounts in order. In the 1790s he speculated heavily in western land, the venture collapsed, and in 1798 he was confined in the Prune Street debtors' prison in Philadelphia. He was released after Congress passed a bankruptcy law in 1800 and died in reduced circumstances in 1806. His life shows both the value of courage in a public emergency and the damage of overreaching after the emergency has passed.","keyDates":[{"date":"1734","event":"Born in Liverpool, England"},{"date":"1776","event":"Abstains from the July vote, then signs the Declaration"},{"date":"1781","event":"Becomes superintendent of finance"},{"date":"1787","event":"Signs the Constitution"},{"date":"1798","event":"Confined in debtors' prison after land speculation fails"},{"date":"1806","event":"Dies in Philadelphia"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["the-founding-documents"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-founding-documents","url":"/works/the-founding-documents/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":null,"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"samuel-morse","name":"Samuel Morse","url":"/great-lives/samuel-morse/","dates":"1791–1872","born":1791,"died":1872,"era":"19th-century","categories":["inventors","artists-composers-architects"],"knownFor":"Painter and inventor who helped develop the electric telegraph and Morse code.","bio":"Samuel Finley Breese Morse was born in Charlestown, Massachusetts, the son of a minister and geographer. He studied at Yale and became a painter, studying in London and painting portraits of figures such as Lafayette. In 1825, while he was in Washington painting, his wife died at home in New Haven; the letter bringing the news took days to reach him, and she was buried before he arrived. On a voyage home from Europe in 1832 he talked with a fellow passenger about electromagnetism and began to think about sending messages by electricity. With help from the scientist Joseph Henry's work and his partners Leonard Gale and Alfred Vail, he built a working telegraph and a code of dots and dashes for letters and numbers. Congress paid for a line from Washington to Baltimore, and on 24 May 1844 Morse sent the message What hath God wrought, a phrase from the Bible. Telegraph lines soon crossed the country and the oceans. Morse also helped found Vassar College. He died in New York in 1872.","keyDates":[{"date":"1825","event":"Death of his wife prompts thoughts of faster communication"},{"date":"1832","event":"Begins work on the telegraph"},{"date":"1838","event":"Demonstrates his code"},{"date":"1844","event":"First long-distance message, Washington to Baltimore"},{"date":"1872","event":"Dies in New York"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Son of a Calvinist preacher; he was a Protestant who campaigned against Catholic influence in America.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Morse","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"john-morton","name":"John Morton","url":"/great-lives/john-morton/","dates":"c. 1724–1777","born":1724,"died":1777,"era":"18th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"Pennsylvania farmer whose vote helped carry his divided delegation for independence; he died the next year.","bio":"John Morton was born about 1724 in Ridley Township, in Chester County, Pennsylvania, into a family of Finnish and Swedish descent from the old New Sweden settlement. He was a farmer and surveyor, served many years in the colonial assembly, and became a judge. In the Continental Congress the Pennsylvania delegation was divided over independence. Morton voted for it, and his vote helped the delegation join the majority of the colonies; he then signed the Declaration. He also helped see the Articles of Confederation through Congress. Morton died in 1777, about a year after the signing, one of the first of the fifty-six to be gone. A later inscription at his grave says that he hoped posterity would remember that he had voted for independence; whether or not those exact words are his, they fit the record of a cautious, local man who made a hard choice and did not live to enjoy its fruits.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 1724","event":"Born in Ridley Township, Pennsylvania"},{"date":"1776","event":"Votes for independence and signs the Declaration"},{"date":"1777","event":"Dies in Pennsylvania"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["the-founding-documents"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-founding-documents","url":"/works/the-founding-documents/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":null,"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"moses","name":"Moses","url":"/great-lives/moses/","dates":"traditional dates c. 1526–1406 BC","born":-1526,"died":-1406,"era":"ancient","categories":["legal-scholars-lawgivers","statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"Hebrew prophet and lawgiver who, according to the Bible, led Israel out of Egypt and received the Ten Commandments at Mount Sinai.","bio":"Everything known of Moses comes from the books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. They tell that he was born in Egypt to Hebrew parents of the tribe of Levi at a time when Pharaoh had ordered Hebrew baby boys killed. His mother hid him in a basket among the reeds of the Nile, where Pharaoh's daughter found him and raised him as her own son. As a man he killed an Egyptian who was beating a Hebrew and fled to Midian, where he married Zipporah and kept sheep. At a burning bush on Mount Horeb God called him to return and lead his people out of slavery. After the plagues on Egypt and the crossing of the sea, Moses led Israel to Mount Sinai, where he received the Ten Commandments and the laws of the covenant. He led the people for forty years in the wilderness and died on Mount Nebo, within sight of the promised land. Traditional dates based on 1 Kings 6:1 place the Exodus about 1446 BC; many historians prefer the thirteenth century BC, and there is no record of Moses outside the Bible.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 1526 BC (traditional)","event":"Born in Egypt, according to the early-Exodus chronology"},{"date":"c. 1446 BC (traditional)","event":"Leads Israel out of Egypt; receives the law at Sinai"},{"date":"c. 1406 BC (traditional)","event":"Dies on Mount Nebo at the age of 120 (Deuteronomy 34:7)"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["the-bible"],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"library","work":"the-bible","url":"/works/the-bible/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"code-of-hammurabi","url":"/works/code-of-hammurabi/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Considered the most important prophet in Judaism and an important prophet in Christianity and Islam.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moses","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["All dates are traditional, derived from 1 Kings 6:1 and Exodus 7:7 and Deuteronomy 34:7 (an early-Exodus chronology); many scholars date the Exodus to the 13th century BC.","No source outside the Bible mentions Moses."]},{"slug":"wolfgang-amadeus-mozart","name":"Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart","url":"/great-lives/wolfgang-amadeus-mozart/","dates":"1756–1791","born":1756,"died":1791,"era":"18th-century","categories":["artists-composers-architects"],"knownFor":"Austrian child prodigy and composer of operas, symphonies and concertos.","bio":"Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born in Salzburg, Austria, the son of Leopold Mozart, a court violinist and teacher. He was playing the keyboard at three and composing at five. His father took him and his talented older sister, Nannerl, on long tours, where they performed for the empress in Vienna, the king of France and the royal family in London. As a teenager Mozart toured Italy and wrote his first operas. He served the archbishop of Salzburg but chafed under him, and in 1781 he left to work on his own in Vienna, the first major composer to try to live without a permanent patron. There he married Constanze Weber, taught, gave concerts, and wrote some of the greatest music of the age, including the operas The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni and The Magic Flute, many piano concertos and his last symphonies. He was often short of money. He died in Vienna in December 1791, at thirty-five, before finishing his Requiem. He wrote more than six hundred works.","keyDates":[{"date":"1756","event":"Born in Salzburg"},{"date":"1762","event":"First tour as a child performer"},{"date":"1781","event":"Moves to Vienna"},{"date":"1786","event":"The Marriage of Figaro"},{"date":"1791","event":"The Magic Flute; dies in Vienna"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"book","title":"Who Was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart?","author":"Yona Zeldis McDonough","isbn13":"9780448431048","publisher":"Grosset & Dunlap","year":2003,"format":""},{"band":"9-12","kind":"book","title":"Mozart: A Life","author":"Paul Johnson","isbn13":"9780143126065","publisher":"Paperback","year":2014,"format":"paperback"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"By the age of five he could play keyboard and violin, had begun composing, and had performed for European royalty.","source":{"title":"Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfgang_Amadeus_Mozart"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Raised a Catholic and a practicing Catholic throughout his life.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfgang_Amadeus_Mozart","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"john-muir","name":"John Muir","url":"/great-lives/john-muir/","dates":"1838–1914","born":1838,"died":1914,"era":"19th-century","categories":["scientists-mathematicians","writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Scottish-American naturalist and writer who campaigned for national parks and co-founded the Sierra Club.","bio":"John Muir was born in Dunbar, Scotland, in 1838, and in 1849 his family emigrated to a farm in Wisconsin, where he worked long hours under a strict father. He invented clocks and other machines and studied at the University of Wisconsin. In 1867 an accident in a factory nearly blinded him; after recovering, he walked about a thousand miles from Kentucky to Florida. In 1868 he reached California and fell in love with the Sierra Nevada, especially Yosemite Valley, where he herded sheep and studied how glaciers had shaped the landscape. His articles and books made the American public aware of the wilderness, and he campaigned to protect it; he helped bring about the creation of Yosemite National Park in 1890. In 1892 he co-founded the Sierra Club and became its first president. In 1903 he camped in Yosemite with President Theodore Roosevelt. His books include The Mountains of California, Our National Parks, Stickeen, My First Summer in the Sierra, The Story of My Boyhood and Youth, and Travels in Alaska. He died in Los Angeles in 1914.","keyDates":[{"date":"1838","event":"Born in Dunbar, Scotland"},{"date":"1849","event":"Emigrates to Wisconsin"},{"date":"1868","event":"Arrives in California"},{"date":"1879","event":"First voyage to Alaska; explores Glacier Bay"},{"date":"1890","event":"Yosemite National Park created"},{"date":"1892","event":"Co-founds the Sierra Club"},{"date":"1894","event":"Publishes The Mountains of California"},{"date":"1903","event":"Camps with Theodore Roosevelt"},{"date":"1914","event":"Dies in Los Angeles"},{"date":"1915","event":"Travels in Alaska published posthumously"}],"quotes":[],"author":"John Muir","relatedWorks":["the-story-of-my-boyhood-and-youth","stickeen","my-first-summer-in-the-sierra","the-mountains-of-california","our-national-parks","travels-in-alaska"],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"library","work":"the-story-of-my-boyhood-and-youth","url":"/works/the-story-of-my-boyhood-and-youth/"},{"band":"3-5","kind":"library","work":"stickeen","url":"/works/stickeen/"},{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"my-first-summer-in-the-sierra","url":"/works/my-first-summer-in-the-sierra/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-mountains-of-california","url":"/works/the-mountains-of-california/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"our-national-parks","url":"/works/our-national-parks/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"travels-in-alaska","url":"/works/travels-in-alaska/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"The great scientist Louis Agassiz praised him as 'the first man I have ever found who has any adequate conception of glacial action'.","source":{"title":"John Muir (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Muir"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Raised in a strict religious family; as an adult he often spoke of God in nature.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Muir","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"john-courtney-murray","name":"John Courtney Murray","url":"/great-lives/john-courtney-murray/","dates":"1904–1967","born":1904,"died":1967,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["theologians-church-fathers","philosophers"],"knownFor":"American Jesuit theologian who helped shape the Second Vatican Council's Declaration on Religious Liberty, author of We Hold These Truths.","bio":"John Courtney Murray was born in New York City in 1904 and attended Xavier High School. In 1920 he entered the Society of Jesus, and he studied classics and philosophy at Boston College, receiving his bachelor's degree in 1926 and his master's in 1927. He then taught Latin and English literature at the Ateneo de Manila in the Philippines. After theological studies he was ordained a priest in 1933 and earned a doctorate at the Gregorian University in Rome. From 1937 he taught theology at Woodstock College in Maryland, and he edited the journal Theological Studies. Murray wrote on the relationship between the Catholic Church and modern democratic states, arguing that the American system of religious freedom was compatible with Catholic teaching. In the 1950s church authorities asked him to stop writing on the subject. His book We Hold These Truths (1960) examined the moral foundations of the American public order. At the Second Vatican Council he served as an adviser and helped draft the Declaration on Religious Liberty, Dignitatis Humanae, adopted in 1965. He died in New York in 1967.","keyDates":[{"date":"1904","event":"Born in New York City"},{"date":"1920","event":"Enters the Society of Jesus"},{"date":"1933","event":"Ordained a priest"},{"date":"1937","event":"Begins teaching at Woodstock College"},{"date":"1960","event":"We Hold These Truths published"},{"date":"1965","event":"Declaration on Religious Liberty adopted"},{"date":"1967","event":"Dies in New York"}],"quotes":[],"author":"John Courtney Murray","relatedWorks":["we-hold-these-truths"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"we-hold-these-truths","url":"/works/we-hold-these-truths/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"American Jesuit priest and Catholic theologian.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Courtney_Murray","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"mansa-musa","name":"Mansa Musa","url":"/great-lives/mansa-musa/","dates":"c. 1280–1337","born":1280,"died":1337,"era":"medieval","categories":["kings-queens-emperors"],"knownFor":"Ruler of the Mali Empire, famous for his gold-laden pilgrimage to Mecca.","bio":"Musa I, called Mansa Musa, mansa meaning king, ruled the Mali Empire in West Africa in the early fourteenth century. Mali controlled the gold fields of the upper Niger and Senegal rivers and the trade routes across the Sahara, making it one of the richest states in the world. A devout Muslim, Musa made the pilgrimage to Mecca in 1324 and 1325 with a huge caravan of attendants and camels carrying gold. Arab writers recorded that when he passed through Cairo he gave away and spent so much gold that its value there fell for years. His journey made Mali famous, and a Spanish map of 1375, the Catalan Atlas, shows him seated on a throne holding a golden nugget. He brought back scholars and the architect Abu Ishaq al-Sahili, built mosques such as the Djinguereber in Timbuktu, and encouraged Timbuktu's growth as a center of trade and learning. His empire also took the trading city of Gao. Ibn Battuta visited Mali in the reign of Musa's brother Sulayman.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 1312","event":"Becomes mansa of Mali"},{"date":"1324–25","event":"Pilgrimage to Mecca through Cairo"},{"date":"1327","event":"Djinguereber Mosque in Timbuktu"},{"date":"c. 1337","event":"Dies"},{"date":"1375","event":"Shown on the Catalan Atlas"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["ibn-battuta-travels"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"ibn-battuta-travels","url":"/works/ibn-battuta-travels/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A Sunni Muslim of the Maliki school who made a famous pilgrimage (hajj) to Mecca in 1324.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mansa_Musa","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["Dates of his reign vary between sources (about 1312–1337)."]},{"slug":"napoleon-bonaparte","name":"Napoleon Bonaparte","url":"/great-lives/napoleon-bonaparte/","dates":"1769–1821","born":1769,"died":1821,"era":"19th-century","categories":["kings-queens-emperors","military-leaders"],"knownFor":"French general and emperor who conquered much of Europe and gave France its civil code.","bio":"Napoleon Bonaparte was born on the island of Corsica, which had just become French. Trained as an artillery officer, he rose quickly in the wars of the French Revolution, winning brilliant victories in Italy in 1796 and 1797. In 1799 he seized power in a coup and made himself First Consul, and in 1804 he crowned himself Emperor of the French. At home he reorganized the government, made peace with the Catholic Church, founded schools and a national bank, and issued the Civil Code, a clear set of laws later copied in many countries. Abroad he defeated Austria, Prussia and Russia in battles such as Austerlitz and made his relatives kings across Europe. His invasion of Russia in 1812 ended in disaster, with most of his army lost in the retreat. Defeated in 1814 and exiled to the island of Elba, he escaped and returned for a hundred days until his final defeat at Waterloo in 1815. He died in exile on the island of Saint Helena in the South Atlantic in 1821.","keyDates":[{"date":"1769","event":"Born at Ajaccio, Corsica"},{"date":"1799","event":"Seizes power as First Consul"},{"date":"1804","event":"Crowned emperor; Civil Code issued"},{"date":"1812","event":"Invasion of Russia"},{"date":"1815","event":"Defeated at Waterloo"},{"date":"1821","event":"Dies on Saint Helena"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Napoleon Bonaparte","relatedWorks":["letters-of-napoleon","napoleons-maxims-of-war"],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"book","title":"Who Was Napoleon?","author":"Jim Gigliotti","isbn13":"9780448488608","publisher":"Paperback","year":2018,"format":"paperback"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"letters-of-napoleon","url":"/works/letters-of-napoleon/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"napoleons-maxims-of-war","url":"/works/napoleons-maxims-of-war/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"book","title":"Napoleon: A Life","author":"Andrew Roberts","isbn13":"9780143127857","publisher":"Paperback","year":2014,"format":""}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"He is often pictured wearing a large two-cornered hat sideways, with one hand tucked into his waistcoat, a pose made famous by a painting by Jacques-Louis David.","source":{"title":"Napoleon (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleon"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Baptized and raised a Roman Catholic; his Concordat of 1801 with Pope Pius VII restored relations with the Catholic Church. His personal beliefs are debated.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleon","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[{"series":"Very Short Introductions","title":"Napoleon: A Very Short Introduction","author":"David A. Bell","publisher":"Oxford University Press","year":2018,"isbn13":"9780199321667","url":"https://bookshop.org/a/130650/9780199321667"}],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"natsume-soseki","name":"Natsume Sōseki","url":"/great-lives/natsume-soseki/","dates":"1867–1916","born":1867,"died":1916,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Japanese novelist, author of Kokoro and Botchan, regarded as one of the greatest modern Japanese writers.","bio":"Natsume Kinnosuke, who wrote under the pen name Sōseki, was born in 1867 in Edo, which became Tokyo the next year. He had a troubled childhood and was given up for adoption twice before returning to his family. He studied Chinese classics and then English literature at Tokyo Imperial University. He taught English at schools in Matsuyama and Kumamoto, and from 1900 to 1902 the Japanese government sent him to study in London, where he was lonely and unhappy. On his return he lectured on English literature at Tokyo Imperial University. His comic novel I Am a Cat (1905), narrated by a cat who observes its master's household, made him famous, and Botchan (1906), about a hot-tempered young teacher from Tokyo working in a country school, became one of the most widely read Japanese novels. In 1907 he gave up teaching to write for the Asahi newspaper. His later novels, including Sanshirō and Kokoro (1914), explore loneliness and the conflict between tradition and modern life. He suffered from stomach ulcers and died in Tokyo in 1916.","keyDates":[{"date":"1867","event":"Born in Edo (Tokyo)"},{"date":"1900–1902","event":"Studies in London"},{"date":"1905","event":"I Am a Cat published"},{"date":"1906","event":"Botchan published"},{"date":"1907","event":"Joins the Asahi newspaper"},{"date":"1914","event":"Kokoro published"},{"date":"1916","event":"Dies in Tokyo"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Natsume Sōseki","relatedWorks":["kokoro","sanshiro","botchan"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"botchan","url":"/works/botchan/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"kokoro","url":"/works/kokoro/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"sanshiro","url":"/works/sanshiro/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natsume_S%C5%8Dseki","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"horatio-nelson","name":"Horatio Nelson","url":"/great-lives/horatio-nelson/","dates":"1758–1805","born":1758,"died":1805,"era":"18th-century","categories":["military-leaders"],"knownFor":"British admiral who destroyed the French and Spanish fleets at Trafalgar.","bio":"Horatio Nelson was born in Norfolk, England, the son of a clergyman. He joined the Royal Navy at twelve on a ship commanded by his uncle and became a captain at only twenty. During the wars with Revolutionary France he lost the sight of his right eye in Corsica in 1794 and his right arm in an attack on Santa Cruz de Tenerife in 1797. He was known for daring and for disobeying cautious orders when he judged it right, as at the Battle of Cape St. Vincent in 1797. In 1798 he destroyed Napoleon's fleet at anchor in Aboukir Bay at the Battle of the Nile, trapping the French army in Egypt. At Copenhagen in 1801 he is said to have put his telescope to his blind eye to avoid seeing a signal to withdraw. On October 21, 1805, off Cape Trafalgar in Spain, his fleet attacked the combined French and Spanish fleets in two columns. The British won a complete victory, ending Napoleon's hopes of invading Britain, but Nelson was shot by a French marksman and died during the battle.","keyDates":[{"date":"1794","event":"Loses sight of his right eye"},{"date":"1797","event":"Loses his right arm at Tenerife"},{"date":"1798","event":"Victory at the Battle of the Nile"},{"date":"1801","event":"Battle of Copenhagen"},{"date":"1805","event":"Killed at Trafalgar"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"On an Arctic voyage he is said to have chased a polar bear across the ice, explaining, 'I wished, Sir, to get the skin for my father.'","source":{"title":"Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horatio_Nelson,_1st_Viscount_Nelson"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Son of a parish rector from a clerical family.","source":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Nelson%2C_Horatio_Nelson%2C_Viscount","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica (1911) (via Wikisource)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["The blind-eye story at Copenhagen is traditional and may be embellished."]},{"slug":"thomas-nelson-jr","name":"Thomas Nelson Jr.","url":"/great-lives/thomas-nelson-jr/","dates":"1738–1789","born":1738,"died":1789,"era":"18th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders","military-leaders"],"knownFor":"Virginia signer who, as governor and militia commander, led troops at the siege of Yorktown and risked his own property there.","bio":"Thomas Nelson Jr. was born in 1738 in Yorktown, Virginia, educated in England, and became a merchant and planter in a family long established at the mouth of the York River. He sat in the House of Burgesses, carried Virginia's instructions for independence to Congress in 1776, and signed the Declaration. During the war he raised militia, pledged his own credit to borrow money for the cause, and in 1781, as governor, commanded Virginia troops at the siege of Yorktown. British officers occupied a Nelson family house in the town; early accounts say he urged that the American artillery not spare it. Details of that story vary, and there was more than one Nelson house in Yorktown, but his willingness to put the victory above his own property is well attested in early tradition. The war left him financially strained. He held people in slavery, as did the other great York County planters. He died in 1789, worn out in his early fifties.","keyDates":[{"date":"1738","event":"Born in Yorktown, Virginia"},{"date":"1776","event":"Brings Virginia's instructions and signs the Declaration"},{"date":"1781","event":"As governor, commands Virginia militia at the siege of Yorktown"},{"date":"1789","event":"Dies in Virginia"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["the-founding-documents"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-founding-documents","url":"/works/the-founding-documents/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":null,"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"pablo-neruda","name":"Pablo Neruda","url":"/great-lives/pablo-neruda/","dates":"1904–1973","born":1904,"died":1973,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Chilean poet and diplomat, author of Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair, and Nobel laureate.","bio":"Pablo Neruda was the pen name, later his legal name, of Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto, born in 1904 in Parral, Chile. His mother died soon after his birth, and he grew up in Temuco, in southern Chile, where his father was a railway worker. He began writing poems as a boy. While studying in Santiago he published Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair (1924), which became one of the best-selling books of poetry in Spanish. He then served as a Chilean consul in Burma and other countries, and in Spain, where he witnessed the Spanish Civil War, which led him to communism and to political poetry. Back in Chile he was elected a senator, but in 1948, after criticizing the government, he went into hiding and then exile. His Canto General (1950) is a vast poem about the history and nature of Latin America. He returned to Chile in 1952. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1971. He died in Santiago in 1973, days after a military coup.","keyDates":[{"date":"1904","event":"Born in Parral, Chile"},{"date":"1924","event":"Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair"},{"date":"1934","event":"Consul in Spain"},{"date":"1945","event":"Elected to the Chilean Senate"},{"date":"1950","event":"Canto General published"},{"date":"1971","event":"Nobel Prize in Literature"},{"date":"1973","event":"Dies in Santiago"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Pablo Neruda","relatedWorks":["twenty-love-poems-and-a-song-of-despair"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"twenty-love-poems-and-a-song-of-despair","url":"/works/twenty-love-poems-and-a-song-of-despair/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Baptized as a child; he was an atheist.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pablo_Neruda","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"e-nesbit","name":"E. Nesbit","url":"/great-lives/e-nesbit/","dates":"1858–1924","born":1858,"died":1924,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"English author of children's books, including The Railway Children and Five Children and It.","bio":"Edith Nesbit was born in 1858 in Kennington, Surrey (now part of London). Her father, an agricultural chemist, died when she was three, and the family moved often in England, France and Germany for the health of her sister. In 1880 she married Hubert Bland, a bank clerk and journalist, and the couple helped found the Fabian Society, a socialist organization, in 1884. To support the family she wrote poems, stories and articles, publishing under the name E. Nesbit. She became famous for children's books, beginning with The Story of the Treasure Seekers (1899), about the Bastable children. Five Children and It (1902) tells of children who find a grumpy sand fairy that grants wishes that go wrong, and The Railway Children (1906) follows three children whose father is wrongly imprisoned, living near a railway line in Yorkshire. Her lively, realistic children, who speak in their own voices, influenced many later writers of children's fantasy. She died in Kent in 1924.","keyDates":[{"date":"1858","event":"Born in Kennington"},{"date":"1880","event":"Marries Hubert Bland"},{"date":"1884","event":"Helps found the Fabian Society"},{"date":"1899","event":"The Story of the Treasure Seekers"},{"date":"1902","event":"Five Children and It published"},{"date":"1906","event":"The Railway Children published"},{"date":"1924","event":"Dies in Kent"}],"quotes":[],"author":"E. Nesbit","relatedWorks":["five-children-and-it","the-railway-children"],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"library","work":"five-children-and-it","url":"/works/five-children-and-it/"},{"band":"3-5","kind":"library","work":"the-railway-children","url":"/works/the-railway-children/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._Nesbit","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"john-von-neumann","name":"John von Neumann","url":"/great-lives/john-von-neumann/","dates":"1903–1957","born":1903,"died":1957,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["scientists-mathematicians","inventors"],"knownFor":"Hungarian-American mathematician whose work shaped computer design, game theory and quantum mechanics.","bio":"John von Neumann was born Neumann János in Budapest in 1903, the son of a banker. As a child he showed remarkable abilities in mathematics and memory. He studied chemical engineering in Berlin and Zurich and at the same time earned a doctorate in mathematics from the University of Budapest. After teaching in Germany he moved to the United States in 1930 and in 1933 became one of the first professors at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. He made major contributions to set theory, the mathematical foundations of quantum mechanics and many other fields. With the economist Oskar Morgenstern he wrote Theory of Games and Economic Behavior (1944), which founded game theory. During the Second World War he worked on the Manhattan Project. His 1945 report on the EDVAC computer described a design in which programs are stored in memory alongside data, an approach still known as the von Neumann architecture. He later served on the Atomic Energy Commission. He died of cancer in Washington, D.C., in 1957.","keyDates":[{"date":"1903","event":"Born in Budapest"},{"date":"1933","event":"Joins the Institute for Advanced Study"},{"date":"1944","event":"Theory of Games and Economic Behavior"},{"date":"1945","event":"First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC"},{"date":"1955","event":"Atomic Energy Commission"},{"date":"1957","event":"Dies in Washington, D.C."}],"quotes":[],"author":"John von Neumann","relatedWorks":["first-draft-of-a-report-on-the-edvac"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"first-draft-of-a-report-on-the-edvac","url":"/works/first-draft-of-a-report-on-the-edvac/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"He could do hard calculations in his head so fluently that his friend Stanislaw Ulam compared it to playing chess blindfolded.","source":{"title":"John von Neumann (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann"}},{"text":"A crater on the Moon is named after him.","source":{"title":"John von Neumann (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann"}}],"records":[{"text":"He was the youngest person ever elected Privatdozent (lecturer) in the history of the University of Berlin.","source":{"title":"John von Neumann (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Born into a Jewish family; he was baptized a Catholic in 1930.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"john-henry-newman","name":"John Henry Newman","url":"/great-lives/john-henry-newman/","dates":"1801–1890","born":1801,"died":1890,"era":"19th-century","categories":["theologians-church-fathers","saints-reformers"],"knownFor":"English theologian and cardinal, leader of the Oxford Movement and a Catholic saint.","bio":"John Henry Newman was born in London in 1801, the eldest son of a banker. He studied at Trinity College, Oxford, became a fellow of Oriel College, and was ordained in the Church of England. As vicar of the University Church of St Mary the Virgin, he became a famous preacher. In the 1830s he was a leader of the Oxford Movement, which sought to renew the Church of England by recovering its links with the early Church; he wrote many of its Tracts for the Times. His study of church history gradually led him to the Catholic Church, which he joined in 1845. He founded the Oratory in Birmingham and served as the first rector of the Catholic University in Dublin; his lectures there became The Idea of a University. In 1864, replying to an attack by the novelist Charles Kingsley, he wrote Apologia Pro Vita Sua, an account of his religious opinions. He also wrote hymns, including 'Lead, Kindly Light'. Pope Leo XIII made him a cardinal in 1879. He died in Birmingham in 1890 and was canonized in 2019.","keyDates":[{"date":"1801","event":"Born in London"},{"date":"1833","event":"Oxford Movement begins"},{"date":"1845","event":"Received into the Catholic Church"},{"date":"1864","event":"Apologia Pro Vita Sua published"},{"date":"1879","event":"Made a cardinal"},{"date":"1890","event":"Dies in Birmingham"},{"date":"2019","event":"Canonized"}],"quotes":[],"author":"John Henry Newman","relatedWorks":["apologia-pro-vita-sua"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"apologia-pro-vita-sua","url":"/works/apologia-pro-vita-sua/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Underwent a conversion at fifteen; an Anglican leader who became a Catholic and a leading Catholic apologist.","source":"https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10794a.htm","sourceName":"Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"isaac-newton","name":"Isaac Newton","url":"/great-lives/isaac-newton/","dates":"1643–1727","born":1643,"died":1727,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["scientists-mathematicians"],"knownFor":"English mathematician and physicist who described gravity and the laws of motion.","bio":"Isaac Newton was born on a farm in Lincolnshire, England, a small and sickly baby whose father had died before he was born. He went to Cambridge University, and when plague closed the university in 1665 and 1666 he returned home, where in about two years he began calculus, studied light, and started thinking about gravity; he later told the story of watching an apple fall. Using a prism, he showed that white light is made of all the colors, and he built the first working reflecting telescope. In 1687, encouraged by the astronomer Edmond Halley, he published the Principia, which set out three laws of motion and the law of universal gravitation, showing that the same force that makes an apple fall keeps the Moon in orbit and the planets moving around the Sun. Newton also spent many years studying the Bible, theology and alchemy. He became Warden and then Master of the Royal Mint, president of the Royal Society, and was knighted in 1705. He died in 1727 and was buried in Westminster Abbey.","keyDates":[{"date":"1643","event":"Born at Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire"},{"date":"1665–66","event":"Plague years: early work on calculus, light and gravity"},{"date":"1687","event":"Publishes the Principia"},{"date":"1704","event":"Publishes Opticks"},{"date":"1705","event":"Knighted"},{"date":"1727","event":"Dies in London"}],"quotes":[{"text":"Every body perseveres in its state of rest, or of uniform motion in a right line, unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed thereon","work":"principia","location":"Law I","verified":true},{"text":"the whiteness of the Sun's Light is compounded of all the primary Colours mix'd in a due Proportion.","work":"newton-opticks","location":"Book I, Part II, Prop. V, Theor. IV","verified":true}],"author":"Isaac Newton","relatedWorks":["principia","newton-opticks"],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"book","title":"Who Was Isaac Newton?","author":"Janet B. Pascal","isbn13":"9780448479132","publisher":"Paperback","year":2014,"format":""},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"principia","url":"/works/principia/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"newton-opticks","url":"/works/newton-opticks/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"book","title":"Isaac Newton","author":"James Gleick","isbn13":"9781400032952","publisher":"Vintage","year":2004,"format":"paperback"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[{"text":"He was the first to give a number estimate for the mass of the Sun, and the first to explain the Magnus effect, which makes spinning balls curve.","source":{"title":"Isaac Newton (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A Christian whose anti-Trinitarian views departed from Roman and Anglican teaching.","source":"https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/newton/","sourceName":"Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy","documented":true},"furtherReading":[{"series":"Very Short Introductions","title":"Newton: A Very Short Introduction","author":"Rob Iliffe","publisher":"Oxford University Press","year":2007,"isbn13":"9780199298037","url":"https://bookshop.org/a/130650/9780199298037"}],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"john-newton","name":"John Newton","url":"/great-lives/john-newton/","dates":"1725–1807","born":1725,"died":1807,"era":"18th-century","categories":["saints-reformers","writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Former slave-ship captain who became an Anglican clergyman, wrote Amazing Grace and later supported the abolition of the slave trade.","bio":"John Newton was born in London in 1725, the son of a merchant ship's captain, and went to sea at eleven. Pressed into the Royal Navy, he deserted, was flogged, and later worked in the West African slave trade, at one point being held in harsh conditions himself. During a violent storm at sea in 1748 he turned to prayer, which he later saw as the start of his conversion, though he continued for some years as mate and then captain of slave ships. After leaving the sea in 1754 he became a tide surveyor in Liverpool, studied for the ministry and in 1764 was ordained curate of Olney in Buckinghamshire. There he and the poet William Cowper wrote the Olney Hymns (1779), which include Amazing Grace. From 1780 he was rector of St Mary Woolnoth in London, where he advised William Wilberforce. In 1788 he published Thoughts upon the African Slave Trade, describing its cruelties. He died in London in 1807, the year Parliament abolished the British slave trade. His hymn Amazing Grace tells his own story of conversion.","keyDates":[{"date":"1725","event":"Born in London"},{"date":"1748","event":"Storm at sea and conversion"},{"date":"1764","event":"Ordained curate of Olney"},{"date":"1779","event":"Olney Hymns published"},{"date":"1788","event":"Thoughts upon the African Slave Trade"},{"date":"1807","event":"Dies in London"}],"quotes":[],"author":"John Newton and William Cowper","relatedWorks":["olney-hymns"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"olney-hymns","url":"/works/olney-hymns/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Former slave-trader who became a clergyman of the Church of England.","source":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dictionary_of_National_Biography%2C_1885-1900/Newton%2C_John_%281725-1807%29","sourceName":"Dictionary of National Biography (1885–1900) (via Wikisource)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"nicomachus-of-gerasa","name":"Nicomachus of Gerasa","url":"/great-lives/nicomachus-of-gerasa/","dates":"c. 60–c. 120","born":60,"died":120,"era":"ancient","categories":["scientists-mathematicians","philosophers"],"knownFor":"Greek mathematician and Neopythagorean philosopher, author of the Introduction to Arithmetic.","bio":"Nicomachus was a Greek mathematician and philosopher from Gerasa, a city in the Roman province of Syria, near modern Jerash in Jordan. Almost nothing is known about his life, and his dates can only be estimated from the authors he cites and those who cite him; he probably lived in the late first and early second centuries AD. He belonged to the Neopythagorean school, which revived the teaching of Pythagoras that number lies at the heart of reality. His Introduction to Arithmetic treats numbers as objects of philosophical study rather than tools of calculation, classifying them as odd and even, prime and composite, perfect, deficient and abundant, and exploring ratios and figurate numbers. He also wrote a Manual of Harmonics on the mathematics of music. Boethius adapted the Introduction into Latin, and through that version it became a standard school text of the arithmetic in the medieval quadrivium for roughly a thousand years.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 60","event":"Approximate date of birth at Gerasa"},{"date":"c. 100","event":"Approximate date of the Introduction to Arithmetic"},{"date":"c. 500","event":"Boethius adapts the Introduction into Latin"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Nicomachus of Gerasa","relatedWorks":["nicomachus-introduction-to-arithmetic"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"nicomachus-introduction-to-arithmetic","url":"/works/nicomachus-introduction-to-arithmetic/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicomachus","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["Birth and death years are approximate; scholars place his life roughly between AD 60 and 120."]},{"slug":"friedrich-nietzsche","name":"Friedrich Nietzsche","url":"/great-lives/friedrich-nietzsche/","dates":"1844–1900","born":1844,"died":1900,"era":"19th-century","categories":["philosophers"],"knownFor":"German philosopher, author of Thus Spoke Zarathustra and Beyond Good and Evil, who challenged traditional morality and religion.","bio":"Friedrich Nietzsche was born in 1844 in Röcken, Prussia, the son of a Lutheran pastor who died when Friedrich was four. He studied classical philology at Bonn and Leipzig and was so brilliant that in 1869, at the age of only 24, he was appointed professor at the University of Basel in Switzerland. He became a friend of the composer Richard Wagner, and his first book, The Birth of Tragedy (1872), contrasted the Apollonian and Dionysian spirits in Greek culture. He later broke with Wagner. Poor health forced him to resign his professorship in 1879, and for the next ten years he lived on a small pension, moving among boarding houses in Switzerland, Italy and France and writing a series of books, including The Gay Science, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Beyond Good and Evil and On the Genealogy of Morality. He announced the 'death of God' and wrote of the 'will to power' and the 'overman'. In January 1889 he collapsed in Turin and never recovered his sanity. He was cared for by his mother and sister and died in Weimar in 1900.","keyDates":[{"date":"1844","event":"Born in Röcken, Prussia"},{"date":"1869","event":"Professor at Basel at 24"},{"date":"1872","event":"The Birth of Tragedy published"},{"date":"1879","event":"Resigns his professorship"},{"date":"1883–1885","event":"Thus Spoke Zarathustra"},{"date":"1889","event":"Mental collapse in Turin"},{"date":"1900","event":"Dies in Weimar"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Friedrich Nietzsche","relatedWorks":["thus-spoke-zarathustra","the-gay-science","the-antichrist","twilight-of-the-idols","the-birth-of-tragedy","beyond-good-and-evil","ecce-homo","on-the-genealogy-of-morality"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"thus-spoke-zarathustra","url":"/works/thus-spoke-zarathustra/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-gay-science","url":"/works/the-gay-science/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-antichrist","url":"/works/the-antichrist/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"twilight-of-the-idols","url":"/works/twilight-of-the-idols/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-birth-of-tragedy","url":"/works/the-birth-of-tragedy/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"beyond-good-and-evil","url":"/works/beyond-good-and-evil/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"ecce-homo","url":"/works/ecce-homo/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"on-the-genealogy-of-morality","url":"/works/on-the-genealogy-of-morality/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"He also composed music, writing pieces for voice, piano and violin.","source":{"title":"Friedrich Nietzsche (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Nietzsche"}}],"records":[{"text":"He became a professor at 24 and is still among the youngest tenured professors of classics on record.","source":{"title":"Friedrich Nietzsche (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Nietzsche"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Son of a Lutheran minister; he is famous for his criticism of Christianity and the morality founded on it.","source":"https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nietzsche/","sourceName":"Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy","documented":true},"furtherReading":[{"series":"Very Short Introductions","title":"Nietzsche: A Very Short Introduction","author":"Michael Tanner","publisher":"Oxford University Press","year":2000,"isbn13":"9780192854148","url":"https://bookshop.org/a/130650/9780192854148"}],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"florence-nightingale","name":"Florence Nightingale","url":"/great-lives/florence-nightingale/","dates":"1820–1910","born":1820,"died":1910,"era":"19th-century","categories":["physicians-medicine","saints-reformers"],"knownFor":"English nurse in the Crimean War who founded modern nursing.","bio":"Florence Nightingale was born in Florence, Italy, and named after the city, to a wealthy English family. She was well educated by her father in languages, history and mathematics. At sixteen she felt a call from God to serve, and against her family's wishes she trained as a nurse in Germany. In 1854, during the Crimean War, reports reached Britain of terrible conditions for wounded soldiers. The government sent her with thirty-eight nurses to the army hospital at Scutari, near Constantinople. She found filth, crowded wards and shortages of everything; far more soldiers were dying of disease than of wounds. She organized supplies, kitchens and laundries, and the soldiers called her the Lady with the Lamp for her night rounds. After a sanitary commission cleaned the drains and ventilation, deaths fell sharply. Back in England she used statistics and new kinds of diagrams to persuade the government to reform army health and hospitals. In 1860 she founded a nursing school at St. Thomas' Hospital in London, and she wrote Notes on Nursing. Often bedridden later, she kept working from home. She died in 1910.","keyDates":[{"date":"1820","event":"Born in Florence"},{"date":"1854","event":"Goes to Scutari in the Crimean War"},{"date":"1858","event":"Statistical reports on army health"},{"date":"1859","event":"Notes on Nursing"},{"date":"1860","event":"Nightingale Training School opens"},{"date":"1910","event":"Dies in London"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["wonderful-adventures-of-mrs-seacole","nightingale-notes-on-nursing"],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"She was named after the city where she was born, Florence in Italy.","source":{"title":"Florence Nightingale (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Nightingale"}},{"text":"In Athens she rescued a little owl from some children who were teasing it. She named it Athena and often carried it in her pocket.","source":{"title":"Florence Nightingale (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Nightingale"}}],"records":[{"text":"In 1907 she became the first woman awarded the Order of Merit.","source":{"title":"Florence Nightingale (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Nightingale"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Remained in the Church of England throughout her life, with unorthodox views, including belief in universal reconciliation.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Nightingale","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"alfred-nobel","name":"Alfred Nobel","url":"/great-lives/alfred-nobel/","dates":"1833–1896","born":1833,"died":1896,"era":"19th-century","categories":["inventors","titans-of-industry"],"knownFor":"Swedish chemist who invented dynamite and founded the Nobel Prizes.","bio":"Alfred Nobel was born in Stockholm, Sweden, and grew up partly in St. Petersburg, Russia, where his father made mines and machinery. He was educated by private tutors, spoke several languages, and wrote poetry. He studied chemistry and became interested in nitroglycerin, a powerful but dangerously unstable explosive. In 1864 an explosion at the family's factory killed his younger brother Emil and several others. Nobel kept working and in 1867 patented dynamite, nitroglycerin mixed with a kind of fine earth so it could be handled more safely. Dynamite was used for building tunnels, canals, railways and mines, and also in war. He later invented gelignite and a smokeless powder, held over three hundred patents, and built factories in many countries, becoming very rich. When his brother Ludvig died in 1888, a French newspaper mistakenly printed Alfred's obituary, calling him a merchant of death. Nobel never married. In his will he left most of his fortune to establish prizes in physics, chemistry, medicine, literature and peace. He died in Italy in 1896.","keyDates":[{"date":"1864","event":"Factory explosion kills his brother"},{"date":"1867","event":"Patents dynamite"},{"date":"1888","event":"Mistaken obituary published"},{"date":"1895","event":"Signs his will founding the prizes"},{"date":"1896","event":"Dies at San Remo"},{"date":"1901","event":"First Nobel Prizes awarded"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"The chemical element nobelium is named after him.","source":{"title":"Alfred Nobel (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Nobel"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Raised Lutheran and attended the Church of Sweden in Paris; he was agnostic in youth and later described as an atheist.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Nobel","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"charles-nordhoff","name":"Charles Nordhoff","url":"/great-lives/charles-nordhoff/","dates":"1887–1947","born":1887,"died":1947,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American novelist who, with James Norman Hall, wrote Mutiny on the Bounty.","bio":"Charles Bernard Nordhoff was born in 1887 in London, England, to American parents, and grew up in California and Mexico. He graduated from Harvard University in 1909. During the First World War he served as an ambulance driver in France and then as a pilot in the Lafayette Flying Corps, where he met James Norman Hall, another American aviator. After the war the two men were asked to write a history of the corps, and in 1920 they moved together to Tahiti in the South Pacific, where they lived for many years and married local women. They wrote several books together, the most famous being their trilogy about the mutiny on HMS Bounty in 1789: Mutiny on the Bounty (1932), Men Against the Sea and Pitcairn's Island. The first was made into an Academy Award–winning film in 1935. Nordhoff also wrote books on his own, including stories for young readers. He returned to California, where he died in 1947.","keyDates":[{"date":"1887","event":"Born in London to American parents"},{"date":"1909","event":"Graduates from Harvard"},{"date":"1920","event":"Moves to Tahiti with James Norman Hall"},{"date":"1932","event":"Mutiny on the Bounty published"},{"date":"1947","event":"Dies in California"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall","relatedWorks":["mutiny-on-the-bounty"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"mutiny-on-the-bounty","url":"/works/mutiny-on-the-bounty/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented; his mother came from a Pennsylvania Quaker family.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Nordhoff","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"solomon-northup","name":"Solomon Northup","url":"/great-lives/solomon-northup/","dates":"1807 or 1808–after 1857","born":1808,"died":1864,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Free-born African American who was kidnapped and enslaved for twelve years, author of Twelve Years a Slave.","bio":"Solomon Northup was born in 1807 or 1808 in Minerva, New York, the son of a formerly enslaved man who had been freed, which made Solomon free from birth. He became a skilled violinist. In 1829 he married Anne Hampton, and they had three children. He worked as a farmer and owned land in Washington County, New York, and was also a professional violinist. In 1841 two men offered him work as a musician with a travelling circus and took him to Washington, D.C., where he was drugged, kidnapped and sold into slavery. He was shipped to Louisiana and enslaved on plantations there for twelve years. Finally Samuel Bass, a Canadian working on the plantation, helped get word to New York. With the help of Governor Washington Hunt and the lawyer Henry B. Northup, he regained his freedom in January 1853 and returned to his family. That year he published Twelve Years a Slave. He spoke against slavery and helped others escape on the Underground Railroad. The date and place of his death are unknown.","keyDates":[{"date":"1807","event":"Born free in Minerva, New York"},{"date":"1841","event":"Kidnapped and sold into slavery"},{"date":"1853","event":"Regains his freedom"},{"date":"1853","event":"Twelve Years a Slave published"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Solomon Northup","relatedWorks":["twelve-years-a-slave"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"twelve-years-a-slave","url":"/works/twelve-years-a-slave/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"He was a skilled violinist who played at well-known hotels in Saratoga Springs, New York.","source":{"title":"Solomon Northup (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomon_Northup"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomon_Northup","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["Northup's birth year (1807 or 1808) and the date and place of his death are unknown; the last records of him date from after 1857."]},{"slug":"mary-norton","name":"Mary Norton","url":"/great-lives/mary-norton/","dates":"1903–1992","born":1903,"died":1992,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"English author of The Borrowers, about tiny people who live secretly in a family's house.","bio":"Kathleen Mary Pearson was born in 1903, the daughter of a physician, and grew up in a Georgian house at the end of the High Street in Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire, which is thought to have been the setting of The Borrowers. In 1926 she married Robert Charles Norton, and they had four children. She began working for the British War Office in 1940, and during the Second World War she moved with her family to the United States, where she began writing while working for the British Purchasing Commission in New York City. Her first book, The Magic Bed Knob (1944), was followed by Bonfires and Broomsticks; together they became the basis of the Disney film Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971). The Borrowers (1952) tells of the Clock family, tiny people who live under the floor of an old house and 'borrow' what they need from the humans above. It won the Carnegie Medal as the year's outstanding British children's book and was followed by four sequels, the last in 1982. In 1970 she married Lionel Bonsey. She died in Bideford in 1992.","keyDates":[{"date":"1903","event":"Born"},{"date":"1926","event":"Marries Robert Charles Norton"},{"date":"1944","event":"The Magic Bed Knob published"},{"date":"1952","event":"The Borrowers published; Carnegie Medal"},{"date":"1971","event":"Bedknobs and Broomsticks film"},{"date":"1992","event":"Dies in Bideford, Devon"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Mary Norton","relatedWorks":["the-borrowers"],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"library","work":"the-borrowers","url":"/works/the-borrowers/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Norton_%28writer%29","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"notker-the-stammerer","name":"Notker the Stammerer","url":"/great-lives/notker-the-stammerer/","dates":"c. 840–912","born":840,"died":912,"era":"medieval","categories":["writers-poets","theologians-church-fathers","artists-composers-architects"],"knownFor":"Monk of St Gall, poet, composer and author of an early life of Charlemagne.","bio":"Notker, called Balbulus, 'the Stammerer', because of a lifelong stutter, was born around 840 near the Abbey of St Gall, in what is now Switzerland, into a wealthy landowning family. He was educated at the abbey alongside the monks Tuotilo and Ratpert, and all three became composers, making St Gall an important center of early medieval music. Notker spent his life there as a Benedictine monk, librarian and renowned teacher; one of his pupils, Solomon III, became bishop of Constance. He also sometimes advised the emperor Charles the Fat, a great-grandson of Charlemagne. Notker is credited with two major works. His Liber Hymnorum is an important collection of early musical sequences, poems sung during the Mass. The Deeds of Charlemagne, written for Charles the Fat in the 880s, is a collection of lively anecdotes about the great emperor, his court and his wars, some of them legendary, which has been read alongside Einhard's earlier biography ever since. He also wrote a life of St Gall and a martyrology. Although venerated at St Gall, he was never formally canonized. He died there in 912.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 840","event":"Born near the Abbey of St Gall"},{"date":"880s","event":"Liber Hymnorum"},{"date":"880s","event":"Writes the Deeds of Charlemagne"},{"date":"912","event":"Dies at St Gall"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Einhard and Notker the Stammerer","relatedWorks":["two-lives-of-charlemagne"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"two-lives-of-charlemagne","url":"/works/two-lives-of-charlemagne/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Benedictine monk of St Gall; venerated as Blessed or as a saint.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notker_the_Stammerer","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"flannery-oconnor","name":"Flannery O'Connor","url":"/great-lives/flannery-oconnor/","dates":"1925–1964","born":1925,"died":1964,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American writer of the South, author of A Good Man Is Hard to Find and other short stories marked by dark humor and Catholic faith.","bio":"Mary Flannery O'Connor was born in 1925 in Savannah, Georgia, the only child of a Catholic family. When she was five, a newsreel company filmed a chicken she had taught to walk backward. The family moved to Milledgeville, Georgia, and her father died of lupus in 1941. She studied at the Georgia State College for Women and then at the Writers' Workshop of the University of Iowa. Her first novel, Wise Blood, appeared in 1952. In 1951 she was diagnosed with lupus, the disease that had killed her father, and she spent the rest of her life with her mother on the family farm, Andalusia, near Milledgeville, where she raised peacocks and other birds. She wrote in the mornings and corresponded with many friends. Her short-story collection A Good Man Is Hard to Find (1955) and her later stories, often violent and darkly comic, present characters in the rural South facing moments of grace. She died in 1964 at the age of 39. Her Complete Stories won the National Book Award in 1972.","keyDates":[{"date":"1925","event":"Born in Savannah, Georgia"},{"date":"1951","event":"Diagnosed with lupus"},{"date":"1952","event":"Wise Blood published"},{"date":"1955","event":"A Good Man Is Hard to Find published"},{"date":"1964","event":"Dies in Milledgeville"},{"date":"1972","event":"The Complete Stories wins the National Book Award"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Flannery O'Connor","relatedWorks":["a-good-man-is-hard-to-find-and-other-stories"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"a-good-man-is-hard-to-find-and-other-stories","url":"/works/a-good-man-is-hard-to-find-and-other-stories/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"When the girls at her high school had to sew Sunday dresses for themselves, she instead sewed a full outfit for her pet duck and brought the duck to school wearing it.","source":{"title":"Flannery O'Connor (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flannery_O%27Connor"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A devout Catholic whose faith shapes her fiction.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flannery_O%27Connor","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"scott-odell","name":"Scott O'Dell","url":"/great-lives/scott-odell/","dates":"1898–1989","born":1898,"died":1989,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American author of Island of the Blue Dolphins and other historical novels for young readers.","bio":"Scott O'Dell was born in 1898 on Terminal Island in Los Angeles, California. His birth name was O'Dell Gabriel Scott; when a publisher printed his name as Scott O'Dell by mistake, he kept it. He attended several colleges, including Stanford University and the University of Rome. He worked as a cameraman and technical director in films, and later as a newspaper book editor. He wrote articles and books for adults, and in World War II he served in the Army Air Forces. In the 1950s, living in the old gold-rush town of Julian, California, he began writing for children. His first children's book, Island of the Blue Dolphins (1960), tells of Karana, a girl who survives alone for years on an island off the California coast, and is based on a true story. It won the Newbery Medal in 1961. The King's Fifth, The Black Pearl and Sing Down the Moon were later Newbery runners-up. In 1972 he received the Hans Christian Andersen Award, and in 1984 he founded the Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction. He died in 1989, aged 91.","keyDates":[{"date":"1898","event":"Born in Los Angeles"},{"date":"1960","event":"Island of the Blue Dolphins published"},{"date":"1961","event":"Newbery Medal"},{"date":"1972","event":"Hans Christian Andersen Award"},{"date":"1984","event":"Founds the Scott O'Dell Award"},{"date":"1989","event":"Dies"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Scott O'Dell","relatedWorks":["island-of-the-blue-dolphins"],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"library","work":"island-of-the-blue-dolphins","url":"/works/island-of-the-blue-dolphins/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_O%27Dell","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"john-ohara","name":"John O'Hara","url":"/great-lives/john-ohara/","dates":"1905–1970","born":1905,"died":1970,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American novelist and short-story writer, author of Appointment in Samarra and Butterfield 8.","bio":"John O'Hara was born in 1905 in Pottsville, Pennsylvania, the eldest son of a doctor. His father died in the mid-1920s, leaving the family unable to afford Yale, the college O'Hara had hoped to attend. He worked as a reporter for newspapers and magazines and began writing short stories, many of them in The New Yorker, and he is credited with helping to create that magazine's short-story style. His first novel, Appointment in Samarra (1934), set in a fictional Pennsylvania town based on Pottsville, follows the self-destruction of a car dealer over three days. Butterfield 8 (1935) is set in New York. His epistolary novel Pal Joey (1940) became a Broadway musical with songs by Rodgers and Hart. O'Hara was known for his ear for dialogue and his close attention to social class and status. His novel Ten North Frederick won the National Book Award in 1956. He wrote many more novels and story collections and died in Princeton, New Jersey, in 1970.","keyDates":[{"date":"1905","event":"Born in Pottsville, Pennsylvania"},{"date":"1934","event":"Appointment in Samarra published"},{"date":"1935","event":"Butterfield 8 published"},{"date":"1956","event":"National Book Award for Ten North Frederick"},{"date":"1970","event":"Dies in Princeton"}],"quotes":[],"author":"John O'Hara","relatedWorks":["butterfield-8"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"butterfield-8","url":"/works/butterfield-8/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Raised Irish Catholic; his adult beliefs are not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_O%27Hara","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"eugene-oneill","name":"Eugene O'Neill","url":"/great-lives/eugene-oneill/","dates":"1888–1953","born":1888,"died":1953,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American playwright, winner of four Pulitzer Prizes and the 1936 Nobel Prize in Literature, author of Long Day's Journey into Night.","bio":"Eugene O'Neill was born in 1888 in a New York City hotel room, the son of the touring actor James O'Neill, and spent much of his childhood traveling with his parents or at boarding schools. He attended Princeton University for a year, then spent several years at sea as a sailor, prospected for gold in Honduras, and lived in poverty in New York. While recovering from tuberculosis in a sanatorium in 1912–1913, he decided to become a playwright. His early one-act plays about the sea were staged by the Provincetown Players. Beyond the Horizon (1920) won the first of his four Pulitzer Prizes for Drama. His plays, including The Emperor Jones, Anna Christie, Strange Interlude, Mourning Becomes Electra, which sets the Greek Oresteia in New England after the Civil War, and The Iceman Cometh, brought serious tragedy to the American stage. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1936. His autobiographical masterpiece, Long Day's Journey into Night, was staged after his death in Boston in 1953 and won a final Pulitzer.","keyDates":[{"date":"1888","event":"Born in New York City"},{"date":"1912–1913","event":"Decides to write plays while recovering from tuberculosis"},{"date":"1920","event":"First Pulitzer Prize, for Beyond the Horizon"},{"date":"1931","event":"Mourning Becomes Electra staged"},{"date":"1936","event":"Nobel Prize in Literature"},{"date":"1953","event":"Dies in Boston"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Eugene O'Neill","relatedWorks":["oneill-mourning-becomes-electra"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"oneill-mourning-becomes-electra","url":"/works/oneill-mourning-becomes-electra/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Raised Catholic and educated at Catholic schools; his adult beliefs are not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_O%27Neill","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"caspar-olevianus","name":"Caspar Olevianus","url":"/great-lives/caspar-olevianus/","dates":"1536–1587","born":1536,"died":1587,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["theologians-church-fathers","saints-reformers"],"knownFor":"German Reformed theologian and preacher at Heidelberg, long honored as co-author of the Heidelberg Catechism, who wrote on the covenant of grace.","bio":"Caspar Olevianus, also called Caspar Olevian, was born in 1536 in Trier, Germany, the son of a baker. He studied the humanities in Paris and law at Bourges in France, where he came to accept the teaching of the Protestant Reformation. When he returned to Trier and preached Reformed beliefs, he came into conflict with the clergy of the city. In 1560 Frederick III, the Elector Palatine, invited him to Heidelberg, where he taught and preached. For centuries he was named with Zacharias Ursinus as co-author of the Heidelberg Catechism of 1563, though many modern scholars think his part was smaller than once believed. After Frederick died, his Lutheran son tried to turn the Palatinate away from the catechism, and Olevianus was banned from teaching. He moved to Berleburg, where he published a commentary on Galatians in 1578; he also wrote on God's covenant of grace. In 1584 he became head of the academy at Herborn. On his deathbed in 1587, asked whether he was sure of his salvation, he answered, 'Most certain!'","keyDates":[{"date":"1536","event":"Born in Trier"},{"date":"1560","event":"Invited to Heidelberg by Frederick III"},{"date":"1563","event":"Heidelberg Catechism published"},{"date":"1578","event":"Commentary on Galatians published"},{"date":"1584","event":"Head of the academy at Herborn"},{"date":"1587","event":"Dies at Herborn"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Zacharias Ursinus and Caspar Olevianus","relatedWorks":["heidelberg-catechism"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"heidelberg-catechism","url":"/works/heidelberg-catechism/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"German Calvinist clergyman and theologian.","source":"https://www.britannica.com/biography/Caspar-Olevianus","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"baroness-orczy","name":"Baroness Orczy","url":"/great-lives/baroness-orczy/","dates":"1865–1947","born":1865,"died":1947,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Hungarian-born British novelist and playwright, creator of the Scarlet Pimpernel.","bio":"Emma Orczy was born in 1865 in Tarnaörs, Hungary, the daughter of Baron Felix Orczy, a composer and landowner. Her family left Hungary when she was a child, living in Budapest, Brussels and Paris before settling in London in 1880. She studied art and exhibited paintings, and married the illustrator Montague Barstow. She began writing detective stories and then The Scarlet Pimpernel, about Sir Percy Blakeney, an English aristocrat who pretends to be a foolish dandy while secretly rescuing French nobles from the guillotine during the Reign of Terror. It was staged as a play in London in 1903 before the novel was published in 1905, and both were great successes. She wrote many sequels about the Pimpernel and his League, as well as mystery stories featuring the Old Man in the Corner and Lady Molly of Scotland Yard. She lived for many years in Monte Carlo and died in Henley-on-Thames in 1947.","keyDates":[{"date":"1865","event":"Born in Tarnaörs, Hungary"},{"date":"1880","event":"Family settles in London"},{"date":"1903","event":"The Scarlet Pimpernel staged in London"},{"date":"1905","event":"The Scarlet Pimpernel published"},{"date":"1947","event":"Dies in Henley-on-Thames"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Baroness Orczy","relatedWorks":["the-scarlet-pimpernel"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-scarlet-pimpernel","url":"/works/the-scarlet-pimpernel/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"Her play The Scarlet Pimpernel opened in London's West End on 5 January 1905 and became a favourite of British audiences.","source":{"title":"Baroness Orczy (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baroness_Orczy"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baroness_Orczy","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"origen","name":"Origen","url":"/great-lives/origen/","dates":"c. 185–c. 253","born":185,"died":253,"era":"ancient","categories":["theologians-church-fathers"],"knownFor":"Alexandrian scholar, teacher and the most learned Christian writer of the third century.","bio":"Origen was born to Christian parents in Alexandria, Egypt, around 185. When he was about seventeen his father, Leonides, was beheaded in a persecution, and Origen supported his family by teaching. He was soon put in charge of instructing new converts and became famous for his learning and simple way of life. He studied Greek philosophy to explain the faith to educated people and learned Hebrew to study the Old Testament. He wrote commentaries on most books of the Bible, the Hexapla, which set Hebrew and Greek versions of the Old Testament side by side, and On First Principles. Around 231 he settled in Caesarea in Palestine and opened a school. There, about 248, he wrote Against Celsus, a reply to a pagan attack on Christianity. In the persecution under Emperor Decius in 250 he was imprisoned and tortured but did not deny his faith. He died a few years later, probably at Tyre. Some of his speculative ideas were later condemned, but his biblical scholarship deeply influenced later Christian thinkers.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 185","event":"Born in Alexandria"},{"date":"202","event":"Father Leonides martyred; Origen begins teaching"},{"date":"c. 220–230","event":"Writes On First Principles"},{"date":"c. 231","event":"Ordained in Palestine; settles in Caesarea"},{"date":"c. 248","event":"Writes Against Celsus"},{"date":"250","event":"Imprisoned and tortured under Decius"},{"date":"c. 253","event":"Dies, probably at Tyre"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Origen","relatedWorks":["origen-de-principiis","origen-against-celsus"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"origen-against-celsus","url":"/works/origen-against-celsus/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"origen-de-principiis","url":"/works/origen-de-principiis/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Christian exegete and theologian whose work laid foundations for philosophical theology, though he was later considered a heretic.","source":"https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/origen/","sourceName":"Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["Birth and death years are approximate; ancient sources (chiefly Eusebius, Church History VI) give no exact dates."]},{"slug":"george-orwell","name":"George Orwell","url":"/great-lives/george-orwell/","dates":"1903–1950","born":1903,"died":1950,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"English novelist and essayist Eric Blair, author of Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four.","bio":"Eric Arthur Blair was born in 1903 in Motihari, India, where his father was a British official, and was brought to England as a baby. He won a scholarship to Eton, and instead of going to university he joined the Indian Imperial Police in Burma in 1922. He resigned in 1927 and, wanting to understand poverty firsthand, lived among the poor in Paris and London, writing Down and Out in Paris and London (1933) under the pen name George Orwell. The Road to Wigan Pier described the lives of coal miners in northern England. In 1936 he went to fight against Franco in the Spanish Civil War, where he was shot in the throat, and his experiences of the war and of rival factions on his own side, described in Homage to Catalonia, made him a lifelong opponent of totalitarianism. During the Second World War he worked for the BBC. Animal Farm (1945), a fable about farm animals whose revolution is betrayed, and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), set in a society under constant surveillance, made him famous. He died of tuberculosis in London in 1950.","keyDates":[{"date":"1903","event":"Born in Motihari, India"},{"date":"1922","event":"Joins the Indian Imperial Police in Burma"},{"date":"1933","event":"Down and Out in Paris and London"},{"date":"1937","event":"Wounded in the Spanish Civil War"},{"date":"1945","event":"Animal Farm published"},{"date":"1949","event":"Nineteen Eighty-Four published"},{"date":"1950","event":"Dies in London"}],"quotes":[],"author":"George Orwell","relatedWorks":["animal-farm","orwell-politics-and-the-english-language","nineteen-eighty-four","down-and-out-in-paris-and-london","burmese-days","a-clergymans-daughter","keep-the-aspidistra-flying","the-road-to-wigan-pier","homage-to-catalonia","coming-up-for-air","shooting-an-elephant-and-other-essays"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"animal-farm","url":"/works/animal-farm/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"orwell-politics-and-the-english-language","url":"/works/orwell-politics-and-the-english-language/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"nineteen-eighty-four","url":"/works/nineteen-eighty-four/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"down-and-out-in-paris-and-london","url":"/works/down-and-out-in-paris-and-london/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"burmese-days","url":"/works/burmese-days/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"a-clergymans-daughter","url":"/works/a-clergymans-daughter/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"keep-the-aspidistra-flying","url":"/works/keep-the-aspidistra-flying/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-road-to-wigan-pier","url":"/works/the-road-to-wigan-pier/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"homage-to-catalonia","url":"/works/homage-to-catalonia/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"coming-up-for-air","url":"/works/coming-up-for-air/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"shooting-an-elephant-and-other-essays","url":"/works/shooting-an-elephant-and-other-essays/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"He chose the pen name George Orwell because 'It is a good round English name': George for England's patron saint and Orwell for the River Orwell in Suffolk.","source":{"title":"George Orwell (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Orwell"}}],"records":[{"text":"He may have been the first to use the phrase 'cold war', in an essay published in 1945.","source":{"title":"George Orwell (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Orwell"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"An atheist who identified with a humanist outlook, though he took part in the social life of the Church of England.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Orwell","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"william-osler","name":"William Osler","url":"/great-lives/william-osler/","dates":"1849–1919","born":1849,"died":1919,"era":"19th-century","categories":["physicians-medicine"],"knownFor":"Canadian physician who reshaped medical education at Johns Hopkins by bringing students to the bedside and creating the residency system.","bio":"William Osler was born on 12 July 1849 at Bond Head, Canada West (now Ontario), the son of an Anglican missionary clergyman. He first intended to enter the ministry but turned to medicine, graduating from McGill University in 1872 and studying in London, Berlin and Vienna. He taught at McGill and then at the University of Pennsylvania before becoming, in 1889, the first physician-in-chief of the new Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. There he insisted that medical students learn on the wards, examining patients themselves, and he organized the training of young doctors who lived in the hospital, the origin of the modern residency. His textbook The Principles and Practice of Medicine (1892) was used for decades. He was famous for his kindness to patients, his humour and his love of old books. In 1905 he became Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford and was made a baronet in 1911. His only son, Revere, was killed in the First World War in 1917, a grief from which he never recovered. Osler died in Oxford on 29 December 1919.","keyDates":[{"date":"1849","event":"Born at Bond Head, Ontario, on 12 July"},{"date":"1872","event":"Graduates in medicine from McGill"},{"date":"1889","event":"First physician-in-chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital"},{"date":"1892","event":"Publishes The Principles and Practice of Medicine"},{"date":"1905","event":"Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford"},{"date":"1919","event":"Dies in Oxford on 29 December"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"hippocratic-writings","url":"/works/hippocratic-writings/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A practicing Anglican from a very religious family.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Osler","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"ovid","name":"Ovid","url":"/great-lives/ovid/","dates":"43 BC–AD 17 or 18","born":-43,"died":17,"era":"ancient","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Roman poet, author of the Metamorphoses, a great collection of myths of transformation.","bio":"Publius Ovidius Naso, known in English as Ovid, was born in 43 BC in Sulmo, now Sulmona, in central Italy, into an old family of the equestrian class. His father sent him to Rome to study rhetoric in preparation for a career in law and politics, but he preferred poetry. His early works, the Amores and the Art of Love, are playful love poems, and the Heroides are imaginary letters from heroines of legend to the men who left them. His masterpiece, the Metamorphoses, completed around AD 8, is a long poem of about 250 myths, from the creation of the world to the time of Julius Caesar, linked by the theme of transformation, such as the stories of Daphne and of Daedalus and Icarus. He also wrote the Fasti, about the Roman calendar. In AD 8 the emperor Augustus banished him to Tomis, on the Black Sea, for reasons Ovid called 'a poem and a mistake'. From exile he wrote the Tristia and other poems pleading to return, but he died at Tomis in AD 17 or 18.","keyDates":[{"date":"43 BC","event":"Born in Sulmo"},{"date":"c. 16 BC","event":"Amores published"},{"date":"AD 8","event":"Metamorphoses completed; banished to Tomis"},{"date":"AD 17 or 18","event":"Dies at Tomis"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Ovid","relatedWorks":["metamorphoses","ovid-heroides"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"metamorphoses","url":"/works/metamorphoses/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"ovid-heroides","url":"/works/ovid-heroides/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented beyond the Roman religion of his time.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ovid","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[{"series":"Very Short Introductions","title":"Ovid: A Very Short Introduction","author":"Llewelyn Morgan","publisher":"Oxford University Press","year":2020,"isbn13":"9780198837688","url":"https://bookshop.org/a/130650/9780198837688"}],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"william-paca","name":"William Paca","url":"/great-lives/william-paca/","dates":"1740–1799","born":1740,"died":1799,"era":"18th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"Maryland lawyer and planter who signed the Declaration and later served as governor and as a federal judge.","bio":"William Paca was born in 1740 in Abingdon, Maryland, studied law in Annapolis and in England, and became a leading attorney and planter. With Samuel Chase and others he opposed the Stamp Act and later served in the Continental Congress, where he signed the Declaration of Independence. He helped write Maryland's first state constitution and became governor of Maryland late in the war, working to raise men and supplies. After ratification of the federal Constitution, President Washington appointed him a federal district judge, a post he held until his death in 1799. Paca was a wealthy planter who held people in slavery, like many of the Maryland and Virginia signers. The contrast between the language he signed in 1776 and the labor system that supported his household is part of his story, not a footnote to be added later.","keyDates":[{"date":"1740","event":"Born in Abingdon, Maryland"},{"date":"1776","event":"Signs the Declaration of Independence"},{"date":"1782","event":"Becomes governor of Maryland"},{"date":"1789","event":"Is appointed a federal district judge"},{"date":"1799","event":"Dies in Maryland"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["the-founding-documents"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-founding-documents","url":"/works/the-founding-documents/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":null,"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"robert-treat-paine","name":"Robert Treat Paine","url":"/great-lives/robert-treat-paine/","dates":"1731–1814","born":1731,"died":1814,"era":"18th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"Massachusetts lawyer who signed the Declaration and later served as the state's attorney general and a justice of its supreme court.","bio":"Robert Treat Paine was born in Boston in 1731, graduated from Harvard, and studied law after first considering the ministry. In 1770 he was a prosecutor in the Boston Massacre trials, while John Adams served as counsel for the British soldiers; the two men differed in that courtroom but later sat together in Congress. Paine signed the Declaration of Independence for Massachusetts and also signed the Articles of Confederation. After the war he became the first attorney general of Massachusetts and then a justice of the state supreme court, where he served until 1804. He had a serious interest in science and in the organization of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He died in Boston in 1814.","keyDates":[{"date":"1731","event":"Born in Boston"},{"date":"1770","event":"Prosecutes the Boston Massacre trials"},{"date":"1776","event":"Signs the Declaration of Independence"},{"date":"1777","event":"Becomes Massachusetts attorney general"},{"date":"1814","event":"Dies in Boston"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["the-founding-documents"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-founding-documents","url":"/works/the-founding-documents/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":null,"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"thomas-paine","name":"Thomas Paine","url":"/great-lives/thomas-paine/","dates":"1737–1809","born":1737,"died":1809,"era":"18th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders","writers-poets"],"knownFor":"English-born American writer whose pamphlet Common Sense (1776) made the case for American independence.","bio":"Thomas Paine was born in 1737 in Thetford, Norfolk, England, the son of a stay-maker, who made corsets. At thirteen he was apprenticed to his father and later worked at several jobs, including as an excise officer. In 1774, with a letter of introduction from Benjamin Franklin, he emigrated to Philadelphia. In January 1776 he published Common Sense, a pamphlet arguing in plain language that the American colonies should break away from Britain. It was read widely and helped turn opinion toward independence. During the Revolutionary War he wrote a series of pamphlets called The American Crisis, which began, 'These are the times that try men's souls'; George Washington had it read to his troops. He later went to Europe, where he defended the French Revolution in Rights of Man (1791). He was elected to the French National Convention, but in 1793 he was arrested and held in the Luxembourg Prison in Paris. His book The Age of Reason, which criticised organised religion from the point of view of deism, made him many enemies. He returned to America in 1802 and died in New York City in 1809.","keyDates":[{"date":"1737","event":"Born in Thetford, England"},{"date":"1774","event":"Emigrates to Philadelphia"},{"date":"1776","event":"Common Sense published"},{"date":"1776","event":"The American Crisis begins"},{"date":"1791","event":"Rights of Man published"},{"date":"1793","event":"Imprisoned in France"},{"date":"1809","event":"Dies in New York City"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Thomas Paine","relatedWorks":["common-sense-rights-of-man-and-other-writings","burke-paine-debate"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"common-sense-rights-of-man-and-other-writings","url":"/works/common-sense-rights-of-man-and-other-writings/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"burke-paine-debate","url":"/works/burke-paine-debate/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[{"text":"The U.S. Social Security Administration recognises his Agrarian Justice as the first American proposal for an old-age pension.","source":{"title":"Thomas Paine (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Paine"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"His Age of Reason became a popular deist text.","source":"https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/paine/","sourceName":"Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"giovanni-pierluigi-da-palestrina","name":"Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina","url":"/great-lives/giovanni-pierluigi-da-palestrina/","dates":"c. 1525–1594","born":1525,"died":1594,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["artists-composers-architects"],"knownFor":"Italian composer whose smooth, clear church polyphony became a model for centuries.","bio":"Giovanni Pierluigi was born around 1525 in Palestrina, a town near Rome, and took its name. He sang as a choirboy at the church of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, and in 1544 became organist and choirmaster in his hometown cathedral. When its bishop became Pope Julius III, he brought Palestrina to Rome to direct the choir of St. Peter's Basilica. He spent nearly his entire career in Rome's great churches. He wrote more than a hundred Masses, hundreds of motets and other sacred works, and some secular madrigals. His music weaves several independent voice parts together while keeping the words clear and the harmonies smooth and balanced. A long-told story says his Pope Marcellus Mass persuaded the Council of Trent not to ban polyphonic music in church; historians consider this an exaggeration, but his style did match the council's desire for clarity. He lost his first wife and two sons to plague, remarried, and managed his second wife's fur business. His style was later studied as the model of counterpoint by composers including Bach and Mozart's teachers. He died in Rome in 1594.","keyDates":[{"date":"1544","event":"Organist at Palestrina cathedral"},{"date":"1551","event":"Choirmaster at St. Peter's"},{"date":"1562","event":"Pope Marcellus Mass published by 1567"},{"date":"1594","event":"Dies in Rome"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A Catholic composer remembered as the ideal composer of Catholic church music after the Council of Trent.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Pierluigi_da_Palestrina","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["The story that his Mass saved church polyphony at Trent is regarded by historians as legend."]},{"slug":"paracelsus","name":"Paracelsus","url":"/great-lives/paracelsus/","dates":"1493–1541","born":1493,"died":1541,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["physicians-medicine","scientists-mathematicians"],"knownFor":"Swiss physician and alchemist who attacked ancient authorities, championed chemical medicines and studied miners' diseases.","bio":"Theophrastus von Hohenheim, who called himself Paracelsus, was born in 1493 (some sources say 1494) at Einsiedeln in Switzerland, the son of a physician. He studied in Italy and then travelled widely as an army surgeon and wandering doctor, learning from barbers, miners and folk healers as well as from books. In 1527 he became city physician and lecturer at Basel, where he lectured in German rather than Latin and publicly burned a standard medical textbook to show his contempt for slavish reliance on Galen and Avicenna. His quarrels with colleagues soon forced him out, and he spent the rest of his life wandering through central Europe. Paracelsus taught that diseases have specific causes outside the body and should be treated with specific remedies, many prepared chemically from minerals such as mercury, antimony and sulphur. He wrote on syphilis, on wounds and on the lung diseases of miners, an early study of occupational illness. He held that the dose determines whether a substance is a poison or a cure. He died in Salzburg in 1541.","keyDates":[{"date":"1493","event":"Born at Einsiedeln, Switzerland (some sources: 1494)"},{"date":"1527","event":"City physician and lecturer at Basel"},{"date":"1528","event":"Leaves Basel after quarrels with the authorities"},{"date":"1541","event":"Dies in Salzburg on 24 September"},{"date":"1567","event":"His treatise on miners' diseases is published"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"galen-selected-works","url":"/works/galen-selected-works/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A Christian whose religious beliefs shaped his science; he believed scientific discoveries were messages from God.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracelsus","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["The burned textbook is usually said to be Avicenna's Canon; accounts vary.","The idea that \"the dose makes the poison\" is paraphrased, not quoted."]},{"slug":"ambroise-pare","name":"Ambroise Paré","url":"/great-lives/ambroise-pare/","dates":"c. 1510–1590","born":1510,"died":1590,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["physicians-medicine"],"knownFor":"French barber-surgeon who reformed the treatment of wounds.","bio":"Ambroise Paré was born in Laval, in western France, and trained as a barber-surgeon, a craftsman rather than a university physician, working at the Hôtel-Dieu hospital in Paris. He became an army surgeon in 1537. At the time, gunshot wounds were thought to be poisoned and were treated by pouring boiling oil into them. During one campaign Paré ran out of oil and used a soothing mixture of egg yolk, oil of roses and turpentine instead. The next morning the soldiers he had treated this way were resting comfortably, while those given boiling oil were feverish and in pain, and he never used the oil again. He also revived the practice of tying off arteries with thread during amputations instead of burning them, designed artificial limbs, and improved childbirth methods. He wrote in French rather than Latin so that ordinary surgeons could read his books, which angered some university doctors. He served as surgeon to four French kings. A Protestant by tradition, he is said to have survived the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre of 1572 under royal protection. He died in 1590.","keyDates":[{"date":"1537","event":"Becomes an army surgeon"},{"date":"1545","event":"Publishes on the treatment of gunshot wounds"},{"date":"1552","event":"Surgeon to Henry II"},{"date":"1575","event":"Collected works published"},{"date":"1590","event":"Dies in Paris"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["vesalius-on-the-fabric-of-the-human-body","pare-journeys-in-diverse-places"],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"As a child he watched and then trained with his older brother, a barber-surgeon in Paris.","source":{"title":"Ambroise Paré (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambroise_Par%C3%A9"}},{"text":"An asteroid, 259344 Paré, is named after him.","source":{"title":"Ambroise Paré (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambroise_Par%C3%A9"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Lived as a Catholic; some evidence suggests sympathy for the Huguenot (French Protestant) cause, but this is disputed.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambroise_Par%C3%A9","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["His Protestant faith and survival of the 1572 massacre rest on later tradition and are debated."]},{"slug":"dorothy-parker","name":"Dorothy Parker","url":"/great-lives/dorothy-parker/","dates":"1893–1967","born":1893,"died":1967,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American poet, critic and short-story writer known for her sharp wit and a member of the Algonquin Round Table.","bio":"Dorothy Rothschild was born in 1893 in Long Branch, New Jersey, and grew up in Manhattan. Her mother died when she was a small child. After her father's death she played piano at a dancing school and then sold poems to Vanity Fair magazine and went to work for Vogue. In 1917 she married Edwin Pond Parker II. As a drama critic at Vanity Fair, she joined a group of writers and wits who met for lunch at the Algonquin Hotel in New York, known as the Algonquin Round Table. Her short, clever poems were collected in Enough Rope (1926), a bestseller, and later books. Her short story Big Blonde won the O. Henry Award in 1929. She also wrote reviews for The New Yorker and, with her second husband Alan Campbell, film screenplays in Hollywood, sharing an Academy Award nomination for A Star Is Born. She was active in civil rights causes and left her estate to Martin Luther King Jr. She died in New York in 1967.","keyDates":[{"date":"1893","event":"Born in Long Branch, New Jersey"},{"date":"1917","event":"Joins Vanity Fair"},{"date":"1926","event":"Enough Rope published"},{"date":"1929","event":"O. Henry Award for Big Blonde"},{"date":"1937","event":"Oscar nomination for A Star Is Born"},{"date":"1967","event":"Dies in New York"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Dorothy Parker","relatedWorks":["the-portable-dorothy-parker","dorothy-parker-complete-poems"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-portable-dorothy-parker","url":"/works/the-portable-dorothy-parker/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"dorothy-parker-complete-poems","url":"/works/dorothy-parker-complete-poems/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented; she attended a Catholic school as a child.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Parker","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"blaise-pascal","name":"Blaise Pascal","url":"/great-lives/blaise-pascal/","dates":"1623–1662","born":1623,"died":1662,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["philosophers","scientists-mathematicians","inventors","theologians-church-fathers"],"knownFor":"French mathematician, inventor and Christian thinker, author of the Pensées.","bio":"Blaise Pascal was born in Clermont, France. His mother died when he was three, and his father, a tax official and amateur mathematician, educated him at home. Pascal showed astonishing talent: at sixteen he wrote an essay on conic sections, and at nineteen he invented a mechanical calculator to help his father with his work. He experimented with air pressure, showing with a barometer carried up a mountain that air pressure falls with height, and stated Pascal's principle about pressure in fluids. With Pierre de Fermat he founded the mathematics of probability. On the night of 23 November 1654 he had an intense religious experience, which he wrote down and sewed into his coat; it began with the word Fire. He drew close to the Jansenists at Port-Royal and wrote the Provincial Letters, a witty attack on Jesuit moral teaching. He planned a great defense of Christianity, and the notes for it, published after his death as the Pensées, include his famous wager. He also started a public carriage service in Paris. Long in poor health, he died in 1662 at thirty-nine.","keyDates":[{"date":"1642","event":"Invents a calculating machine"},{"date":"1648","event":"Air-pressure experiment on the Puy de Dôme"},{"date":"1654","event":"Probability correspondence with Fermat; night of fire"},{"date":"1656–57","event":"Provincial Letters"},{"date":"1662","event":"Dies in Paris"}],"quotes":[{"text":"The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know","work":"pensees","location":"Fragment 277, Section IV","verified":true},{"text":"Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature; but he is a thinking reed","work":"pensees","location":"Fragment 347, Section VI","verified":true}],"author":"Blaise Pascal","relatedWorks":["pensees","pascal-provincial-letters","pascal-scientific-treatises"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"pensees","url":"/works/pensees/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"pascal-provincial-letters","url":"/works/pascal-provincial-letters/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"pascal-scientific-treatises","url":"/works/pascal-scientific-treatises/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A Catholic who in November 1654 had an ecstatic experience he interpreted as a religious conversion.","source":"https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pascal/","sourceName":"Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"boris-pasternak","name":"Boris Pasternak","url":"/great-lives/boris-pasternak/","dates":"1890–1960","born":1890,"died":1960,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Russian poet and novelist, author of Doctor Zhivago, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1958.","bio":"Boris Pasternak was born in Moscow in 1890. His father, Leonid Pasternak, was a well-known painter and illustrator, and his mother, Rosa Kaufman, was a concert pianist; Leo Tolstoy and the composer Alexander Scriabin were among the family's acquaintances. Boris first studied music composition, then philosophy at Moscow University and briefly at Marburg in Germany, before turning to poetry. His collection My Sister, Life (1922) made him one of the leading Russian poets of his generation. Under Stalin he survived the purges that killed many writers and earned a living largely by translating, including Shakespeare and Goethe's Faust. His novel Doctor Zhivago, the story of a doctor and poet caught up in the Russian Revolution and civil war, was rejected for publication in the Soviet Union and first appeared in Italy in 1957. In 1958 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature but, under heavy pressure from the Soviet government, declined it. He died near Moscow in 1960.","keyDates":[{"date":"1890","event":"Born in Moscow"},{"date":"1922","event":"My Sister, Life published"},{"date":"1957","event":"Doctor Zhivago published in Italy"},{"date":"1958","event":"Awarded the Nobel Prize, which he declines"},{"date":"1960","event":"Dies at Peredelkino"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Boris Pasternak","relatedWorks":["doctor-zhivago"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"doctor-zhivago","url":"/works/doctor-zhivago/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"His mother was a concert pianist, and as a young man he first wanted to be a musician.","source":{"title":"Boris Pasternak (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Pasternak"}},{"text":"An asteroid, 3508 Pasternak, is named after him.","source":{"title":"Boris Pasternak (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Pasternak"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Grew up in a Russian Jewish household; Christianity became a theme of his later work.","source":"https://www.britannica.com/biography/Boris-Pasternak","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"louis-pasteur","name":"Louis Pasteur","url":"/great-lives/louis-pasteur/","dates":"1822–1895","born":1822,"died":1895,"era":"19th-century","categories":["physicians-medicine","scientists-mathematicians"],"knownFor":"French scientist of germ theory, pasteurization and the rabies vaccine.","bio":"Louis Pasteur was born in Dole, in eastern France, the son of a tanner. He was an average student at first but became a chemist and, at twenty-five, discovered that some crystals come in mirror-image forms. As a professor in Lille he studied why wine and beer go sour, and showed that fermentation is caused by living microorganisms. He found that heating liquids gently kills the microbes that spoil them, a process now called pasteurization. With elegant experiments using swan-necked flasks, he showed that microbes do not arise spontaneously but come from other microbes. He saved France's silk industry by identifying diseases of silkworms. Building on the idea that germs cause disease, he developed vaccines against chicken cholera and anthrax. In 1885 he gave the first rabies vaccine to nine-year-old Joseph Meister, who had been bitten by a rabid dog, and the boy survived. The Pasteur Institute was founded in Paris in 1887. Pasteur suffered strokes that partly paralyzed him, and three of his daughters died young. He was a believing Catholic. He died in 1895.","keyDates":[{"date":"1822","event":"Born in Dole"},{"date":"1857","event":"Shows fermentation is caused by microbes"},{"date":"1862","event":"Swan-neck flask experiments; pasteurization"},{"date":"1881","event":"Anthrax vaccine demonstration"},{"date":"1885","event":"First rabies vaccination"},{"date":"1895","event":"Dies near Paris"}],"quotes":[{"text":"The Sciences gain by mutual support.","work":"pasteur-and-lister-germ-theory-papers","location":"The Germ Theory and Its Applications to Medicine and Surgery (1878), opening","verified":true},{"text":"It is characteristic of science to reduce incessantly the number of unexplained phenomena.","work":"pasteur-and-lister-germ-theory-papers","location":"The Physiological Theory of Fermentation, I","verified":true}],"author":"Louis Pasteur and Joseph Lister","relatedWorks":["pasteur-and-lister-germ-theory-papers"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"pasteur-and-lister-germ-theory-papers","url":"/works/pasteur-and-lister-germ-theory-papers/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[{"text":"He regarded himself as the first to show that tiny living things, microorganisms, cause fermentation.","source":{"title":"Louis Pasteur (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Pasteur"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Raised Catholic; accounts differ, some calling him an ardent Christian and his grandson saying he kept only a spiritual belief without religious practice.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Pasteur","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"saint-patrick","name":"Saint Patrick","url":"/great-lives/saint-patrick/","dates":"5th century","born":390,"died":461,"era":"ancient","categories":["saints-reformers"],"knownFor":"British-born missionary bishop to Ireland, who wrote the Confession.","bio":"Patrick was born in Roman Britain, the son of a deacon and grandson of a priest. At about sixteen, as he tells in his own Confession, he was seized by Irish raiders and taken to Ireland as a slave, where he herded animals and prayed many times a day. After six years he heard in a dream that a ship was ready for him, walked about two hundred miles to the coast, and escaped. Back home with his family, he dreamed that the people of Ireland were calling him to come and walk among them again. After training as a cleric, he returned to Ireland as a bishop and spent the rest of his life there, baptizing thousands, ordaining clergy, and facing danger, imprisonment and criticism. His two surviving writings, the Confession and a Letter to the soldiers of the British ruler Coroticus, who had killed and enslaved newly baptized Christians, are the only certain sources for his life. Many later legends, such as driving out the snakes and using the shamrock to teach the Trinity, are not found in them.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 405","event":"Captured and taken to Ireland, by his own account at about sixteen"},{"date":"c. 411","event":"Escapes back to Britain"},{"date":"c. 432","event":"Returns to Ireland as a bishop, by traditional dating"},{"date":"c. 461","event":"Dies, by traditional dating"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["st-patricks-writings","bede-ecclesiastical-history"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"st-patricks-writings","url":"/works/st-patricks-writings/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Christian missionary, ordained a deacon at Auxerre, who spread the faith in Ireland.","source":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Patrick%2C_St","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica (1911) (via Wikisource)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["His dates are uncertain; traditional dates (432 mission, death about 461) are not firmly established."]},{"slug":"george-s-patton","name":"George S. Patton","url":"/great-lives/george-s-patton/","dates":"1885–1945","born":1885,"died":1945,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["military-leaders"],"knownFor":"Hard-driving American tank general of World War II.","bio":"George Smith Patton Jr. was born in San Gabriel, California, into a family with a long military tradition. He struggled with reading as a boy but graduated from West Point in 1909. In 1916 he served under Pershing in Mexico, and in World War I he organized and led the new American tank force in France, where he was wounded. In World War II he commanded troops in North Africa and led the Seventh Army in the invasion of Sicily in 1943, racing to Palermo and Messina. His career nearly ended after he slapped two soldiers suffering from battle fatigue in field hospitals. After D-Day his Third Army broke out of Normandy in August 1944 and swept across France. In December 1944, during the Battle of the Bulge, he swung his army north in a few days to relieve the surrounded town of Bastogne. His forces then crossed the Rhine and advanced into Germany and Czechoslovakia. Known for profanity and showmanship, he was admired for speed and aggression. He died in December 1945 after a car accident in Germany.","keyDates":[{"date":"1909","event":"Graduates from West Point"},{"date":"1918","event":"Leads American tanks in France"},{"date":"1943","event":"Leads the Seventh Army in Sicily"},{"date":"1944","event":"Third Army sweeps across France; relieves Bastogne"},{"date":"1945","event":"Dies after a car accident in Germany"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"As a child he had trouble learning to read and write, but he grew up to be a keen reader.","source":{"title":"George S. Patton (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_S._Patton"}}],"records":[{"text":"The first American tank designed after the Second World War, the M46, was named the Patton.","source":{"title":"George S. Patton (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_S._Patton"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"An Episcopalian.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_S._Patton","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"apostle-paul","name":"Paul the Apostle","url":"/great-lives/apostle-paul/","dates":"c. 5–c. 64/67","born":5,"died":64,"era":"ancient","categories":["saints-reformers","theologians-church-fathers"],"knownFor":"Jewish Pharisee who became the leading missionary of early Christianity; his letters are the oldest writings in the New Testament.","bio":"Paul, also called Saul, was born in Tarsus in Cilicia, in what is now southern Turkey, a Jew and a Roman citizen. He was trained as a Pharisee in Jerusalem and at first persecuted the followers of Jesus. According to the Acts of the Apostles, he was converted after a vision of the risen Christ on the road to Damascus. Over the following decades he travelled through Syria, Asia Minor, Greece and Macedonia, founding churches in cities such as Philippi, Thessalonica, Corinth and Ephesus, and argued that non-Jewish believers need not follow the Jewish law to belong to the church. His letters to these communities, written in the 50s, are the earliest surviving Christian writings and form much of the New Testament. Arrested in Jerusalem, he appealed to the emperor and was taken to Rome. Early Christian tradition holds that he was executed there under Nero in the 60s. His teaching on grace and faith shaped Augustine, Luther and much later theology. Christians read his letters as Scripture, inspired by God.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 34","event":"Conversion on the road to Damascus"},{"date":"c. 46–57","event":"Missionary journeys"},{"date":"c. 49","event":"Council of Jerusalem"},{"date":"c. 57","event":"Writes the Letter to the Romans"},{"date":"c. 64–67","event":"Traditionally executed in Rome"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["the-bible"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-bible","url":"/works/the-bible/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Apostle and missionary of the early Christian movement who preached to Gentiles.","source":"https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Paul-the-Apostle","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica","documented":true},"furtherReading":[{"series":"Very Short Introductions","title":"Paul: A Very Short Introduction","author":"E. P. Sanders","publisher":"Oxford University Press","year":2001,"isbn13":"9780192854513","url":"https://bookshop.org/a/130650/9780192854513"}],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"charles-sanders-peirce","name":"Charles Sanders Peirce","url":"/great-lives/charles-sanders-peirce/","dates":"1839–1914","born":1839,"died":1914,"era":"19th-century","categories":["philosophers","scientists-mathematicians"],"knownFor":"American philosopher, logician and scientist, founder of pragmatism and of the modern study of signs.","bio":"Charles Sanders Peirce was born in 1839 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the son of Benjamin Peirce, a Harvard professor of mathematics and astronomy. He studied chemistry at Harvard and for about thirty years worked as a scientist for the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey, measuring gravity with pendulums. He also made important contributions to logic, including work on the logic of relations and quantifiers, and to probability and the philosophy of science. In a series of articles in Popular Science Monthly in 1877–1878, called Illustrations of the Logic of Science, including 'The Fixation of Belief' and 'How to Make Our Ideas Clear', he set out the ideas that his friend William James later called pragmatism: that the meaning of an idea lies in its practical consequences. He also developed a theory of signs, or semiotics. He lectured at Johns Hopkins University but never held a permanent academic post. He spent his last decades in poverty in Milford, Pennsylvania, where he died in 1914, leaving many unpublished manuscripts.","keyDates":[{"date":"1839","event":"Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts"},{"date":"1859","event":"Begins work for the Coast Survey"},{"date":"1877–1878","event":"Illustrations of the Logic of Science"},{"date":"1879–1884","event":"Lecturer at Johns Hopkins"},{"date":"1914","event":"Dies in Milford, Pennsylvania"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Charles Sanders Peirce","relatedWorks":["peirce-illustrations-of-the-logic-of-science"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"peirce-illustrations-of-the-logic-of-science","url":"/works/peirce-illustrations-of-the-logic-of-science/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Sanders_Peirce","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"john-penn","name":"John Penn","url":"/great-lives/john-penn/","dates":"1740–1788","born":1740,"died":1788,"era":"18th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"Virginia-born North Carolina lawyer who signed the Declaration and the Articles of Confederation.","bio":"John Penn was born in 1740 in Caroline County, Virginia, studied law, and moved to Granville County, North Carolina, where he built a practice. He was sent to the Continental Congress in 1775, signed the Declaration of Independence, and later signed the Articles of Confederation. He served on the Board of War and remained in Congress through difficult years, when the government often lacked money and men. After leaving Congress he held a state office connected with the taxation of land and then retired to his farm. He died in 1788, at forty-eight. He is not to be confused with the Penn family of Pennsylvania proprietors. His career was that of a working lawyer from a newer colony who accepted a national office, did the committee work assigned to him, and went home when it was done.","keyDates":[{"date":"1740","event":"Born in Caroline County, Virginia"},{"date":"1775","event":"Is seated in the Continental Congress"},{"date":"1776","event":"Signs the Declaration of Independence"},{"date":"1778","event":"Signs the Articles of Confederation"},{"date":"1788","event":"Dies in North Carolina"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["the-founding-documents"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-founding-documents","url":"/works/the-founding-documents/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":null,"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"william-penn","name":"William Penn","url":"/great-lives/william-penn/","dates":"1644–1718","born":1644,"died":1718,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["statesmen-founders","saints-reformers"],"knownFor":"English Quaker leader and writer who founded Pennsylvania as a colony with religious freedom.","bio":"William Penn was born in London in 1644, the son of Admiral Sir William Penn. Sent down from Oxford for religious nonconformity, he later joined the Quakers in Ireland in 1667, to his father's distress. He was imprisoned in the Tower of London for his writings, where he wrote No Cross, No Crown, and in 1670 he and William Mead were tried for preaching in the street; the jury's refusal to convict them, despite being locked up, became a landmark for the independence of English juries. In 1681 King Charles II granted Penn a vast territory in America to settle a debt owed to his father. Penn drew up a Frame of Government guaranteeing freedom of worship, founded Philadelphia, and made treaties with the Lenape people. He spent only about four years in the colony, troubled by disputes and debt. His Some Fruits of Solitude (1693) is a collection of maxims, and in 1693 he also proposed a European parliament to keep the peace. He died in England in 1718. He suffered imprisonment for his faith and defended liberty of conscience.","keyDates":[{"date":"1644","event":"Born in London"},{"date":"1667","event":"Joins the Quakers"},{"date":"1670","event":"Penn and Mead trial"},{"date":"1681","event":"Charter for Pennsylvania"},{"date":"1682","event":"Frame of Government; arrives in America"},{"date":"1693","event":"Some Fruits of Solitude"},{"date":"1718","event":"Dies in Berkshire"}],"quotes":[],"author":"William Penn","relatedWorks":["penn-no-cross-no-crown"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"penn-no-cross-no-crown","url":"/works/penn-no-cross-no-crown/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Accepted the tenets of Quakerism as a young man.","source":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Appletons%27_Cyclop%C3%A6dia_of_American_Biography/Penn%2C_William","sourceName":"Appletons' Cyclopaedia of American Biography (via Wikisource)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"pericles","name":"Pericles","url":"/great-lives/pericles/","dates":"c. 495–429 BC","born":-495,"died":-429,"era":"ancient","categories":["statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"Leading statesman of Athens in its golden age, who built the Parthenon.","bio":"Pericles was the leading statesman of Athens for about thirty years in the middle of the fifth century BC, the city's golden age. He came from a noble family but led the democratic side, and was elected general again and again. Under his leadership Athens used funds from its league of allies, the Delian League, to build the Parthenon and other temples on the Acropolis, and the city became a center of drama, philosophy and art. He introduced pay for citizens who served on juries, so that poorer men could take part in government. When war broke out with Sparta in 431 BC, Pericles persuaded the Athenians to shelter behind their city walls and rely on their navy. At the end of the first year he gave a funeral speech for the war dead, recorded by the historian Thucydides, praising the Athenian way of life. Soon afterward a terrible plague struck the crowded city. Pericles lost two sons to it and died of the plague himself in 429 BC.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 461 BC","event":"Becomes leading figure in Athens"},{"date":"447 BC","event":"Work begins on the Parthenon"},{"date":"431 BC","event":"Peloponnesian War begins; Funeral Oration"},{"date":"429 BC","event":"Dies in the plague"}],"quotes":[{"text":"Its administration favours the many instead of the few; this is why it is called a democracy.","work":"pericles-funeral-oration","location":"Book II.37","verified":true},{"text":"In short, I say that as a city we are the school of Hellas","work":"pericles-funeral-oration","location":"Book II.41","verified":true}],"author":"Pericles","relatedWorks":["pericles-funeral-oration","plutarch-lives"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"pericles-funeral-oration","url":"/works/pericles-funeral-oration/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"plutarch-lives","url":"/works/plutarch-lives/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"book","title":"Pericles of Athens and the Birth of Democracy","author":"Donald Kagan","isbn13":"9780684863955","publisher":"Free Press","year":1998,"format":"paperback"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"Ancient writers say that, a few nights before he was born, his mother dreamed she gave birth to a lion.","source":{"title":"Pericles (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pericles"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented beyond Athenian civic religion; he sponsored temples on the Acropolis.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pericles","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"perpetua-and-felicity","name":"Perpetua and Felicity","url":"/great-lives/perpetua-and-felicity/","dates":"died 203","born":null,"died":203,"era":"ancient","categories":["saints-reformers"],"knownFor":"Young mother and her pregnant slave who were martyred together at Carthage in 203; Perpetua's prison diary is among the earliest writings by a Christian woman.","bio":"Vibia Perpetua was a twenty-two-year-old woman of good family in Carthage, in Roman North Africa, married and nursing an infant son. Felicity was a slave, pregnant at the time of their arrest. In 203, under the emperor Septimius Severus, they were arrested with several other catechumens, people preparing for baptism, and were baptized while under guard. Perpetua's father, a pagan, pleaded with her repeatedly to renounce her faith for the sake of her child, but she refused. In prison she kept a diary describing these scenes and several visions, including one of a ladder to heaven guarded by a dragon. Felicity gave birth to a daughter shortly before the games. On 7 March 203 the prisoners were exposed to wild animals in the amphitheatre during celebrations for the emperor's son, and were then killed by the sword. An editor, possibly Tertullian, combined Perpetua's diary with the account of another martyr and his own narrative in the Passion of Perpetua and Felicity. Their feast is kept on 7 March. Their courage has encouraged persecuted Christians for centuries.","keyDates":[{"date":"203","event":"Arrest and baptism in Carthage"},{"date":"203","event":"Perpetua's prison diary"},{"date":"7 March 203","event":"Martyrdom in the amphitheatre at Carthage"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Vibia Perpetua and an anonymous editor","relatedWorks":["passion-of-perpetua-and-felicity"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"passion-of-perpetua-and-felicity","url":"/works/passion-of-perpetua-and-felicity/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Christian martyrs who suffered at Carthage on 7 March 203.","source":"https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06029a.htm","sourceName":"Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"charles-perrault","name":"Charles Perrault","url":"/great-lives/charles-perrault/","dates":"1628–1703","born":1628,"died":1703,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"French writer whose Stories or Tales from Times Past introduced Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and Puss in Boots to print.","bio":"Charles Perrault was born in Paris in 1628 into a well-to-do family. He studied law and then worked for his brother and later for Jean-Baptiste Colbert, chief minister of King Louis XIV, helping to oversee royal buildings and the arts; he was involved in plans for the Louvre and the gardens of Versailles. He was elected to the Académie française in 1671. In the 1680s and 1690s he led the 'moderns' in a famous literary quarrel, arguing that the writers of the age of Louis XIV equaled or surpassed those of ancient Greece and Rome. In 1697, when he was nearly seventy, he published Stories or Tales from Times Past, with Morals, also known as Tales of Mother Goose. It contained eight prose tales, including Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Little Red Riding Hood, Puss in Boots and Bluebeard, written in an elegant style and each followed by a moral in verse. These versions became the basis of many later retellings. Perrault died in Paris in 1703.","keyDates":[{"date":"1628","event":"Born in Paris"},{"date":"1663","event":"Works for the minister Colbert"},{"date":"1671","event":"Elected to the Académie française"},{"date":"1697","event":"Tales of Mother Goose published"},{"date":"1703","event":"Dies in Paris"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Charles Perrault","relatedWorks":["perrault-cinderella","perrault-sleeping-beauty"],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"library","work":"perrault-cinderella","url":"/works/perrault-cinderella/"},{"band":"3-5","kind":"library","work":"perrault-sleeping-beauty","url":"/works/perrault-sleeping-beauty/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Perrault","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"persius","name":"Persius","url":"/great-lives/persius/","dates":"AD 34–62","born":34,"died":62,"era":"ancient","categories":["writers-poets","philosophers"],"knownFor":"Roman poet whose six satires express Stoic philosophy.","bio":"Aulus Persius Flaccus was born in AD 34 at Volaterrae, now Volterra, in Etruria, into a wealthy family of the equestrian class. His father died when he was six, and his stepfather a few years later. At twelve he was sent to Rome to study grammar and rhetoric. As a teenager he became a student and close friend of the Stoic philosopher Lucius Annaeus Cornutus, who taught him for the rest of his short life. He also befriended the poet Lucan and the senator Thrasea Paetus, a relative by marriage, with whom he traveled. He met the philosopher Seneca but was not impressed by him. He was devoted to his mother, sister and aunt. He wrote slowly and left only six satires, a few hundred lines in all, which criticize the poor taste of contemporary poets, the vanity of the rich and the confusion of ordinary people about what is good, and recommend the Stoic life of virtue. He died in AD 62, aged 27. Cornutus and another friend edited the satires for publication, and they were widely read in the Middle Ages.","keyDates":[{"date":"AD 34","event":"Born at Volaterrae"},{"date":"c. AD 46","event":"Comes to Rome to study"},{"date":"c. AD 50","event":"Becomes a pupil of Cornutus"},{"date":"AD 62","event":"Dies, aged 27"},{"date":"After 62","event":"Satires published by Cornutus"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Horace and Persius","relatedWorks":["the-satires-of-horace-and-persius"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-satires-of-horace-and-persius","url":"/works/the-satires-of-horace-and-persius/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persius","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"peter-the-great","name":"Peter the Great","url":"/great-lives/peter-the-great/","dates":"1672–1725","born":1672,"died":1725,"era":"18th-century","categories":["kings-queens-emperors"],"knownFor":"Tsar who forced Russia to modernize and built St. Petersburg.","bio":"Peter I became tsar of Russia as a boy in 1682, at first sharing the throne with his half-brother. Fascinated by ships and machines, he spent time in the foreign quarter of Moscow and later traveled through western Europe in disguise, working in a Dutch shipyard to learn shipbuilding. Back home he set out to make Russia a European power. He built a navy, reorganized the army, founded schools of mathematics and navigation, simplified the alphabet, changed the calendar, ordered nobles to shave their beards and wear western clothes, and made the nobility serve the state. In the long Great Northern War with Sweden he lost at first, then crushed King Charles XII at Poltava in 1709, winning land on the Baltic Sea. There, on marshland, he built a new capital, St. Petersburg, at the cost of many thousands of workers' lives. He was physically huge, energetic and often brutal; his son Alexei died after being tortured on suspicion of treason. He took the title emperor in 1721 and died in 1725.","keyDates":[{"date":"1682","event":"Becomes co-tsar"},{"date":"1697–98","event":"Travels through western Europe"},{"date":"1703","event":"Founds St. Petersburg"},{"date":"1709","event":"Defeats Sweden at Poltava"},{"date":"1725","event":"Dies in St. Petersburg"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"book","title":"Peter the Great","author":"Diane Stanley","isbn13":"9780688167080","publisher":"Morrow Junior Books","year":1999,"format":""},{"band":"9-12","kind":"book","title":"Peter the Great: His Life and World","author":"Robert K. Massie","isbn13":"9780345298065","publisher":"Ballantine Books","year":1981,"format":"paperback"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"As a young man he built boats, went sailing on Lake Pleshcheyevo and staged mock battles with his toy army.","source":{"title":"Peter the Great (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_the_Great"}},{"text":"Nobles who wanted to keep their beards had to pay a yearly beard tax of one hundred rubles.","source":{"title":"Peter the Great (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_the_Great"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Russian Orthodox ruler who mocked church ceremonies and did not believe in miracles.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_the_Great","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"apostle-peter","name":"Peter the Apostle","url":"/great-lives/apostle-peter/","dates":"died c. 64–68","born":null,"died":64,"era":"ancient","categories":["saints-reformers"],"knownFor":"Galilean fisherman who became the leading apostle of Jesus; Catholic tradition counts him the first bishop of Rome.","bio":"Peter, whose original name was Simon, was a fisherman from Bethsaida who worked on the Sea of Galilee with his brother Andrew. The Gospels describe him as one of the first disciples called by Jesus, who gave him the name Cephas or Peter, meaning rock. He is shown as the spokesman of the Twelve, confessing Jesus as the Christ, but also denying him three times on the night of his arrest. After the resurrection he became a leader of the church in Jerusalem; the Acts of the Apostles describes his preaching at Pentecost and his baptism of the Roman centurion Cornelius, which opened the church to non-Jews. Two New Testament letters bear his name. Early Christian writers from Clement of Rome onward speak of his martyrdom, and later tradition, recorded by Eusebius, places his death in Rome under Nero and his tomb beneath St. Peter's Basilica. The Catholic Church regards him as the first pope; Orthodox and Protestant churches honour him as an apostle but differ over that claim. His two New Testament letters encourage believers suffering for Christ.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 28","event":"Called as a disciple of Jesus"},{"date":"c. 30","event":"Preaches at Pentecost in Jerusalem"},{"date":"c. 49","event":"Speaks at the Council of Jerusalem"},{"date":"c. 64–68","event":"Traditionally martyred in Rome under Nero"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["the-bible","the-history-of-the-church"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-bible","url":"/works/the-bible/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-history-of-the-church","url":"/works/the-history-of-the-church/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A Jewish fisherman called to be a disciple of Jesus.","source":"https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Peter-the-Apostle","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"francesco-petrarch","name":"Francesco Petrarch","url":"/great-lives/francesco-petrarch/","dates":"1304–1374","born":1304,"died":1374,"era":"medieval","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Italian poet and scholar, father of humanism, whose sonnets to Laura made the sonnet the great love form of Europe.","bio":"Francesco Petrarca, known in English as Petrarch, was born at Arezzo in Tuscany on 20 July 1304, the son of a Florentine notary in political exile. He grew up near Avignon, where the popes then lived, and studied law at Montpellier and Bologna before turning to letters. In 1327, he later wrote, he first saw Laura in an Avignon church, and his Italian poems to her, gathered in the Canzoniere, made the sonnet the great love form of Europe. He held clerical offices and church benefices, lived for years in retreat at Vaucluse, climbed Mont Ventoux with Augustine's Confessions in his pocket, and in 1341 was crowned poet laureate on the Capitoline Hill in Rome. A tireless hunter of ancient manuscripts, he rediscovered letters of Cicero and urged a revival of classical learning joined with Christian faith, earning the name father of humanism. He wrote Latin dialogues, letters and the epic Africa, and served as a diplomat. He spent his last years at Arquà near Padua, where he died on 19 July 1374.","keyDates":[{"date":"1304","event":"Born at Arezzo, 20 July"},{"date":"1312","event":"Family settles near Avignon"},{"date":"1327","event":"By his own account, first sees Laura in an Avignon church on Good Friday, 6 April"},{"date":"1336","event":"Climbs Mont Ventoux"},{"date":"1341","event":"Crowned poet laureate on the Capitoline Hill, Rome"},{"date":"1345","event":"Discovers Cicero's letters to Atticus at Verona"},{"date":"1348","event":"Laura dies during the Black Death"},{"date":"1374","event":"Dies at Arquà, 19 July"}],"quotes":[{"text":"That the world's joy is but a flitting dream.","work":"petrarch-canzoniere"}],"author":"Petrarch","relatedWorks":["petrarch-canzoniere"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"petrarch-canzoniere","url":"/works/petrarch-canzoniere/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A devout Catholic and Christian humanist who held clerical offices and benefices, including a canonry, and spent his last years in religious contemplation at Arquà. He revered Augustine, wrote the Secretum as an imagined dialogue with him, and praised the contemplative life in De otio religioso; his brother Gherardo became a Carthusian monk.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrarch","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"pierre-of-cambrai","name":"Pierre of Cambrai","url":"/great-lives/pierre-of-cambrai/","dates":"fl. 1238–1248","born":null,"died":1248,"era":"medieval","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Thirteenth-century canon of Saint-Aubert at Cambrai who wrote the earliest known Life of Saint Dymphna, patron of the mentally ill.","bio":"Pierre of Cambrai, called Petrus in Latin, was a thirteenth-century priest who wrote the earliest known account of Saint Dymphna, the patron saint of people with mental illness. Almost all we know of him comes from that work. He was a canon of Saint-Aubert, a community of priests living under a religious rule in the city of Cambrai, in what is now northern France. Sometime between 1238 and 1248, Guy I, Bishop of Cambrai, asked him to write down the story of Dymphna and her companion, the priest Gerebernus, who were honored at Geel, in present-day Belgium. Pierre wrote in Latin, working from a legend already told in the region, perhaps in Dutch. A collection of miracles reported at the saints' tomb, written between about 1240 and 1247, is probably also his. His Life survives in several fifteenth-century manuscripts. Later historians, such as Johann Peter Kirsch in the Catholic Encyclopedia, judged that the legend has little historical foundation, but the care for the mentally ill that grew up around her shrine at Geel continues today.","keyDates":[{"date":"1238–1248","event":"Bishop Guy I of Cambrai commissions his Life of Dymphna and Gerebernus"},{"date":"c. 1240–1247","event":"The Miracles of Dymphna and Gerebernus are written, probably by Pierre"},{"date":"1349","event":"A church honoring Dymphna is built at Geel"},{"date":"15th century","event":"His Life is copied in several manuscripts, one of them now at Cambrai"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Pierre of Cambrai; Geel tradition","relatedWorks":["st-dymphna-and-geel"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"st-dymphna-and-geel","url":"/works/st-dymphna-and-geel/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":null,"sourceName":null,"documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["No Wikipedia article. Facts come from the Repertorium Fontium entries at geschichtsquellen.de (works 3921 and 3922), the IRHT Légendiers latins record for BHL 2352, the Deutsche Biographie authority record, the Wikipedia article on Saint Dymphna (which calls the bishop Guiard of Laon), and the Catholic Encyclopedia. His birth and death dates are unknown; the died value 1248 marks the end of Bishop Guy I's time in office and is used only for ordering."]},{"slug":"philippe-pinel","name":"Philippe Pinel","url":"/great-lives/philippe-pinel/","dates":"1745–1826","born":1745,"died":1826,"era":"18th-century","categories":["physicians-medicine"],"knownFor":"French physician who pioneered humane treatment of the mentally ill, author of A Treatise on Insanity.","bio":"Philippe Pinel was born in 1745 in Jonquières, in southern France. He received a medical degree at Toulouse and then studied for four more years at Montpellier. In 1778 he moved to Paris, where he earned a living by translating and editing medical works and tutoring, while studying mental illness; the illness of a friend who became mentally disturbed deepened his interest. In 1793, during the French Revolution, he was appointed physician at the Bicêtre Hospital, a large institution for men, and in 1795 at the Salpêtrière, which housed thousands of women. With the hospital superintendent Jean-Baptiste Pussin and his wife, Marguerite, he worked to replace chains, beatings and bleeding with what he called 'moral treatment': kindness, conversation, observation, work and a calm daily routine. He kept careful case records and tried to classify mental illnesses. His Treatise on Insanity (1801) described these methods and was widely influential. Pinel also taught at the Paris medical school and became a member of the Academy of Sciences. He died in Paris in 1826.","keyDates":[{"date":"1745","event":"Born in Jonquières"},{"date":"1778","event":"Moves to Paris"},{"date":"1793","event":"Physician at the Bicêtre Hospital"},{"date":"1795","event":"Chief physician at the Salpêtrière"},{"date":"1801","event":"Treatise on Insanity published"},{"date":"1826","event":"Dies in Paris"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Philippe Pinel","relatedWorks":["a-treatise-on-insanity"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"a-treatise-on-insanity","url":"/works/a-treatise-on-insanity/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Distanced himself from religious views and considered excessive religiosity harmful.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippe_Pinel","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"luigi-pirandello","name":"Luigi Pirandello","url":"/great-lives/luigi-pirandello/","dates":"1867–1936","born":1867,"died":1936,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Italian playwright and novelist, author of Six Characters in Search of an Author, and Nobel laureate.","bio":"Luigi Pirandello was born in 1867 near Agrigento, in Sicily, the son of a sulfur-mine owner. He studied at the universities of Palermo and Rome and then at Bonn, in Germany, where he earned a doctorate with a thesis on the dialect of his home region. He settled in Rome and began writing poems, short stories and novels. In 1894 he married Antonietta Portulano. In 1903 a flood destroyed the family's sulfur mine, leaving them in financial trouble, and his wife suffered a mental illness that grew worse over the years. Pirandello taught at a teachers' college for women and wrote constantly. His novel The Late Mattia Pascal (1904), about a man who is mistakenly declared dead and starts a new life, brought him fame. He then turned to the theater. Six Characters in Search of an Author (1921), in which characters abandoned by their author interrupt a rehearsal, and Henry IV (1922) question the line between reality and illusion. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1934 and died in Rome in 1936.","keyDates":[{"date":"1867","event":"Born near Agrigento, Sicily"},{"date":"1894","event":"Marries Antonietta Portulano"},{"date":"1904","event":"The Late Mattia Pascal published"},{"date":"1921","event":"Six Characters in Search of an Author"},{"date":"1934","event":"Nobel Prize in Literature"},{"date":"1936","event":"Dies in Rome"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Luigi Pirandello","relatedWorks":["pirandello-three-plays"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"pirandello-three-plays","url":"/works/pirandello-three-plays/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luigi_Pirandello","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"walter-pitts","name":"Walter Pitts","url":"/great-lives/walter-pitts/","dates":"1923–1969","born":1923,"died":1969,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["scientists-mathematicians"],"knownFor":"American logician who, with Warren McCulloch, created the first mathematical model of a neural network in 1943.","bio":"Walter Pitts was born in Detroit, Michigan, in 1923. He taught himself logic and mathematics as a child and learned to read several languages, including Greek and Latin. Friends told the story that at twelve he read Bertrand Russell's Principia Mathematica in a library and wrote to Russell about problems in it. At fifteen he left home and went to Chicago, where he attended Russell's lectures at the University of Chicago without enrolling as a student. The logician Rudolf Carnap found the homeless young man a small job at the university and had him study logic. In 1942 the neuroscientist Warren McCulloch invited Pitts to live with his family, and in the evenings they worked together. Their paper 'A Logical Calculus of the Ideas Immanent in Nervous Activity' (1943) proposed the first mathematical model of a neural network; its simplified 'McCulloch–Pitts neuron' is still a standard reference in the field. Pitts then moved to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to work with Norbert Wiener and took part in the Macy conferences on cybernetics. He died in 1969.","keyDates":[{"date":"1923","event":"Born in Detroit, Michigan"},{"date":"1938","event":"Goes to Chicago"},{"date":"1943","event":"A Logical Calculus of the Ideas Immanent in Nervous Activity published"},{"date":"1943","event":"Begins work with Norbert Wiener at MIT"},{"date":"1969","event":"Dies"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Warren McCulloch and Walter Pitts","relatedWorks":["logical-calculus-of-ideas-immanent-in-nervous-activity"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"logical-calculus-of-ideas-immanent-in-nervous-activity","url":"/works/logical-calculus-of-ideas-immanent-in-nervous-activity/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"As a child he taught himself logic and mathematics, and he learned to read several languages, including Greek and Latin.","source":{"title":"Walter Pitts (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Pitts"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Pitts","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"max-planck","name":"Max Planck","url":"/great-lives/max-planck/","dates":"1858–1947","born":1858,"died":1947,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["scientists-mathematicians"],"knownFor":"German physicist who founded quantum theory.","bio":"Max Planck was born in Kiel, Germany, into a family of scholars and pastors. A gifted pianist, he considered a career in music, but chose physics, though a professor told him almost everything in physics had already been discovered. He became professor at the University of Berlin. In 1900, trying to explain the colors of light given off by hot objects, he proposed that energy is given off in tiny separate packets, which he called quanta, each with energy proportional to its frequency. The number linking them is now called Planck's constant. He thought of this at first as a mathematical trick, but it became the starting point of quantum theory, developed further by Einstein, Bohr and others. He received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918. He was one of the first to recognize Einstein's genius. His life was marked by grief: his first wife and three of his four children died before him, and his son Erwin was executed in 1945 for involvement in the plot against Hitler. Planck himself had protested to Hitler about the dismissal of Jewish scientists. He died in 1947.","keyDates":[{"date":"1858","event":"Born in Kiel"},{"date":"1889","event":"Professor in Berlin"},{"date":"1900","event":"Proposes energy quanta"},{"date":"1918","event":"Nobel Prize in Physics"},{"date":"1945","event":"Son Erwin executed"},{"date":"1947","event":"Dies in Göttingen"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["einstein-relativity"],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"He was a gifted musician who sang, played the piano, organ and cello, and composed songs and operas; Albert Einstein sometimes joined in on the violin at his musical evenings.","source":{"title":"Max Planck (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Planck"}},{"text":"A crater on the Moon is named after him.","source":{"title":"Max Planck (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Planck"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Defended religious belief; he criticized both atheistic attacks on religion and the excessive elevation of religious symbols.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Planck","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"plato","name":"Plato","url":"/great-lives/plato/","dates":"c. 428–348 BC","born":-428,"died":-348,"era":"ancient","categories":["philosophers"],"knownFor":"Student of Socrates and founder of the Academy, whose dialogues shaped Western philosophy.","bio":"Plato was born into a wealthy and politically powerful Athenian family. As a young man he became a follower of Socrates, and the trial and death of his teacher in 399 BC turned him away from a political career. He traveled, including to Sicily, where he tried without success to guide the rulers of Syracuse. Around 387 BC he founded the Academy in a grove outside Athens, a school where students studied mathematics, philosophy and politics; it lasted in some form for centuries, and Aristotle studied there for twenty years. Plato wrote dialogues, conversations usually led by Socrates, on justice, love, knowledge, the soul, beauty and the best kind of city. In the Republic he describes a just city ruled by philosopher-kings and tells the allegory of the cave, in which prisoners mistake shadows for reality. He taught that the changing things we see are copies of unchanging Forms, such as the Good itself. Nearly all his writings survive. He died in Athens around 348 BC.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 428 BC","event":"Born in Athens"},{"date":"399 BC","event":"Death of Socrates"},{"date":"c. 387 BC","event":"Founds the Academy"},{"date":"c. 375 BC","event":"Writes the Republic"},{"date":"c. 348 BC","event":"Dies in Athens"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Plato","relatedWorks":["the-last-days-of-socrates","the-republic","plato-meno","timaeus","the-symposium","plato-laws","phaedrus-and-letters-vii-and-viii","plato-statesman","plato-charmides-lysis-laches","plato-protagoras","plato-gorgias","plato-euthydemus","plato-cratylus","plato-ion","plato-critias","plato-parmenides","plato-theaetetus","plato-sophist","plato-philebus"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-last-days-of-socrates","url":"/works/the-last-days-of-socrates/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-republic","url":"/works/the-republic/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"plato-meno","url":"/works/plato-meno/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-symposium","url":"/works/the-symposium/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"phaedrus-and-letters-vii-and-viii","url":"/works/phaedrus-and-letters-vii-and-viii/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"plato-laws","url":"/works/plato-laws/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"timaeus","url":"/works/timaeus/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"plato-statesman","url":"/works/plato-statesman/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"plato-charmides-lysis-laches","url":"/works/plato-charmides-lysis-laches/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"plato-protagoras","url":"/works/plato-protagoras/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"plato-gorgias","url":"/works/plato-gorgias/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"plato-euthydemus","url":"/works/plato-euthydemus/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"plato-cratylus","url":"/works/plato-cratylus/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"plato-ion","url":"/works/plato-ion/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"plato-critias","url":"/works/plato-critias/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"plato-parmenides","url":"/works/plato-parmenides/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"plato-theaetetus","url":"/works/plato-theaetetus/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"plato-sophist","url":"/works/plato-sophist/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"plato-philebus","url":"/works/plato-philebus/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"Ancient writers say his favourite pastime as a young man was writing poetry.","source":{"title":"Plato (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato"}},{"text":"'Plato' may have been a nickname referring to his broad, sturdy build, though this story is widely doubted.","source":{"title":"Plato (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato"}}],"records":[{"text":"His longest work is the Laws, written near the end of his life.","source":{"title":"Plato (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented beyond the Greek religion of his time; his philosophy later influenced Christian, Jewish and Islamic thought.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[{"series":"Very Short Introductions","title":"Plato: A Very Short Introduction","author":"Julia Annas","publisher":"Oxford University Press","year":2003,"isbn13":"9780192802163","url":"https://bookshop.org/a/130650/9780192802163"}],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"pliny-the-elder","name":"Pliny the Elder","url":"/great-lives/pliny-the-elder/","dates":"AD 23/24–79","born":20,"died":79,"era":"ancient","categories":["scientists-mathematicians","writers-poets","military-leaders"],"knownFor":"Roman naturalist, commander and author of the Natural History, who died during the eruption of Vesuvius.","bio":"Gaius Plinius Secundus, known as Pliny the Elder, was born in AD 23 or 24 at Novum Comum, now Como, in northern Italy, into a wealthy family of the equestrian class. As a young man he served as a cavalry officer on the German frontier, and he wrote a history of Rome's wars with the Germans. Under the emperor Vespasian, a personal friend, he held high posts as a provincial administrator. He was famous for his industry: according to his nephew, Pliny the Younger, one servant would read aloud to him while another wrote down the extracts he dictated, even while he was bathing. His only surviving work, the Natural History, in 37 books, dedicated to the future emperor Titus in AD 77, gathers knowledge from hundreds of earlier writers on astronomy, geography, people, animals, plants, medicine, metals and art. It became a standard reference for many centuries. In AD 79, while commanding the Roman fleet at Misenum, near Naples, he saw the eruption of Mount Vesuvius and sailed to study it and to rescue people; he died on the shore at Stabiae.","keyDates":[{"date":"AD 23/24","event":"Born at Novum Comum"},{"date":"AD 47","event":"Cavalry officer in Germany"},{"date":"AD 77","event":"Natural History dedicated to Titus"},{"date":"AD 79","event":"Dies at Stabiae during the eruption of Vesuvius"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Pliny the Elder","relatedWorks":["natural-history-a-selection"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"natural-history-a-selection","url":"/works/natural-history-a-selection/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pliny_the_Elder","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"plotinus","name":"Plotinus","url":"/great-lives/plotinus/","dates":"c. 204–270","born":205,"died":270,"era":"ancient","categories":["philosophers"],"knownFor":"Greek philosopher of late antiquity, founder of Neoplatonism, whose teachings were collected in the Enneads.","bio":"Plotinus was a philosopher of the third century AD, born around 204 or 205, probably in Egypt; he would not say where, because he disliked talking about his body or his origins. What is known of his life comes mainly from a biography by his student Porphyry. At about twenty-eight he began to study philosophy in Alexandria, and after trying several teachers he studied for eleven years with Ammonius Saccas. Hoping to learn the philosophy of Persia and India, he joined the army of the emperor Gordian III on a campaign against Persia in 243, but the emperor was killed and Plotinus escaped. At about forty he settled in Rome, where he taught for the rest of his life and was respected by the emperor Gallienus and many senators. His teachings, which developed the ideas of Plato, describe all reality as flowing from a single source, the One, through the Intellect and the Soul, and urge the soul to return to its source through contemplation. Porphyry edited his writings into six groups of nine treatises, the Enneads. Plotinus died in Campania in 270.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 204","event":"Born, probably in Egypt"},{"date":"c. 232","event":"Begins studying with Ammonius Saccas in Alexandria"},{"date":"243","event":"Joins Gordian III's Persian campaign"},{"date":"c. 245","event":"Settles in Rome and begins teaching"},{"date":"270","event":"Dies in Campania"},{"date":"c. 301","event":"Porphyry publishes the Enneads"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Plotinus","relatedWorks":["enneads"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"enneads","url":"/works/enneads/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Neoplatonist philosopher whose ideas inspired pagan, Jewish, Christian and Islamic mystics.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plotinus","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"plutarch","name":"Plutarch","url":"/great-lives/plutarch/","dates":"c. AD 46–after 119","born":40,"died":120,"era":"ancient","categories":["writers-poets","philosophers"],"knownFor":"Greek biographer and essayist, author of the Parallel Lives of famous Greeks and Romans.","bio":"Plutarch was born around AD 46 in Chaeronea, a small town in Boeotia, in central Greece, into a wealthy family, and he lived there for most of his life. He studied philosophy, rhetoric and mathematics in Athens under the Platonist philosopher Ammonius, and traveled to Egypt and Italy, where he lectured in Rome and made friends among leading Romans. He became a Roman citizen. Plutarch married Timoxena, and they had several children; a letter of comfort he wrote to her after the death of their young daughter survives. For about the last thirty years of his life he served as one of the two priests of the temple of Apollo at Delphi. His most famous work, the Parallel Lives, pairs biographies of famous Greeks and Romans, such as Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar, to show their virtues and vices and to offer moral examples. His many essays and dialogues, collected as the Moralia, discuss ethics, religion, politics, education and nature. His works were widely read in the Renaissance and influenced writers such as Montaigne and Shakespeare. He died some time after AD 119.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. AD 46","event":"Born in Chaeronea"},{"date":"c. AD 66","event":"Studies in Athens under Ammonius"},{"date":"c. AD 95","event":"Becomes a priest at Delphi"},{"date":"Early 2nd century","event":"Writes the Parallel Lives"},{"date":"After AD 119","event":"Dies"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Plutarch","relatedWorks":["plutarch-essays","the-age-of-alexander","plutarch-lives","the-fall-of-the-roman-republic"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"plutarch-essays","url":"/works/plutarch-essays/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-age-of-alexander","url":"/works/the-age-of-alexander/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"plutarch-lives","url":"/works/plutarch-lives/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-fall-of-the-roman-republic","url":"/works/the-fall-of-the-roman-republic/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Served as a priest of Apollo at Delphi.","source":"https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plutarch/","sourceName":"Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"edgar-allan-poe","name":"Edgar Allan Poe","url":"/great-lives/edgar-allan-poe/","dates":"1809–1849","born":1809,"died":1849,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American poet, short-story writer and critic, author of The Raven and tales of mystery and horror.","bio":"Edgar Poe was born in Boston in 1809 to two traveling actors. His father left the family and his mother died when he was two, and he was taken in by John and Frances Allan of Richmond, Virginia, whose name he later used as his middle name. He lived in England with the Allans for several years as a boy. He attended the University of Virginia but left because of debts, served in the army, and went to the military academy at West Point, from which he was dismissed. He then worked as an editor and critic for magazines in Richmond, Philadelphia and New York, writing poems and short stories, often in poverty. In 1836 he married his young cousin Virginia Clemm, who died of tuberculosis in 1847. His tales, such as The Fall of the House of Usher and The Tell-Tale Heart, explored terror and the mind, and The Murders in the Rue Morgue is often called the first modern detective story. The Raven (1845) made him famous. He died in Baltimore in 1849.","keyDates":[{"date":"1809","event":"Born in Boston"},{"date":"1827","event":"First book of poems published"},{"date":"1838","event":"The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym published"},{"date":"1841","event":"The Murders in the Rue Morgue"},{"date":"1845","event":"The Raven published"},{"date":"1849","event":"Dies in Baltimore"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Edgar Allan Poe","relatedWorks":["the-raven","the-narrative-of-arthur-gordon-pym-of-nantucket","poe-tales"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-raven","url":"/works/the-raven/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-narrative-of-arthur-gordon-pym-of-nantucket","url":"/works/the-narrative-of-arthur-gordon-pym-of-nantucket/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"poe-tales","url":"/works/poe-tales/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"The cryptographer William Friedman became interested in codes after reading Poe's story 'The Gold-Bug' as a child, and later helped break Japan's PURPLE code in the Second World War.","source":{"title":"Edgar Allan Poe (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Allan_Poe"}}],"records":[{"text":"He was one of the first American authors to try to earn a living by writing alone.","source":{"title":"Edgar Allan Poe (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Allan_Poe"}}],"livedPlaces":[{"name":"Edgar Allan Poe National Historic Site","note":"Poe and his family lived in this Philadelphia house in 1843–44; it is an adult home, not his birthplace. The National Park Service offers group visits and classroom materials.","url":"https://www.nps.gov/edal/learn/education/index.htm","urlLabel":"Edgar Allan Poe National Historic Site — for educators"}],"faith":{"note":"Baptized in the Episcopal Church as a child; his adult beliefs are not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Allan_Poe","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"henri-poincare","name":"Henri Poincaré","url":"/great-lives/henri-poincare/","dates":"1854–1912","born":1854,"died":1912,"era":"19th-century","categories":["scientists-mathematicians","philosophers"],"knownFor":"French mathematician and physicist, a founder of topology and chaos theory and author of Science and Hypothesis.","bio":"Henri Poincaré was born in 1854 in Nancy, France, into a distinguished family; his cousin Raymond Poincaré later became president of France. As a child he had diphtheria and was taught at home for a time by his mother. He studied at the École Polytechnique and the School of Mines and briefly worked as a mining engineer before becoming a professor at the University of Paris. He made major contributions to nearly every branch of mathematics of his day. In studying the 'three-body problem' of how three objects move under gravity, entered for a prize offered by the King of Sweden in 1887, he discovered that tiny differences in starting conditions can lead to very different results, an idea basic to modern chaos theory. He helped found topology, the study of shapes under stretching, and the Poincaré conjecture he posed was solved only in the twenty-first century. He also worked on the physics of electricity and on relativity. In Science and Hypothesis (1902) he discussed the role of conventions in science. He died in Paris in 1912.","keyDates":[{"date":"1854","event":"Born in Nancy"},{"date":"1881","event":"Professor at the University of Paris"},{"date":"1889","event":"Wins the King of Sweden's prize"},{"date":"1902","event":"Science and Hypothesis published"},{"date":"1904","event":"Poses the Poincaré conjecture"},{"date":"1912","event":"Dies in Paris"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Henri Poincare","relatedWorks":["poincare-science-and-hypothesis"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"poincare-science-and-hypothesis","url":"/works/poincare-science-and-hypothesis/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[{"text":"Studying how three bodies move under gravity, he became the first person to discover a 'chaotic' system, laying the foundations of chaos theory.","source":{"title":"Henri Poincaré (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Poincar%C3%A9"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Poincar%C3%A9","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"michael-polanyi","name":"Michael Polanyi","url":"/great-lives/michael-polanyi/","dates":"1891–1976","born":1891,"died":1976,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["scientists-mathematicians","philosophers"],"knownFor":"Hungarian-British chemist and philosopher, author of Personal Knowledge.","bio":"Michael Polanyi was born Mihály Pollacsek in Budapest in 1891, the fifth child of a secular Jewish family; his father built much of Hungary's railway system. He studied medicine at the University of Budapest and served as a medical officer in the Austro-Hungarian army in the First World War, while also earning a doctorate in physical chemistry. He moved to Germany, and in 1926 he became a professor at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin, where he did important research on chemical reaction rates, X-ray diffraction and the strength of metals. After the Nazis came to power in 1933 he resigned and moved to England, becoming professor of physical chemistry at the University of Manchester. There he turned increasingly to economics and philosophy, opposing central planning of science and the economy, and he later exchanged his chemistry chair for one in social studies. In Personal Knowledge (1958) he argued that all knowledge, including science, depends on personal commitment and skills that cannot be fully put into words, which he called tacit knowledge. Two of his students and his son John won Nobel Prizes. He died in 1976.","keyDates":[{"date":"1891","event":"Born in Budapest"},{"date":"1926","event":"Professor at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, Berlin"},{"date":"1933","event":"Moves to the University of Manchester"},{"date":"1944","event":"Elected to the Royal Society"},{"date":"1958","event":"Personal Knowledge published"},{"date":"1976","event":"Dies"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Michael Polanyi","relatedWorks":["polanyi-personal-knowledge"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"polanyi-personal-knowledge","url":"/works/polanyi-personal-knowledge/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Born into a Jewish family; a Christian from 1913, he married in a Roman Catholic ceremony.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Polanyi","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"john-polidori","name":"John Polidori","url":"/great-lives/john-polidori/","dates":"1795–1821","born":1795,"died":1821,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets","physicians-medicine"],"knownFor":"English physician and writer, author of The Vampyre, the first modern vampire story in English prose.","bio":"John William Polidori was born in London in 1795, the son of an Italian scholar and translator, Gaetano Polidori. He studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh and received his degree in 1815, at nineteen, writing a thesis on sleepwalking. In 1816 he was hired as the personal physician of the poet Lord Byron and traveled with him to Switzerland, where they spent the summer near Geneva with Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Godwin, later Mary Shelley, and her stepsister Claire Clairmont. One stormy evening Byron proposed that each of them write a ghost story; the contest led to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and Polidori developed an idea of Byron's into The Vampyre. Byron dismissed Polidori later that year. The Vampyre was published in 1819 under Byron's name, to the anger of both writers. It presented the vampire as an aristocratic and charming villain, Lord Ruthven, and became very popular, influencing later vampire fiction. Polidori's medical career did not succeed, and he fell into debt. He died in London in 1821, aged 25.","keyDates":[{"date":"1795","event":"Born in London"},{"date":"1815","event":"Medical degree from Edinburgh"},{"date":"1816","event":"Summer with Byron and the Shelleys near Geneva"},{"date":"1819","event":"The Vampyre published"},{"date":"1821","event":"Dies in London"}],"quotes":[],"author":"John Polidori","relatedWorks":["the-vampyre"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-vampyre","url":"/works/the-vampyre/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_William_Polidori","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"marco-polo","name":"Marco Polo","url":"/great-lives/marco-polo/","dates":"1254–1324","born":1254,"died":1324,"era":"medieval","categories":["explorers"],"knownFor":"Venetian merchant whose account of China and the court of Kublai Khan amazed Europe.","bio":"Marco Polo was born in Venice into a family of merchants. His father Niccolò and uncle Maffeo had already traveled to China, where they met the Mongol emperor Kublai Khan. In 1271, when Marco was seventeen, he set out with them on a new journey across Persia, the Pamir mountains and the Gobi Desert along the Silk Road, reaching Kublai's summer capital, Shangdu, about 1275. According to his book, Marco entered the khan's service and traveled widely in China and beyond on official missions for some seventeen years. He described paper money, coal burned for fuel, the postal relay system, and great cities such as Hangzhou. The Polos finally returned home by sea, escorting a Mongol princess to Persia, and reached Venice in 1295. Captured in a war with Genoa, Marco dictated his travels to a fellow prisoner, the writer Rustichello da Pisa. The book was copied widely, though many readers doubted it, and some scholars still debate parts of it. It later inspired Christopher Columbus. Marco married, had three daughters, and died in Venice in 1324.","keyDates":[{"date":"1271","event":"Sets out for China"},{"date":"c. 1275","event":"Reaches the court of Kublai Khan"},{"date":"1295","event":"Returns to Venice"},{"date":"1298","event":"Dictates his travels in a Genoese prison"},{"date":"1324","event":"Dies in Venice"}],"quotes":[{"text":"But I believe it was God’s pleasure that we should get back in order that people might learn about the things that the world contains.","work":"the-travels-of-marco-polo","location":"Book IV, Chapter XXXIV (Conclusion)","verified":true}],"author":"Marco Polo (with Rustichello da Pisa)","relatedWorks":["the-travels-of-marco-polo"],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"book","title":"Who Was Marco Polo?","author":"Joan Holub","isbn13":"9780448445403","publisher":"Grosset & Dunlap","year":2007,"format":""},{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-travels-of-marco-polo","url":"/works/the-travels-of-marco-polo/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"Back home in Venice he was nicknamed 'Milione' ('Million'), reportedly because he kept saying Kublai Khan's wealth was counted in millions.","source":{"title":"Marco Polo (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marco_Polo"}}],"records":[{"text":"He was not the first European to reach China, but he was the first to leave a detailed account of it, including the first Western record of porcelain, gunpowder and paper money.","source":{"title":"Marco Polo (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marco_Polo"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marco_Polo","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"polybius","name":"Polybius","url":"/great-lives/polybius/","dates":"c. 200–c. 118 BC","born":-200,"died":-120,"era":"ancient","categories":["writers-poets","statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"Greek historian of the rise of Rome, whose Histories describe the Roman constitution.","bio":"Polybius was born around 200 BC in Megalopolis, in Arcadia, Greece, the son of Lycortas, a leading statesman of the Achaean League, a federation of Greek cities. As a young man he carried the funeral urn of the statesman Philopoemen. After Rome defeated King Perseus of Macedon in 168 BC, Polybius was one of a thousand prominent Achaeans taken to Italy as hostages. In Rome he became a friend and tutor of the young Scipio Aemilianus, and he accompanied him on campaigns, witnessing the destruction of Carthage in 146 BC. He also helped arrange the settlement of Greece after the Romans sacked Corinth that year. His Histories, in forty books, of which only the first five survive complete, set out to explain how Rome came to dominate the Mediterranean world in less than fifty-three years. In Book VI he explains Rome's success through its mixed constitution, which combined elements of monarchy, aristocracy and democracy, an idea that later influenced the framers of the United States Constitution. He is said to have died after falling from a horse, around 118 BC.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 200 BC","event":"Born in Megalopolis"},{"date":"168 BC","event":"Taken to Rome as a hostage"},{"date":"146 BC","event":"Witnesses the destruction of Carthage"},{"date":"c. 118 BC","event":"Dies"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Polybius","relatedWorks":["polybius-histories-book-vi"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"polybius-histories-book-vi","url":"/works/polybius-histories-book-vi/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polybius","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"alexander-pope","name":"Alexander Pope","url":"/great-lives/alexander-pope/","dates":"1688–1744","born":1688,"died":1744,"era":"18th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Leading English poet of the early eighteenth century: An Essay on Criticism, The Rape of the Lock, An Essay on Man and his translation of Homer.","bio":"Alexander Pope was born in London on 21 May 1688, the son of a Roman Catholic linen merchant. Because the penal laws barred Catholics from the universities and public office, he was educated mostly at home and by his own wide reading, after his family moved to Binfield near Windsor Forest. From about the age of twelve he suffered from tuberculosis of the spine, which left him very short, bent and often in pain. He won early fame with An Essay on Criticism (1711) and The Rape of the Lock (1712–1717). His translations of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey made him wealthy and allowed him to settle at a villa in Twickenham, where he built a celebrated garden and grotto. He went on to write The Dunciad, a satire on dull writers, An Essay on Man (1733–34) and imitations of Horace. A friend of Swift, Gay and Arbuthnot, he was the master of the heroic couplet. He died at Twickenham on 30 May 1744.","keyDates":[{"date":"1688","event":"Born in London, 21 May"},{"date":"1700","event":"Family moves to Binfield in Windsor Forest"},{"date":"1711","event":"An Essay on Criticism published"},{"date":"1714","event":"Five-canto Rape of the Lock published"},{"date":"1715–1720","event":"Translation of the Iliad published"},{"date":"1719","event":"Settles at Twickenham"},{"date":"1733–1734","event":"An Essay on Man published"},{"date":"1744","event":"Dies at Twickenham, 30 May"}],"quotes":[{"text":"To err is human, to forgive, divine.","work":"an-essay-on-criticism"},{"text":"An honest man's the noblest work of God.","work":"an-essay-on-man"}],"author":"Alexander Pope","relatedWorks":["an-essay-on-criticism","the-rape-of-the-lock","an-essay-on-man"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-rape-of-the-lock","url":"/works/the-rape-of-the-lock/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"an-essay-on-criticism","url":"/works/an-essay-on-criticism/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"an-essay-on-man","url":"/works/an-essay-on-man/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Born to Roman Catholic parents and remained a Catholic all his life, which under the penal laws barred him from university and public office; he received the last rites before he died. Some critics charged An Essay on Man with deism, a reading he rejected.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Pope","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"karl-popper","name":"Karl Popper","url":"/great-lives/karl-popper/","dates":"1902–1994","born":1902,"died":1994,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["philosophers"],"knownFor":"Austrian-British philosopher of science, who argued that scientific theories must be falsifiable, and author of The Open Society and Its Enemies.","bio":"Karl Popper was born in Vienna in 1902 to a family of Jewish origin that had converted to Lutheranism; his father was a lawyer with a large library. He left school at sixteen, attended lectures at the University of Vienna, trained as a cabinetmaker, and worked with children and as a schoolteacher, earning a doctorate in psychology in 1928. His first book, Logik der Forschung (1934), later published in English as The Logic of Scientific Discovery, argued that scientific theories can never be proven true, only tested, and that a theory is scientific only if some observation could show it to be false. Fearing the rise of Nazism, he left Austria in 1937 to teach in New Zealand. There he wrote The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945), a defense of liberal democracy that criticized the political ideas of Plato, Hegel and Marx. In 1946 he moved to the London School of Economics, where he taught until he retired. He was knighted in 1965. He died in London in 1994.","keyDates":[{"date":"1902","event":"Born in Vienna"},{"date":"1934","event":"Logik der Forschung published"},{"date":"1937","event":"Moves to New Zealand"},{"date":"1945","event":"The Open Society and Its Enemies published"},{"date":"1946","event":"Joins the London School of Economics"},{"date":"1965","event":"Knighted"},{"date":"1994","event":"Dies in London"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Karl Popper","relatedWorks":["popper-the-logic-of-scientific-discovery","popper-the-open-society-and-its-enemies"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"popper-the-logic-of-scientific-discovery","url":"/works/popper-the-logic-of-scientific-discovery/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"popper-the-open-society-and-its-enemies","url":"/works/popper-the-open-society-and-its-enemies/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Born to parents of Jewish origin.","source":"https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/popper/","sourceName":"Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"eleanor-h-porter","name":"Eleanor H. Porter","url":"/great-lives/eleanor-h-porter/","dates":"1868–1920","born":1868,"died":1920,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American novelist, author of Pollyanna, the story of a girl who plays the 'glad game'.","bio":"Eleanor Emily Hodgman was born in 1868 in Littleton, New Hampshire. She trained as a singer and studied for several years at the New England Conservatory. In 1892 she married John Lyman Porter and moved to Massachusetts, where she began writing and publishing short stories and later novels for both children and adults. Pollyanna (1913) tells of an orphaned girl who goes to live with her stern aunt in a small New England town and changes the lives of the people around her by playing the 'glad game', looking for something to be glad about in every situation. The book was among the best-selling novels in the United States for several years and was followed by Pollyanna Grows Up (1915). The word 'Pollyanna' entered the English language to describe a very optimistic person. Her other novels include Just David, another bestseller. She died at her home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1920.","keyDates":[{"date":"1868","event":"Born in Littleton, New Hampshire"},{"date":"1892","event":"Marries John Lyman Porter"},{"date":"1913","event":"Pollyanna published"},{"date":"1915","event":"Pollyanna Grows Up published"},{"date":"1920","event":"Dies in Cambridge, Massachusetts"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Eleanor H. Porter","relatedWorks":["pollyanna"],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"library","work":"pollyanna","url":"/works/pollyanna/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleanor_H._Porter","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"beatrix-potter","name":"Beatrix Potter","url":"/great-lives/beatrix-potter/","dates":"1866–1943","born":1866,"died":1943,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"English author and illustrator of The Tale of Peter Rabbit and other small animal books, and a naturalist and farmer in the Lake District.","bio":"Beatrix Potter was born in London in 1866 into a wealthy family and was educated at home by governesses. She spent much time drawing the pets she kept, including rabbits, mice and a hedgehog, and studying plants and fungi; she made careful scientific drawings of fungi and wrote a paper on how their spores grow. Family holidays in Scotland and the Lake District gave her a lasting love of the countryside. The Tale of Peter Rabbit began as a picture letter to a sick child, the son of her former governess. She first printed it privately, and Frederick Warne published it in 1902. It was followed by more than twenty small books, including The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin, The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck and The Tale of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle. With her earnings she bought Hill Top Farm in the Lake District, married the solicitor William Heelis in 1913, raised Herdwick sheep, and left much of her land to the National Trust. She died in 1943.","keyDates":[{"date":"1866","event":"Born in London"},{"date":"1902","event":"The Tale of Peter Rabbit published by Frederick Warne"},{"date":"1905","event":"Buys Hill Top Farm"},{"date":"1913","event":"Marries William Heelis"},{"date":"1943","event":"Dies; leaves her farms to the National Trust"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Beatrix Potter","relatedWorks":["the-tale-of-peter-rabbit","the-tale-of-tom-kitten"],"reading":[{"band":"K-2","kind":"library","work":"the-tale-of-peter-rabbit","url":"/works/the-tale-of-peter-rabbit/"},{"band":"K-2","kind":"library","work":"the-tale-of-tom-kitten","url":"/works/the-tale-of-tom-kitten/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"Her books The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin and The Tailor of Gloucester began as picture letters she sent to children she knew.","source":{"title":"Beatrix Potter (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beatrix_Potter"}}],"records":[{"text":"In 1903 she made the first Peter Rabbit soft toy and registered it at the Patent Office in London, making Peter the oldest licensed fictional character.","source":{"title":"Beatrix Potter (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beatrix_Potter"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Raised in an English Unitarian family.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beatrix_Potter","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"procopius-of-caesarea","name":"Procopius of Caesarea","url":"/great-lives/procopius-of-caesarea/","dates":"c. 500–c. 565","born":500,"died":565,"era":"medieval","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Byzantine historian of the wars of the emperor Justinian, author of the History of the Wars and the Secret History.","bio":"Procopius was born around 500 in Caesarea, in the Roman province of Palestine, and received an upper-class education in Greek literature and rhetoric; he probably also studied law. In 527, the first year of the reign of the emperor Justinian, he became the legal adviser and secretary of the general Belisarius, Justinian's chief military commander. He accompanied Belisarius on campaigns against the Persian Empire in the east, against the Vandal kingdom in North Africa, and against the Ostrogoths in Italy, and he witnessed the Nika riots in Constantinople in 532 and the great plague of 542. His History of the Wars, in eight books, describes these campaigns in detail and is the main source for the period. His Buildings praises the churches, fortresses and other works built by Justinian, including the Hagia Sophia. His Secret History, published only long after his death, attacks Justinian, the empress Theodora, Belisarius and his wife Antonina with harsh and scandalous accusations, which historians treat with caution. Procopius probably died around 565.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 500","event":"Born in Caesarea, Palestine"},{"date":"527","event":"Becomes adviser to Belisarius"},{"date":"532","event":"Witnesses the Nika riots"},{"date":"542","event":"Witnesses the plague in Constantinople"},{"date":"c. 550s","event":"History of the Wars completed"},{"date":"c. 565","event":"Probable death"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Procopius of Caesarea","relatedWorks":["procopius-secret-history","procopius-history-of-the-wars-persian-war"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"procopius-secret-history","url":"/works/procopius-secret-history/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"procopius-history-of-the-wars-persian-war","url":"/works/procopius-history-of-the-wars-persian-war/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A Byzantine historian writing in a Christian empire; his personal beliefs are not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procopius","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["Procopius's birth and death dates are approximate (c. 500–c. 565); Wikidata's death year of 506 is incorrect."]},{"slug":"marcel-proust","name":"Marcel Proust","url":"/great-lives/marcel-proust/","dates":"1871–1922","born":1871,"died":1922,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"French novelist, author of In Search of Lost Time.","bio":"Marcel Proust was born in 1871 in Auteuil, near Paris, the son of a respected doctor, Adrien Proust, and Jeanne Weil, who came from a wealthy Jewish family. From the age of nine he suffered from serious asthma attacks, and he was often ill throughout his life. He studied at the Lycée Condorcet, served a year in the French army and studied law and philosophy. As a young man he moved in the fashionable salons of Parisian high society, while writing articles and stories; his first book, Pleasures and Days, appeared in 1896. After the deaths of his father in 1903 and of his mother in 1905, Proust withdrew more and more from society, living in a cork-lined bedroom and writing at night. His great novel, In Search of Lost Time, in seven volumes, explores memory, time, love, art and society; in a famous passage the taste of a madeleine cake dipped in tea brings back the narrator's childhood. The first volume, Swann's Way, was published in 1913, and the second won the Prix Goncourt in 1919. He died in Paris in 1922.","keyDates":[{"date":"1871","event":"Born in Auteuil, near Paris"},{"date":"1896","event":"Pleasures and Days published"},{"date":"1905","event":"Death of his mother"},{"date":"1913","event":"Swann's Way published"},{"date":"1919","event":"Prix Goncourt"},{"date":"1922","event":"Dies in Paris"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Marcel Proust","relatedWorks":["proust-swanns-way"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"proust-swanns-way","url":"/works/proust-swanns-way/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Baptized and confirmed a Catholic, his father's faith, but never formally practiced; his mother came from a Jewish family.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel_Proust","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[{"series":"Very Short Introductions","title":"Marcel Proust: A Very Short Introduction","author":"Joshua Landy","publisher":"Oxford University Press","year":2024,"isbn13":null,"url":null}],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"michael-psellos","name":"Michael Psellos","url":"/great-lives/michael-psellos/","dates":"c. 1018–c. 1078","born":1018,"died":1078,"era":"medieval","categories":["philosophers","writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Byzantine scholar, courtier and historian, author of the Chronographia.","bio":"Michael Psellos was born in 1017 or 1018, probably in Constantinople, and was baptized Constantine; Michael was the name he later took as a monk. His family came from Nicomedia, and his surname, meaning 'the stammerer', probably referred to a speech defect. He was educated in Constantinople, worked as secretary to a provincial judge, and rose to become a leading adviser at the imperial court, serving several emperors. He was named 'consul of the philosophers', the head of philosophical teaching in the capital, and he promoted the study of ancient Greek literature and of Plato, whom he presented as compatible with Christian teaching. In about 1054 he briefly entered a monastery on Mount Olympus in Bithynia, but he soon returned to court. His Chronographia is a history in the form of lively portraits of the emperors and empresses from Basil II to Michael VII, many of whom he knew personally, and it is a major source for eleventh-century Byzantium. He also wrote letters, speeches, and works on science and theology. He probably died about 1078.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 1018","event":"Born, probably in Constantinople"},{"date":"1040s","event":"Rises at the imperial court"},{"date":"1040s","event":"Named consul of the philosophers"},{"date":"c. 1054","event":"Briefly enters a monastery"},{"date":"c. 1078","event":"Probable death"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Michael Psellos","relatedWorks":["psellos-chronographia"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"psellos-chronographia","url":"/works/psellos-chronographia/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A Byzantine Christian scholar whose study of profane literature brought him under suspicion of the orthodox.","source":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Psellus","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica (1911) (via Wikisource)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["Psellos's death date is uncertain (1078 is usual; some argue he lived to about 1096)."]},{"slug":"claudius-ptolemy","name":"Claudius Ptolemy","url":"/great-lives/claudius-ptolemy/","dates":"c. 100–170","born":100,"died":170,"era":"ancient","categories":["scientists-mathematicians"],"knownFor":"Alexandrian astronomer and geographer whose Earth-centered system was standard for 1,400 years.","bio":"Claudius Ptolemy lived and worked in Alexandria, Egypt, under Roman rule, in the second century AD. Almost nothing is known of his life beyond his books, which date his observations between AD 127 and 141. His great work on astronomy, called the Almagest from its Arabic title, gathered centuries of Greek astronomy into a complete mathematical system. It placed the Earth motionless at the center of the universe, with the Moon, Sun, planets and stars moving around it, and used circles upon circles, called epicycles, to predict the positions of the planets accurately. It also included a catalogue of over a thousand stars. His Geography explained how to draw maps using latitude and longitude and listed the coordinates of about eight thousand places in the known world. He also wrote on optics, music theory and astrology. His works were translated into Arabic and later Latin, and his system of the heavens remained the standard view in Europe and the Islamic world until Copernicus proposed a Sun-centered alternative in 1543.","keyDates":[{"date":"127–141","event":"Recorded astronomical observations"},{"date":"c. 150","event":"Writes the Almagest"},{"date":"c. 150","event":"Writes the Geography"},{"date":"1543","event":"Copernicus challenges his system"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Claudius Ptolemy","relatedWorks":["ptolemy-almagest","copernicus-on-the-revolutions"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"ptolemy-almagest","url":"/works/ptolemy-almagest/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"Craters on the Moon and on Mars and an asteroid are named Ptolemaeus after him.","source":{"title":"Ptolemy (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ptolemy"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ptolemy","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["Birth and death years are estimates."]},{"slug":"alexander-pushkin","name":"Alexander Pushkin","url":"/great-lives/alexander-pushkin/","dates":"1799–1837","born":1799,"died":1837,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Russia's national poet, author of Eugene Onegin, Boris Godunov and The Bronze Horseman.","bio":"Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin was born in Moscow in 1799 into an old noble family; his maternal great-grandfather, Abram Gannibal, was an African brought to Russia who became a general under Peter the Great. Pushkin was educated at the new Lyceum at Tsarskoye Selo, where his poetic gifts were recognized early. His liberal poems angered the government, and in 1820 he was sent into exile in southern Russia and later confined to his family estate at Mikhailovskoye. Many of his friends took part in the Decembrist revolt of 1825. Pardoned by Nicholas I in 1826, he remained under the tsar's personal censorship. Pushkin wrote lyric poems, narrative poems such as The Bronze Horseman, the historical drama Boris Godunov, prose tales including The Queen of Spades and The Captain's Daughter, and his novel in verse, Eugene Onegin. In 1831 he married Natalya Goncharova. Rumors about a French officer, Georges d'Anthès, and his wife led Pushkin to challenge him to a duel in January 1837; Pushkin was mortally wounded and died two days later.","keyDates":[{"date":"1799","event":"Born in Moscow"},{"date":"1820","event":"Exiled to the south of Russia"},{"date":"1833","event":"Eugene Onegin published complete"},{"date":"1837","event":"Dies after a duel in St. Petersburg"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Alexander Pushkin","relatedWorks":["pushkin-eugene-onegin"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"pushkin-eugene-onegin","url":"/works/pushkin-eugene-onegin/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Pushkin","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"howard-pyle","name":"Howard Pyle","url":"/great-lives/howard-pyle/","dates":"1853–1911","born":1853,"died":1911,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets","artists-composers-architects"],"knownFor":"American illustrator and author of The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood and books of King Arthur, and a teacher of illustrators.","bio":"Howard Pyle was born in 1853 in Wilmington, Delaware, into a Quaker family. He loved books and pictures as a child and studied art at a small school in Philadelphia. In the 1870s he moved to New York and began selling illustrations and stories to magazines such as Harper's Weekly and Scribner's. He returned to Wilmington, where he lived and worked for most of his life. In 1883 he published The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, which he wrote and illustrated in a style imitating old woodcuts. It was followed by Otto of the Silver Hand, Men of Iron and four books retelling the legends of King Arthur, beginning with The Story of King Arthur and His Knights (1903). He also wrote and illustrated stories of pirates that shaped the popular image of pirates. Pyle taught illustration at the Drexel Institute in Philadelphia and then at his own school in Wilmington, where his students included N. C. Wyeth and Jessie Willcox Smith. In 1910 he went to Italy to study mural painting and died in Florence in 1911.","keyDates":[{"date":"1853","event":"Born in Wilmington, Delaware"},{"date":"1883","event":"The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood published"},{"date":"1894","event":"Begins teaching at the Drexel Institute"},{"date":"1900","event":"Opens his own school in Wilmington"},{"date":"1903","event":"The Story of King Arthur and His Knights published"},{"date":"1911","event":"Dies in Florence"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Howard Pyle","relatedWorks":["the-story-of-king-arthur-and-his-knights","the-merry-adventures-of-robin-hood"],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"library","work":"the-merry-adventures-of-robin-hood","url":"/works/the-merry-adventures-of-robin-hood/"},{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-story-of-king-arthur-and-his-knights","url":"/works/the-story-of-king-arthur-and-his-knights/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"He loved drawing and writing from a very young age.","source":{"title":"Howard Pyle (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Pyle"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Pyle","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"barbara-pym","name":"Barbara Pym","url":"/great-lives/barbara-pym/","dates":"1913–1980","born":1913,"died":1980,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"English novelist of quiet comedies about church life and single women in mid-century England, including Excellent Women.","bio":"Barbara Pym was born in 1913 in Oswestry, Shropshire, and studied English at St Hilda's College, Oxford. During the Second World War she served in the Women's Royal Naval Service, including a posting in Naples. Afterward she worked for many years at the International African Institute in London, helping to edit its journal. Her novels are gentle social comedies about the lives of clergy, churchgoers, academics and unmarried women in English towns and London parishes. Excellent Women (1952), narrated by Mildred Lathbury, a clergyman's daughter who is always helping others, is often considered her best. After several successful books, her publisher rejected her work in 1963 as old-fashioned, and for years she could not find a publisher. In 1977 the critic Lord David Cecil and the poet Philip Larkin both named her one of the most underrated writers of the century, and her novel Quartet in Autumn was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. She died in Oxfordshire in 1980.","keyDates":[{"date":"1913","event":"Born in Oswestry"},{"date":"1950","event":"Some Tame Gazelle published"},{"date":"1952","event":"Excellent Women published"},{"date":"1977","event":"Rediscovered; Quartet in Autumn shortlisted for the Booker Prize"},{"date":"1980","event":"Dies"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Barbara Pym","relatedWorks":["excellent-women"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"excellent-women","url":"/works/excellent-women/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"An Anglican whose novels center on Church of England parish life.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Pym","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"pythagoras","name":"Pythagoras","url":"/great-lives/pythagoras/","dates":"c. 570–495 BC","born":-570,"died":-495,"era":"ancient","categories":["philosophers","scientists-mathematicians"],"knownFor":"Greek thinker who founded a brotherhood devoted to number, music and the soul.","bio":"Pythagoras was born on the Greek island of Samos. Little is known for certain about him, because he wrote nothing and his followers credited many later ideas to him. Ancient writers say he traveled, perhaps to Egypt, and around 530 BC settled in Croton, a Greek city in southern Italy. There he founded a community of followers, men and women, who lived by strict rules: they shared property, kept silence while learning, avoided eating beans, and believed the soul was reborn in new bodies after death. The Pythagoreans taught that number is the key to understanding the world. They discovered that musical harmonies correspond to simple ratios of string lengths, such as two to one for an octave, and they studied odd and even numbers and geometric shapes. The famous theorem about right triangles bears his name, though it was known earlier in Babylon, and it is unclear whether he proved it. The community also became involved in politics, and an uprising eventually drove the Pythagoreans out of Croton. He died around 495 BC.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 570 BC","event":"Born on Samos"},{"date":"c. 530 BC","event":"Settles in Croton and founds his community"},{"date":"c. 495 BC","event":"Dies, perhaps at Metapontum"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["euclid-elements-book-i","timaeus"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"euclid-elements-book-i","url":"/works/euclid-elements-book-i/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"Ancient legends claim he once persuaded a bull not to eat beans and convinced a destructive bear to promise never to harm a living creature again.","source":{"title":"Pythagoras (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagoras"}}],"records":[{"text":"He was reputedly the first person to call himself a 'philosopher', a 'lover of wisdom'.","source":{"title":"Pythagoras (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagoras"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Founded a community bound by religious and ascetic practices; he taught the transmigration of souls.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagoras","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["His life is known only from much later sources; dates are approximate."]},{"slug":"qin-shi-huang","name":"Qin Shi Huang","url":"/great-lives/qin-shi-huang/","dates":"259–210 BC","born":-259,"died":-210,"era":"ancient","categories":["kings-queens-emperors"],"knownFor":"First emperor of a unified China, who standardized writing and began the Great Wall.","bio":"Ying Zheng became king of the state of Qin, in western China, in 246 BC at about thirteen. China was then divided among warring states. Over about ten years his armies conquered the six rival kingdoms, and in 221 BC he declared himself Qin Shi Huang, the First Emperor. Guided by his minister Li Si and the strict philosophy called Legalism, he replaced the old noble domains with provinces run by officials, and standardized writing, coins, weights and measures, and even the width of cart axles. He joined earlier walls into a long defensive wall in the north, an early form of the Great Wall, and built roads and canals, using vast numbers of forced laborers, many of whom died. In 213 BC he ordered many books burned, and tradition says he had scholars killed. He searched for a potion of immortality and died in 210 BC while traveling. His tomb near Xi'an was guarded by thousands of life-sized clay soldiers, the Terracotta Army, found by farmers in 1974. His dynasty collapsed four years after his death.","keyDates":[{"date":"246 BC","event":"Becomes king of Qin"},{"date":"221 BC","event":"Unifies China as First Emperor"},{"date":"213 BC","event":"Orders the burning of books"},{"date":"210 BC","event":"Dies"},{"date":"1974","event":"Terracotta Army discovered"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["the-art-of-war"],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qin_Shi_Huang","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"francois-rabelais","name":"François Rabelais","url":"/great-lives/francois-rabelais/","dates":"c. 1494–1553","born":1494,"died":1553,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"French Renaissance writer, physician and former monk, author of the comic giants Gargantua and Pantagruel.","bio":"François Rabelais was born around 1494, probably near Chinon in the Touraine region of France, the son of a lawyer. He became a Franciscan friar and studied Greek, but Greek books were viewed with suspicion by his superiors, and he moved to a Benedictine house. He later left monastic life, studied medicine at the University of Montpellier and became a physician at a hospital in Lyon. In 1532 he published Pantagruel, a comic tale about a giant and his adventures, under the pen name Alcofribas Nasier, an anagram of his name. Gargantua, about Pantagruel's father, followed. The books mix crude humor, wordplay and fantastic adventures with satire of monks, scholars, lawyers and church authorities, and they include the famous Abbey of Thélème, whose only rule is 'Do what you will'. The theologians of the Sorbonne condemned the books, but Rabelais had powerful protectors, including the du Bellay family, and he traveled to Rome with them. Further books followed. He died in Paris in 1553.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 1494","event":"Born near Chinon"},{"date":"1530","event":"Studies medicine at Montpellier"},{"date":"1532","event":"Pantagruel published"},{"date":"c. 1534","event":"Gargantua published"},{"date":"1546","event":"Third Book published under his own name"},{"date":"1553","event":"Dies in Paris"}],"quotes":[],"author":"François Rabelais","relatedWorks":["rabelais-gargantua-and-pantagruel"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"rabelais-gargantua-and-pantagruel","url":"/works/rabelais-gargantua-and-pantagruel/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"An asteroid, 5666 Rabelais, was named after him in 1982.","source":{"title":"François Rabelais (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ois_Rabelais"}}],"records":[{"text":"His first book contains the first known use in French of the words encyclopédie, progrès and utopie.","source":{"title":"François Rabelais (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ois_Rabelais"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Began as a Franciscan friar, then became a Benedictine, before turning to medicine; his beliefs are debated.","source":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Rabelais%2C_Fran%C3%A7ois","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica (1911) (via Wikisource)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["His birth year is uncertain."]},{"slug":"jean-racine","name":"Jean Racine","url":"/great-lives/jean-racine/","dates":"1639–1699","born":1639,"died":1699,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"French tragic dramatist, author of Andromache, Berenice and Phaedra.","bio":"Jean Racine was born in 1639 at La Ferté-Milon in France and was orphaned as a small child. He was raised by his grandparents and educated by the Jansenists at Port-Royal, where he learned Greek and read the ancient tragedians. Breaking with his teachers, he turned to the theatre in Paris. His first great success, Andromache, came in 1667, followed by Britannicus, Berenice, Bajazet, Mithridates, Iphigenia and, in 1677, Phaedra. His tragedies, written in rhymed alexandrine verse and following the classical unities, portray characters destroyed by passion. After Phaedra he withdrew from the public stage, married, was reconciled with Port-Royal, and became royal historiographer to Louis XIV. At the request of Madame de Maintenon he wrote two biblical dramas, Esther and Athalie, for the girls of the school at Saint-Cyr. He died in Paris in 1699 and was buried, as he had asked, at Port-Royal.","keyDates":[{"date":"1639","event":"Born at La Ferté-Milon"},{"date":"1667","event":"Andromache first performed"},{"date":"1677","event":"Phaedra first performed"},{"date":"1689","event":"Esther performed at Saint-Cyr"},{"date":"1699","event":"Dies in Paris"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Jean Racine","relatedWorks":["racine-phaedra","racine-berenice"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"racine-phaedra","url":"/works/racine-phaedra/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"racine-berenice","url":"/works/racine-berenice/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Gave up writing for the stage, married, and became very pious.","source":"https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12630b.htm","sourceName":"Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"ramesses-ii","name":"Ramesses II","url":"/great-lives/ramesses-ii/","dates":"c. 1303–1213 BC","born":-1303,"died":-1213,"era":"ancient","categories":["kings-queens-emperors","military-leaders"],"knownFor":"Long-reigning pharaoh of Egypt who built Abu Simbel and made one of the first known peace treaties.","bio":"Ramesses II, also called Ramesses the Great, was pharaoh of Egypt for about sixty-six years, from around 1279 to 1213 BC. Early in his reign he fought the Hittites, a rival empire in what is now Turkey, at the battle of Kadesh in Syria. The battle ended without a clear winner, though Ramesses had it carved on temple walls as a great victory. Years later, in about 1259 BC, Egypt and the Hittites agreed a peace treaty, one of the earliest known, with copies surviving in both Egyptian and Hittite. Ramesses built more monuments than almost any other pharaoh, including the great temples at Abu Simbel, cut into a cliff with four huge seated statues of himself, the Ramesseum at Thebes, and a new capital in the Nile Delta. He had many wives, with Nefertari the most honored, and more than a hundred children. Many people link him with the pharaoh of the Exodus, though the Bible does not name him. His mummy survives in Cairo.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 1279 BC","event":"Becomes pharaoh"},{"date":"c. 1274 BC","event":"Battle of Kadesh"},{"date":"c. 1259 BC","event":"Peace treaty with the Hittites"},{"date":"c. 1213 BC","event":"Dies after a reign of about 66 years"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["the-histories"],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[{"text":"His 66-year rule is the longest recorded reign of any pharaoh, possibly alongside Pepi II.","source":{"title":"Ramesses II (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramesses_II"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Practiced the religion of ancient Egypt.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramesses_II","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["Egyptian regnal dates are approximate."]},{"slug":"ayn-rand","name":"Ayn Rand","url":"/great-lives/ayn-rand/","dates":"1905–1982","born":1905,"died":1982,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets","philosophers"],"knownFor":"Russian-born American novelist and philosopher, author of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged and founder of Objectivism.","bio":"Ayn Rand was born Alisa Rosenbaum in Saint Petersburg, Russia, in 1905. Her father's pharmacy was seized by the Bolsheviks after the revolution of 1917, and she studied history at the University of Petrograd before emigrating to the United States in 1926. She worked in Hollywood as a screenwriter and in the studio wardrobe department, and married the actor Frank O'Connor in 1929. Her first novel, We the Living (1936), drew on life in Soviet Russia, and the short novel Anthem (1938) imagines a collective future in which the word 'I' has been forgotten. The Fountainhead (1943), about an uncompromising architect named Howard Roark, became a bestseller, as did Atlas Shrugged (1957), in which inventors and industrialists go on strike. In her later years she wrote nonfiction essays developing her philosophy, which she called Objectivism, emphasizing reason, individual rights and free markets. She died in New York City in 1982.","keyDates":[{"date":"1905","event":"Born in Saint Petersburg"},{"date":"1926","event":"Emigrates to the United States"},{"date":"1938","event":"Anthem published"},{"date":"1943","event":"The Fountainhead published"},{"date":"1957","event":"Atlas Shrugged published"},{"date":"1982","event":"Dies in New York City"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Ayn Rand","relatedWorks":["atlas-shrugged","the-fountainhead","anthem"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"anthem","url":"/works/anthem/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"atlas-shrugged","url":"/works/atlas-shrugged/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-fountainhead","url":"/works/the-fountainhead/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"An atheist whose philosophy rejected religious metaphysics.","source":"https://iep.utm.edu/rand/","sourceName":"Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"raphael","name":"Raphael","url":"/great-lives/raphael/","dates":"1483–1520","born":1483,"died":1520,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["artists-composers-architects"],"knownFor":"Painter of the School of Athens and of serene Madonnas, a master of the High Renaissance.","bio":"Raffaello Sanzio was born in Urbino, the son of Giovanni Santi, a court painter who gave him his first training. Orphaned at eleven, he joined the workshop of Pietro Perugino and soon equaled his master. In Florence from 1504 he studied the work of Leonardo and Michelangelo and painted a series of gentle Madonnas. In 1508 Pope Julius II called him to Rome to decorate rooms in the Vatican palace. In the room now called the Stanza della Segnatura he painted The School of Athens, which shows Plato, Aristotle and other ancient thinkers gathered in a grand classical hall, and The Disputation of the Holy Sacrament facing it. He ran a large and busy workshop, designed tapestries for the Sistine Chapel, painted portraits of popes and friends, and was named architect of the new St. Peter's Basilica. Pope Leo X also asked him to record and protect the ruins of ancient Rome. Known for his charm and grace, he was admired by princes and fellow artists. He died in Rome on his thirty-seventh birthday in 1520, while finishing The Transfiguration, and was buried in the Pantheon.","keyDates":[{"date":"1504","event":"Moves to Florence"},{"date":"1508","event":"Called to Rome by Pope Julius II"},{"date":"1509–1511","event":"Paints The School of Athens"},{"date":"1514","event":"Named architect of St. Peter's"},{"date":"1520","event":"Dies in Rome"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["vasari-lives-of-the-artists"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"vasari-lives-of-the-artists","url":"/works/vasari-lives-of-the-artists/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented; he painted many religious works for the Catholic Church.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raphael","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"john-rawls","name":"John Rawls","url":"/great-lives/john-rawls/","dates":"1921–2002","born":1921,"died":2002,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["philosophers"],"knownFor":"American political philosopher, author of A Theory of Justice.","bio":"John Rawls was born in 1921 in Baltimore, Maryland, the son of a lawyer. As a child he lost two younger brothers to illnesses they had caught from him. He studied at Princeton University and served as an infantryman in the Pacific during the Second World War, then returned to Princeton for a doctorate in philosophy. After teaching at Princeton, Cornell and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he joined Harvard University in 1962 and taught there for most of his career. His book A Theory of Justice (1971) asks what principles of justice people would choose if they did not know what place they would hold in society, a thought experiment he called the 'veil of ignorance'. He argued that they would choose equal basic liberties for all and would accept social and economic inequalities only if they benefited the least advantaged. The book revived political philosophy in the English-speaking world. His later works include Political Liberalism (1993) and The Law of Peoples. He received the National Humanities Medal in 1999. He died in Lexington, Massachusetts, in 2002.","keyDates":[{"date":"1921","event":"Born in Baltimore"},{"date":"1962","event":"Joins Harvard University"},{"date":"1971","event":"A Theory of Justice published"},{"date":"1993","event":"Political Liberalism published"},{"date":"1999","event":"National Humanities Medal"},{"date":"2002","event":"Dies in Lexington, Massachusetts"}],"quotes":[],"author":"John Rawls","relatedWorks":["rawls-a-theory-of-justice"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"rawls-a-theory-of-justice","url":"/works/rawls-a-theory-of-justice/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"As a college student he wrote an intensely religious thesis and considered studying for the priesthood.","source":"https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rawls/","sourceName":"Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"wilson-rawls","name":"Wilson Rawls","url":"/great-lives/wilson-rawls/","dates":"1913–1984","born":1913,"died":1984,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American author of the beloved dog story Where the Red Fern Grows and of Summer of the Monkeys.","bio":"Woodrow Wilson Rawls was born in 1913 in the Ozark Mountains near Scraper, Oklahoma. He had little formal schooling, but his mother taught him to read, and the wilderness adventure novels of Jack London gave him a love of books and a wish to write. During the Great Depression his family moved to New Mexico. As a young man Rawls worked as a carpenter and travelled to South America, Canada and Alaska. He wrote several manuscripts but, ashamed by his spelling and lack of punctuation, hid them in a trunk. While working near Idaho Falls, Idaho, he met Sophie Ann Styczinski, and they married in 1958. Before the wedding he burned his old manuscripts, but Sophie encouraged him to rewrite one of them, and she helped him edit it. The story, about a boy and his two coonhounds in the Ozarks, ran in the Saturday Evening Post and was published as the novel Where the Red Fern Grows in 1961. His second novel, Summer of the Monkeys, followed in 1976 and won many children's book awards. He died in 1984.","keyDates":[{"date":"1913","event":"Born near Scraper, Oklahoma"},{"date":"1958","event":"Marries Sophie Ann Styczinski"},{"date":"1961","event":"Where the Red Fern Grows published"},{"date":"1976","event":"Summer of the Monkeys published"},{"date":"1984","event":"Dies"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Wilson Rawls","relatedWorks":["where-the-red-fern-grows"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"where-the-red-fern-grows","url":"/works/where-the-red-fern-grows/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilson_Rawls","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"abu-bakr-al-razi","name":"Abu Bakr al-Razi (Rhazes)","url":"/great-lives/abu-bakr-al-razi/","dates":"c. 865–925 or 935","born":865,"died":925,"era":"medieval","categories":["physicians-medicine","philosophers"],"knownFor":"Persian physician and philosopher of the Islamic Golden Age, known in Europe as Rhazes, author of a classic treatise on smallpox and measles.","bio":"Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi, known in medieval Europe as Rhazes, was born in the city of Ray in Persia, near present-day Tehran, around 865. Little is certain about his early life; later accounts say he came to medicine relatively late. He studied in Baghdad and became chief physician of hospitals both in Baghdad and in Ray. Al-Razi wrote on medicine, philosophy, alchemy, logic and astronomy, and he stressed careful observation of patients. His treatise on smallpox and measles is among the earliest known works to describe the two diseases clearly and tell them apart. His large medical notebook, compiled after his death as the Kitab al-Hawi, was translated into Latin as the Continens and used in European medical schools for centuries. He was also a well-known teacher, and accounts describe him treating rich and poor patients alike. He died in Ray; sources give the year as 925 or 935.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 865","event":"Born in Ray, Persia"},{"date":"10th century","event":"Chief physician of hospitals in Baghdad and Ray"},{"date":"925 or 935","event":"Dies in Ray"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Abu Bakr al-Razi (Rhazes)","relatedWorks":["al-razi-treatise-on-smallpox-and-measles"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"al-razi-treatise-on-smallpox-and-measles","url":"/works/al-razi-treatise-on-smallpox-and-measles/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Lived in the Islamic world; his religious views were controversial, and later writers condemned some of them as a departure from Islam.","source":"https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abu-bakr-al-razi/","sourceName":"Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["Birth and death years differ between sources (born 864 or 865; died 925 or 935)."]},{"slug":"george-read","name":"George Read","url":"/great-lives/george-read/","dates":"1733–1798","born":1733,"died":1798,"era":"18th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders","legal-scholars-lawgivers"],"knownFor":"Delaware lawyer who voted against independence on 2 July, then signed the Declaration and later the Constitution.","bio":"George Read was born in 1733 in Cecil County, Maryland, studied law, and became a leading attorney in Delaware. He served as the colony's attorney general and sat in the Continental Congress. On 2 July 1776 he voted against independence, thinking the step premature; Caesar Rodney's ride that day carried Delaware's vote the other way. Read nevertheless signed the engrossed Declaration, accepting the decision of the Congress once it had been made. He later signed the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution, and he was a United States senator and chief justice of Delaware. His record is valuable for students precisely because it is not simple: a cautious lawyer who said no in July, then bound himself to the new nation and helped write its later frame of government. He died in 1798.","keyDates":[{"date":"1733","event":"Born in Cecil County, Maryland"},{"date":"2 July 1776","event":"Votes against independence in Congress"},{"date":"1776","event":"Signs the Declaration of Independence"},{"date":"1787","event":"Signs the Constitution"},{"date":"1798","event":"Dies while chief justice of Delaware"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["the-founding-documents"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-founding-documents","url":"/works/the-founding-documents/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":null,"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"ronald-reagan","name":"Ronald Reagan","url":"/great-lives/ronald-reagan/","dates":"1911–2004","born":1911,"died":2004,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"Fortieth president of the United States, from 1981 to 1989, and earlier a film actor and governor of California.","bio":"Ronald Wilson Reagan was born in 1911 in Tampico, Illinois, and grew up in Dixon, Illinois, where his first job was as a lifeguard on the Rock River. He graduated from Eureka College in 1932 and became a radio sports announcer in Iowa. In 1937 he signed a contract with Warner Bros. and went on to appear in 53 films. During the Second World War he helped produce army training films. He served as president of the Screen Actors Guild and later worked as a television host and spokesman for General Electric. He was elected governor of California in 1966 and served two terms. In 1980 he was elected president, defeating Jimmy Carter. In 1981, weeks after taking office, he survived an assassination attempt. His presidency cut taxes, increased military spending and took a firm line against the Soviet Union; in 1987, in Berlin, he called on the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to 'tear down this wall'. He and Gorbachev signed a treaty limiting nuclear missiles. He died in Los Angeles in 2004.","keyDates":[{"date":"1911","event":"Born in Tampico, Illinois"},{"date":"1937","event":"Begins his film career"},{"date":"1967–1975","event":"Governor of California"},{"date":"1980","event":"Elected president"},{"date":"1981","event":"Survives an assassination attempt"},{"date":"1987","event":"Tear down this wall speech in Berlin"},{"date":"2004","event":"Dies in Los Angeles"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Ronald Reagan","relatedWorks":["tear-down-this-wall","challenger-disaster-address","reagan-first-inaugural-address","reagan-second-inaugural-address"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"tear-down-this-wall","url":"/works/tear-down-this-wall/"},{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"challenger-disaster-address","url":"/works/challenger-disaster-address/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[{"text":"When he left office in 1989 at 77, he was the oldest president at the end of his time in office up to then.","source":{"title":"Ronald Reagan (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Reagan"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"His values were shaped by his pastor and the First Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) he attended as a youth.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Reagan","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"walter-reed","name":"Walter Reed","url":"/great-lives/walter-reed/","dates":"1851–1902","born":1851,"died":1902,"era":"19th-century","categories":["physicians-medicine"],"knownFor":"U.S. Army doctor whose team proved that mosquitoes spread yellow fever.","bio":"Walter Reed was born in Belroi, Virginia, the son of a Methodist minister. He earned a medical degree from the University of Virginia at seventeen and a second from Bellevue Hospital Medical College in New York. In 1875 he joined the U.S. Army Medical Corps and served for years at frontier posts in the West, where he cared for soldiers, settlers and Native Americans. He later studied bacteriology and became a professor at the Army Medical School. In the Spanish-American War, far more American soldiers died of disease than in battle, and in 1900 Reed was sent to Cuba to lead a commission on yellow fever. Following the theory of the Cuban doctor Carlos Finlay, the commission tested whether the disease was carried by mosquitoes. In carefully controlled experiments, with volunteers who gave written consent, they showed that the Aedes aegypti mosquito spreads yellow fever and that it is not spread by contact with clothing or bedding. A commission member, Jesse Lazear, died after being bitten. Mosquito control then nearly ended the disease in Havana and helped make the Panama Canal possible. Reed died in 1902.","keyDates":[{"date":"1875","event":"Joins the Army Medical Corps"},{"date":"1893","event":"Professor at the Army Medical School"},{"date":"1900","event":"Leads the Yellow Fever Commission in Cuba"},{"date":"1901","event":"Publishes the mosquito findings"},{"date":"1902","event":"Dies in Washington"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[{"text":"He earned his medical degree from the University of Virginia two months before he turned 18, the youngest ever to do so there.","source":{"title":"Walter Reed (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Reed"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Son of a Methodist minister.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Reed","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"erich-maria-remarque","name":"Erich Maria Remarque","url":"/great-lives/erich-maria-remarque/","dates":"1898–1970","born":1898,"died":1970,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"German novelist, author of All Quiet on the Western Front, based on his experiences as a soldier in the First World War.","bio":"Erich Paul Remark was born in 1898 in Osnabrück, Germany, the son of a bookbinder. He was drafted into the German army in 1916, at eighteen, and in 1917 he was wounded by shrapnel on the Western Front and spent the rest of the war recovering in hospital. Afterward he worked as a teacher, a stonecutter's assistant, a journalist and an editor, and he later took the name Erich Maria Remarque. His novel All Quiet on the Western Front (1929) follows Paul Bäumer, a young German soldier, and his classmates through the horrors of trench warfare. It sold millions of copies and was made into an Academy Award–winning American film in 1930. The Nazis opposed the book; Remarque left Germany for Switzerland in 1931, his books were burned in 1933, and he was stripped of German citizenship. His sister was executed by the Nazi regime in 1943. He moved to the United States in 1939, becoming a citizen, and wrote further novels, including Three Comrades and Arch of Triumph. He married the actress Paulette Goddard and died in Switzerland in 1970.","keyDates":[{"date":"1898","event":"Born in Osnabrück"},{"date":"1917","event":"Wounded on the Western Front"},{"date":"1929","event":"All Quiet on the Western Front published"},{"date":"1933","event":"His books burned by the Nazis"},{"date":"1939","event":"Moves to the United States"},{"date":"1970","event":"Dies in Switzerland"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Erich Maria Remarque","relatedWorks":["all-quiet-on-the-western-front"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"all-quiet-on-the-western-front","url":"/works/all-quiet-on-the-western-front/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"The asteroid 10119 Remarque is named after him.","source":{"title":"Erich Maria Remarque (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_Maria_Remarque"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Born into a working-class Roman Catholic family; the Nazis attacked his Catholic faith.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_Maria_Remarque","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"rembrandt","name":"Rembrandt van Rijn","url":"/great-lives/rembrandt/","dates":"1606–1669","born":1606,"died":1669,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["artists-composers-architects"],"knownFor":"Dutch painter of The Night Watch, famous for his use of light and shadow and his self-portraits.","bio":"Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn was born in Leiden, in the Dutch Republic, the son of a miller. He studied briefly at the university, then trained as a painter, including six months with Pieter Lastman in Amsterdam. Around 1631 he moved to Amsterdam, where he became the city's most sought-after portrait painter. He painted Bible scenes and portraits with dramatic contrasts of light and darkness, and made hundreds of etchings and drawings. In 1642 he completed the large group portrait of a militia company now called The Night Watch, which shows the men in action rather than in neat rows. That same year Saskia died, leaving him with their infant son Titus. He spent beyond his means on a large house and on collecting art, and in 1656 he was forced into bankruptcy and had to sell his house and possessions. He kept working, and his late paintings, such as The Return of the Prodigal Son, are especially admired. Over his life he painted, drew and etched nearly a hundred self-portraits. Titus died in 1668, and Rembrandt died in Amsterdam the next year.","keyDates":[{"date":"1606","event":"Born in Leiden"},{"date":"1631","event":"Moves to Amsterdam"},{"date":"1642","event":"Completes The Night Watch"},{"date":"1656","event":"Declared bankrupt"},{"date":"1669","event":"Dies in Amsterdam"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"His mother was Catholic and his father Dutch Reformed; religion is a central theme of his art, but his own faith is debated.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rembrandt","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"david-ricardo","name":"David Ricardo","url":"/great-lives/david-ricardo/","dates":"1772–1823","born":1772,"died":1823,"era":"19th-century","categories":["philosophers"],"knownFor":"English economist of the classical school, known for comparative advantage, the theory of rent and the labour theory of value.","bio":"David Ricardo was born in London in 1772, the third child of a Sephardic Jewish family that had come from the Netherlands. At fourteen he joined his father's business on the London Stock Exchange. At twenty-one he married Priscilla Anne Wilkinson, a Quaker, which led to a break with his parents; he later became a Unitarian. Working on his own account, he became one of the richest men in England, partly through government loans during the Napoleonic Wars. Reading Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations in 1799 drew him to economics. His pamphlets on paper money (1810) and on the corn laws (1815) led to his major work, On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1817), which set out the theory of comparative advantage. He retired to Gatcombe Park in Gloucestershire, sat in Parliament from 1819 and was a close friend and critic of Thomas Malthus. He died in 1823, aged fifty-one.","keyDates":[{"date":"1772","event":"Born in London"},{"date":"1793","event":"Marries Priscilla Anne Wilkinson"},{"date":"1799","event":"Reads The Wealth of Nations"},{"date":"1810","event":"The High Price of Bullion published"},{"date":"1817","event":"Principles of Political Economy and Taxation published"},{"date":"1819","event":"Enters Parliament for Portarlington"},{"date":"1823","event":"Dies at Gatcombe Park"}],"quotes":[],"author":"David Ricardo","relatedWorks":["ricardo-principles-of-political-economy-and-taxation"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"ricardo-principles-of-political-economy-and-taxation","url":"/works/ricardo-principles-of-political-economy-and-taxation/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Born into a Sephardic Jewish family; by 21 he had broken with his father over religion, become a Unitarian and married a Quaker.","source":"https://www.britannica.com/biography/David-Ricardo","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"richard-i","name":"Richard I of England","url":"/great-lives/richard-i/","dates":"1157–1199","born":1157,"died":1199,"era":"medieval","categories":["kings-queens-emperors","military-leaders"],"knownFor":"English king called the Lionheart, a leader of the Third Crusade.","bio":"Richard was the third son of King Henry II of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine. He grew up largely in his mother's lands in France and became Duke of Aquitaine, where he earned a reputation as a bold soldier. He rebelled more than once against his father, and on Henry's death in 1189 he became king. Almost at once he raised money for a crusade to recover Jerusalem from Saladin. In the Holy Land he helped capture Acre in 1191 and defeated Saladin at Arsuf, earning the name Lionheart, but he twice turned back short of Jerusalem, judging it could not be held. In 1192 he made a truce with Saladin. Sailing home, he was shipwrecked and captured by Duke Leopold of Austria and handed to the emperor Henry VI, who released him only after England paid a huge ransom. He spent his last years fighting King Philip II of France to defend his French lands. In 1199, while besieging the castle of Châlus, he was struck by a crossbow bolt and died of the wound.","keyDates":[{"date":"1189","event":"Becomes King of England"},{"date":"1191","event":"Captures Acre; victory at Arsuf"},{"date":"1192","event":"Truce with Saladin; captured on the way home"},{"date":"1194","event":"Released after ransom"},{"date":"1199","event":"Dies at Châlus"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"His brave and fierce leadership earned him the name 'the Lionheart'.","source":{"title":"Richard I of England (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_I_of_England"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"King of England who prepared for and led the Third Crusade.","source":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dictionary_of_National_Biography%2C_1885-1900/Richard_I","sourceName":"Dictionary of National Biography (1885–1900) (via Wikisource)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"i-a-richards","name":"I. A. Richards","url":"/great-lives/i-a-richards/","dates":"1893–1979","born":1893,"died":1979,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets","philosophers"],"knownFor":"English critic and teacher whose Principles of Literary Criticism and Practical Criticism helped found the New Criticism.","bio":"Ivor Armstrong Richards was born in Sandbach, Cheshire, in 1893. He was educated at Clifton College and at Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he studied philosophy, the moral sciences, rather than literature. In 1922 he became a college lecturer in English and moral sciences at Magdalene, and when the Cambridge Faculty of English was formally established a few years later he received a permanent university post. With C. K. Ogden he wrote The Meaning of Meaning (1923). His Principles of Literary Criticism (1924) sought a psychological basis for judging poetry, and Practical Criticism (1929) reported his experiments asking students to comment on unsigned poems. These books helped lay the foundations of the New Criticism and its close reading. Richards taught in China, promoted Basic English, a simplified English of 850 words, and in 1939 moved to Harvard University. In 1974 he returned to Magdalene College, where he lived until his death in 1979.","keyDates":[{"date":"1893","event":"Born in Sandbach, Cheshire"},{"date":"1922","event":"Becomes a lecturer at Magdalene College, Cambridge"},{"date":"1924","event":"Principles of Literary Criticism published"},{"date":"1929","event":"Practical Criticism published"},{"date":"1939","event":"Moves to Harvard University"},{"date":"1979","event":"Dies after returning to Cambridge"}],"quotes":[],"author":"I. A. Richards","relatedWorks":["richards-principles-of-literary-criticism","richards-practical-criticism"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"richards-principles-of-literary-criticism","url":"/works/richards-principles-of-literary-criticism/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"richards-practical-criticism","url":"/works/richards-practical-criticism/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I._A._Richards","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"jose-rizal","name":"José Rizal","url":"/great-lives/jose-rizal/","dates":"1861–1896","born":1861,"died":1896,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets","statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"Filipino physician, novelist and reformer, author of Noli Me Tangere, executed by Spain; national hero of the Philippines.","bio":"José Protasio Rizal Mercado y Alonso Realonda was born in 1861 in Calamba, on the island of Luzon in the Philippines, to a prosperous family. A brilliant student, he studied at the Ateneo Municipal and the University of Santo Tomas in Manila, and then in Madrid, where he earned a medical degree, before further study in Paris and Heidelberg, specializing in ophthalmology. He learned many languages. In Europe he joined the Propaganda Movement of Filipino reformers who called for representation, equality and freedom of expression under Spanish rule. His novel Noli Me Tangere (1887), published in Berlin, exposed abuses by friars and officials, and its sequel, El Filibusterismo (1891), was darker still. Returning to the Philippines in 1892, he founded the reform society La Liga Filipina and was soon deported to Dapitan on Mindanao, where he practiced medicine, taught and built a school. When the Philippine Revolution broke out in 1896, he was arrested, tried for rebellion and shot in Manila on December 30, 1896, writing the farewell poem Mi último adiós before his death.","keyDates":[{"date":"1861","event":"Born in Calamba"},{"date":"1887","event":"Noli Me Tangere published in Berlin"},{"date":"1892","event":"Founds La Liga Filipina; exiled to Dapitan"},{"date":"1896","event":"Executed in Manila"}],"quotes":[],"author":"José Rizal","relatedWorks":["rizal-the-social-cancer"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"rizal-the-social-cancer","url":"/works/rizal-the-social-cancer/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Raised Catholic, he became a Freemason in Spain, called for Spanish friars to be replaced by Filipino priests, and declined to return to Catholic practice in exile; whether he retracted before his execution is still debated.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Rizal","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"john-d-rockefeller","name":"John D. Rockefeller","url":"/great-lives/john-d-rockefeller/","dates":"1839–1937","born":1839,"died":1937,"era":"19th-century","categories":["titans-of-industry"],"knownFor":"Founder of Standard Oil, the richest American of his time, and a major philanthropist.","bio":"John Davison Rockefeller was born in Richford, New York, the son of a traveling salesman and a devout Baptist mother. He grew up in Ohio, studied bookkeeping, and at sixteen took a job as an assistant bookkeeper in Cleveland, keeping careful ledgers all his life. In 1863 he invested in an oil refinery, and in 1870 he founded the Standard Oil Company. By cutting costs, making use of every by-product, securing secret discounts from railroads, and buying out or driving out rivals, Standard Oil came to control about ninety percent of oil refining in the United States. Critics such as the journalist Ida Tarbell exposed its methods, and in 1911 the Supreme Court ordered the company broken up under antitrust law. Rockefeller became the richest person in America. A lifelong churchgoer who tithed from his first wages, he gave away over 500 million dollars, founding the University of Chicago, the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, and the Rockefeller Foundation, which fought hookworm and yellow fever. He died in 1937, aged ninety-seven.","keyDates":[{"date":"1855","event":"First job as a bookkeeper"},{"date":"1870","event":"Founds Standard Oil"},{"date":"1890","event":"Helps found the University of Chicago"},{"date":"1911","event":"Standard Oil broken up by the Supreme Court"},{"date":"1913","event":"Rockefeller Foundation established"},{"date":"1937","event":"Dies in Florida"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["standard-oil-v-united-states"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"book","title":"Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.","author":"Ron Chernow","isbn13":"9781400077304","publisher":"Vintage Books","year":2004,"format":"paperback"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A devoted member of the Baptist church.","source":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Rockefeller%2C_John_Davison","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica (1911) (via Wikisource)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"auguste-rodin","name":"Auguste Rodin","url":"/great-lives/auguste-rodin/","dates":"1840–1917","born":1840,"died":1917,"era":"19th-century","categories":["artists-composers-architects"],"knownFor":"French sculptor of The Thinker, The Kiss, and the Monument to the Burghers of Calais.","bio":"Auguste Rodin was born in Paris on 12 November 1840. He was rejected more than once by the École des Beaux-Arts and earned his living for years as a craftsman in other sculptors’ studios. His early independent figures, with their rough surfaces and intense expressions, were sometimes accused of being cast from life; they were not, but they did break with the smoother official style of the day. Among his major works are The Gates of Hell, from which The Thinker and The Kiss were developed, a monument to Balzac, and the Monument to the Burghers of Calais. For Calais he modeled the six citizens who, in 1347, offered themselves as hostages to end a siege, and he showed them not as a single triumphant hero but as six men walking forward together, each bearing the cost in his own way. The final version was completed in 1889 and unveiled in Calais on 3 June 1895. Rodin died at Meudon on 17 November 1917. The Musée Rodin in Paris holds his plaster of the monument and many of the studies.","keyDates":[{"date":"1840","event":"Born in Paris, 12 November"},{"date":"1889","event":"Completes the final version of the Monument to the Burghers of Calais"},{"date":"1895","event":"The Calais monument is unveiled, 3 June"},{"date":"1917","event":"Dies at Meudon, 17 November"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":null,"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"caesar-rodney","name":"Caesar Rodney","url":"/great-lives/caesar-rodney/","dates":"1728–1784","born":1728,"died":1784,"era":"18th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders","military-leaders"],"knownFor":"Delaware planter and militia leader who rode overnight to Philadelphia so that his state's delegation could vote for independence.","bio":"Caesar Rodney was born in 1728 near Dover, Delaware, and became a planter, a longtime member of the colonial assembly, and a militia commander. He suffered from a painful cancer of the face, which he concealed as best he could and which finally shortened his life. On the night of 1–2 July 1776 he rode to Philadelphia, summoned because the Delaware delegation was split: Thomas McKean was prepared to vote for independence, George Read was not. Rodney's arrival allowed Delaware to cast its vote for independence. He later signed the Declaration, served as president (governor) of Delaware through much of the war, and continued to lead militia when the state was threatened. He never married. Rodney died in 1784. The ride to Philadelphia is well documented and needs no embroidery; it is a clear picture of a sick man accepting a hard duty at a decisive hour.","keyDates":[{"date":"1728","event":"Born near Dover, Delaware"},{"date":"2 July 1776","event":"Arrives in Congress after an overnight ride and votes for independence"},{"date":"1776","event":"Signs the Declaration of Independence"},{"date":"1778","event":"Becomes president of Delaware"},{"date":"1784","event":"Dies in Delaware"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["the-founding-documents"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-founding-documents","url":"/works/the-founding-documents/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":null,"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"wilhelm-rontgen","name":"Wilhelm Röntgen","url":"/great-lives/wilhelm-rontgen/","dates":"1845–1923","born":1845,"died":1923,"era":"19th-century","categories":["scientists-mathematicians"],"knownFor":"German physicist who discovered X-rays in 1895 and received the first Nobel Prize in Physics.","bio":"Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen was born on 27 March 1845 at Lennep in Prussia (now part of Remscheid, Germany), the only child of a cloth merchant, and grew up in the Netherlands. Expelled from a technical school for a prank he did not commit, he studied mechanical engineering in Zurich and then turned to physics. He became professor of physics at Würzburg in 1888. On 8 November 1895, experimenting with a cathode-ray tube wrapped in black cardboard, he noticed a screen coated with barium platinocyanide glowing across the room. He spent weeks investigating the invisible rays, which he called X-rays because their nature was unknown, and found that they passed through flesh but were stopped by bone and metal. His first report appeared at the end of December 1895, with an image of the bones of his wife Anna Bertha's hand and her ring. Within months doctors around the world were using X-rays to locate fractures and bullets. Röntgen refused to patent the discovery. In 1901 he received the first Nobel Prize in Physics. He died in Munich on 10 February 1923.","keyDates":[{"date":"1845","event":"Born at Lennep, Prussia, on 27 March"},{"date":"1888","event":"Professor of physics at Würzburg"},{"date":"1895","event":"Discovers X-rays on 8 November"},{"date":"1901","event":"First Nobel Prize in Physics"},{"date":"1923","event":"Dies in Munich on 10 February"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_R%C3%B6ntgen","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"peter-and-connie-roop","name":"Peter and Connie Roop","url":"/great-lives/peter-and-connie-roop/","dates":"both born 1951","born":1951,"died":null,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Husband-and-wife teachers from Wisconsin who have written more than one hundred children's books, many of them true stories from American history.","bio":"Peter and Connie Roop are a husband-and-wife team of teachers who have written more than one hundred books for children. Peter was born in 1951 in Winchester, Massachusetts, and grew up in Memphis, Tennessee. Connie was born in 1951 in Wisconsin and grew up in the small town of Delavan. They met as students at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin, graduated in 1973, and married that same year. Both then went to work for the Appleton schools: Peter taught elementary school for about twenty-five years, and Connie taught science for thirty-four. Peter began writing while he was a Fulbright exchange teacher in England in 1976, publishing stories in children's magazines before turning to books. Writing together, the Roops produced biographies, history, science books and even joke books, often drawing on real journals and diaries from the American past. Their Keep the Lights Burning, Abbie (1985) tells the true story of a lighthouse keeper's daughter in Maine and was featured on Reading Rainbow. In 2013 the Wisconsin Library Association named them Notable Wisconsin Authors.","keyDates":[{"date":"1951","event":"Peter born in Winchester, Massachusetts; Connie born in Wisconsin"},{"date":"1973","event":"Both graduate from Lawrence University, marry, and begin teaching in Appleton, Wisconsin"},{"date":"1976","event":"Peter, a Fulbright exchange teacher in England, begins writing for children"},{"date":"1985","event":"Keep the Lights Burning, Abbie published"},{"date":"1986","event":"Peter named Wisconsin Teacher of the Year"},{"date":"2013","event":"Named Notable Wisconsin Authors by the Wisconsin Library Association"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Peter and Connie Roop","relatedWorks":["keep-the-lights-burning-abbie"],"reading":[{"band":"K-2","kind":"library","work":"keep-the-lights-burning-abbie","url":"/works/keep-the-lights-burning-abbie/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"Early on, Peter sent one story to Highlights and another to Jack and Jill. Both were rejected, so he swapped them, and each magazine accepted the other's story.","source":{"title":"Connie Roop and Peter Roop (StoryCorps interview, 2023)","url":"https://archive.storycorps.org/interviews/connie-roop-and-peter-roop/"}},{"text":"Seven of Peter Roop's books have been Reading Rainbow books, including Keep the Lights Burning, Abbie.","source":{"title":"Peter Roop (Simon & Schuster author page)","url":"https://www.simonandschuster.com/authors/Peter-Roop/19021347"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":null,"sourceName":null,"documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["No Wikipedia article. Facts come from the University of Minnesota finding aid for the Peter and Connie Roop Papers (citing Something About the Author, 2016), the JRank/Something About the Author entry for Peter Roop, the Roops' 2023 StoryCorps interview, and the Simon & Schuster author page. The finding aid gives Connie's birthplace as Elkhorn, Wisconsin; she has said she grew up in Delavan."]},{"slug":"eleanor-roosevelt","name":"Eleanor Roosevelt","url":"/great-lives/eleanor-roosevelt/","dates":"1884–1962","born":1884,"died":1962,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders","saints-reformers"],"knownFor":"First Lady of the United States who chaired the United Nations commission that drafted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.","bio":"Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was born in New York City on 11 October 1884, a niece of Theodore Roosevelt. Her mother died when she was eight and her father two years later, and she was raised by her grandmother. At fifteen she went to Allenswood, a school near London whose headmistress, Marie Souvestre, gave her confidence. In 1905 she married her distant cousin Franklin Delano Roosevelt. After he was struck by polio in 1921 she became his eyes and ears in politics. As First Lady from 1933 to 1945 she held press conferences, wrote a daily newspaper column, visited coal miners, soldiers and the poor, and spoke for the rights of women and Black Americans. After Franklin's death President Truman appointed her a delegate to the new United Nations. As chair of its Commission on Human Rights she led the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the General Assembly in Paris on 10 December 1948 with no votes against. She remained active in public life, an Episcopalian who taught Sunday school in her youth, until her death in New York on 7 November 1962.","keyDates":[{"date":"1884","event":"Born in New York City on 11 October"},{"date":"1905","event":"Marries Franklin D. Roosevelt"},{"date":"1933–1945","event":"First Lady of the United States"},{"date":"1946","event":"Chairs the UN Commission on Human Rights"},{"date":"1948","event":"Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted on 10 December"},{"date":"1962","event":"Dies in New York on 7 November"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["universal-declaration-of-human-rights"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"universal-declaration-of-human-rights","url":"/works/universal-declaration-of-human-rights/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A devout Episcopalian who regularly attended services and studied the New Testament.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleanor_Roosevelt","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["She chaired the Commission on Human Rights from its first session (1946/1947) until 1951."]},{"slug":"franklin-d-roosevelt","name":"Franklin D. Roosevelt","url":"/great-lives/franklin-d-roosevelt/","dates":"1882–1945","born":1882,"died":1945,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"Thirty-second President, who led the U.S. through the Great Depression and most of World War II.","bio":"Franklin Delano Roosevelt was born to a wealthy family in Hyde Park, New York, and was a distant cousin of Theodore Roosevelt; he married Theodore's niece Eleanor. He served as Assistant Secretary of the Navy during the First World War. In 1921 he was struck by polio and lost the use of his legs, but he returned to politics, became governor of New York, and was elected president in 1932, in the depths of the Great Depression. In his first inaugural address he declared that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. His New Deal programs created jobs, banking rules, Social Security and public works, though critics argued they expanded government too far. He spoke to the nation in radio fireside chats. After Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941, he led the United States into the Second World War alongside Britain and the Soviet Union. In 1942 he authorized the forced removal of Japanese Americans to camps. He won four elections, more than any other president, and died in April 1945.","keyDates":[{"date":"1921","event":"Stricken with polio"},{"date":"1932","event":"Elected President"},{"date":"1933","event":"First inaugural address; New Deal begins"},{"date":"1935","event":"Social Security Act"},{"date":"1941","event":"Pearl Harbor; U.S. enters the war"},{"date":"1945","event":"Dies at Warm Springs, Georgia"}],"quotes":[{"text":"the only thing we have to fear is fear itself","work":"fdr-first-inaugural-address","location":"Paragraph 1","verified":true},{"text":"Yesterday, December 7, 1941—a date which will live in infamy","work":"pearl-harbor-address","location":"Paragraph 1","verified":true}],"author":"Franklin D. Roosevelt","relatedWorks":["fdr-first-inaugural-address","pearl-harbor-address","schechter-poultry-v-united-states","west-coast-hotel-v-parrish","fdr-second-inaugural-address","fdr-third-inaugural-address","fdr-fourth-inaugural-address"],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"book","title":"Who Was Franklin Roosevelt?","author":"Margaret Frith","isbn13":"9780448453460","publisher":"Grosset & Dunlap","year":2010,"format":""},{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"pearl-harbor-address","url":"/works/pearl-harbor-address/"},{"band":"6-8","kind":"book","title":"Franklin Delano Roosevelt","author":"Russell Freedman","isbn13":"9780395629789","publisher":"Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company","year":1992,"format":""},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"fdr-first-inaugural-address","url":"/works/fdr-first-inaugural-address/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[{"text":"He is the longest-serving U.S. president and the only one to serve more than two terms.","source":{"title":"Franklin D. Roosevelt (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_D._Roosevelt"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"An Episcopalian who attended church from a young age.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_D._Roosevelt","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"theodore-roosevelt","name":"Theodore Roosevelt","url":"/great-lives/theodore-roosevelt/","dates":"1858–1919","born":1858,"died":1919,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"Twenty-sixth President, conservationist, soldier and writer.","bio":"Theodore Roosevelt was a sickly, asthmatic boy from a wealthy New York family who built up his strength through exercise. He studied at Harvard, wrote a history of the naval War of 1812, and entered politics. After his wife and mother died on the same day in 1884, he spent time ranching in the Dakota Badlands. He later served as police commissioner of New York City and Assistant Secretary of the Navy. In the Spanish-American War of 1898 he led a volunteer cavalry regiment, the Rough Riders, in the charge at San Juan Heights in Cuba. Elected governor of New York and then vice president, he became president at forty-two when William McKinley was assassinated in 1901, the youngest ever. He broke up large business trusts, supported food safety laws, set aside about 230 million acres of public land as national forests, parks and refuges, began the Panama Canal, and won the Nobel Peace Prize for helping end the Russo-Japanese War. He wrote more than thirty books. He died in his sleep in 1919.","keyDates":[{"date":"1898","event":"Leads the Rough Riders in Cuba"},{"date":"1901","event":"Becomes President after McKinley's assassination"},{"date":"1906","event":"Nobel Peace Prize"},{"date":"1910","event":"Citizenship in a Republic speech in Paris"},{"date":"1919","event":"Dies at Oyster Bay"}],"quotes":[{"text":"It is not the critic who counts","work":"citizenship-in-a-republic","location":"Paragraph 9","verified":true},{"text":"But life is a great adventure, and the worst of all fears is the fear of living.","work":"theodore-roosevelt-an-autobiography","location":"Chapter IX, Outdoors and Indoors","verified":true}],"author":"Theodore Roosevelt","relatedWorks":["theodore-roosevelt-an-autobiography","citizenship-in-a-republic","theodore-roosevelt-inaugural-address"],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"book","title":"Bully for You, Teddy Roosevelt!","author":"Jean Fritz","isbn13":"9780698116092","publisher":"Putnam Juvenile","year":1997,"format":"paperback"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"theodore-roosevelt-an-autobiography","url":"/works/theodore-roosevelt-an-autobiography/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"citizenship-in-a-republic","url":"/works/citizenship-in-a-republic/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"book","title":"The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt","author":"Edmund Morris","isbn13":"9781400069651","publisher":"Random House","year":2010,"format":""}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"His fight against giant business monopolies earned him the nickname 'the Trust Buster'.","source":{"title":"Theodore Roosevelt (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Roosevelt"}},{"text":"After being shot at a campaign event in Milwaukee in 1912, he recovered, and he wrote to a friend that he did not mind the bullet 'any more than if it were in my waistcoat-pocket'.","source":{"title":"Theodore Roosevelt (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Roosevelt"}}],"records":[{"text":"He is the youngest person to become U.S. president, at 42.","source":{"title":"Theodore Roosevelt (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Roosevelt"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Raised by a devout Presbyterian father who led family prayers; as an adult he was a member of the Dutch Reformed Church.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Roosevelt","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"wilhelm-ropke","name":"Wilhelm Röpke","url":"/great-lives/wilhelm-ropke/","dates":"1899–1966","born":1899,"died":1966,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["philosophers","writers-poets"],"knownFor":"German economist, one of the intellectual founders of the social market economy behind West Germany's postwar recovery.","bio":"Wilhelm Röpke was born in Germany in 1899, the son of a rural doctor, in a devout Protestant family. From 1917 he studied law and economics at the universities of Göttingen, Tübingen and Marburg, and in 1922 he became a professor at the University of Jena, then the youngest professor in Germany. Because he opposed the National Socialist regime, he left Germany with his family in 1933 and taught at the University of Istanbul until 1937, when he moved to the Graduate Institute in Geneva, where he lived for the rest of his life. In books such as The Social Crisis of Our Time (1950), he argued for a free market economy set within a framework of law, competition and basic social security, and warned that free markets can carry social and spiritual costs. With economists such as Walter Eucken and Alexander Rüstow, he developed ideas, often called ordoliberalism, that Ludwig Erhard put into practice in West Germany after the Second World War, contributing to its 'economic miracle'. He was president of the Mont Pelerin Society in 1961–1962. He died in Geneva in 1966.","keyDates":[{"date":"1899","event":"Born in Germany"},{"date":"1922","event":"Professor at the University of Jena"},{"date":"1933","event":"Leaves Germany for Istanbul"},{"date":"1937","event":"Moves to Geneva"},{"date":"1961","event":"President of the Mont Pelerin Society"},{"date":"1966","event":"Dies in Geneva"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Wilhelm Röpke","relatedWorks":["ropke-a-humane-economy"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"ropke-a-humane-economy","url":"/works/ropke-a-humane-economy/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[{"text":"In 1922 he became a professor at the University of Jena, the youngest professor in Germany.","source":{"title":"Wilhelm Röpke (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_R%C3%B6pke"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Raised by devout Protestant parents; his economic thought is congruent with Catholic social teaching.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_R%C3%B6pke","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"reginald-rose","name":"Reginald Rose","url":"/great-lives/reginald-rose/","dates":"1920–2002","born":1920,"died":2002,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American playwright and screenwriter, author of Twelve Angry Men.","bio":"Reginald Rose was born in Manhattan, New York City, in 1920, the son of a lawyer. He attended Townsend Harris High School and briefly City College, and served in the army in the Second World War. He began trying to write at fifteen, but, he said, 'I didn't make it until I was 30.' In the meantime he worked as a copywriter, a publicist, a window washer and a clerk. In 1951 he sold his first teleplay to Studio One, a live television drama series. After serving on the jury in a manslaughter case, which led to a furious eight-hour argument in the jury room, he wrote Twelve Angry Men, set entirely in a jury room where one juror slowly persuades the others to reconsider the case against a teenage boy accused of murder. It won him an Emmy, and the 1957 film version, directed by Sidney Lumet, earned him an Academy Award nomination. In 1961 he created the courtroom television series The Defenders, which won Emmy awards for his writing. He died in Norwalk, Connecticut, in 2002.","keyDates":[{"date":"1920","event":"Born in Manhattan"},{"date":"1951","event":"Sells his first teleplay"},{"date":"1950s","event":"Twelve Angry Men broadcast on Studio One"},{"date":"1957","event":"Twelve Angry Men film"},{"date":"1961","event":"Creates The Defenders"},{"date":"2002","event":"Dies"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Reginald Rose","relatedWorks":["twelve-angry-men"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"twelve-angry-men","url":"/works/twelve-angry-men/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reginald_Rose","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"george-ross","name":"George Ross","url":"/great-lives/george-ross/","dates":"1730–1779","born":1730,"died":1779,"era":"18th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"Pennsylvania lawyer appointed to Congress in 1776 who signed the Declaration and died three years later.","bio":"George Ross was born in 1730 in New Castle, Delaware, studied law, and built a practice in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. He served in the colonial assembly, at first as a moderate, and became a judge and an officer of the militia. In 1776 he was added to the Pennsylvania delegation in the Continental Congress after the vote on independence, and he signed the engrossed Declaration. He later sat as a judge of the Pennsylvania admiralty court, which heard cases involving captured ships. Ross died in 1779, still in mid-career. Later popular stories sometimes connect him to the flag-making legend of Betsy Ross, whose late husband was his nephew; that flag story is not a reliable part of the historical record and is not used here. What can be said with confidence is that Ross accepted a seat in Congress at a dangerous moment and died before the war was won.","keyDates":[{"date":"1730","event":"Born in New Castle, Delaware"},{"date":"1776","event":"Is seated in Congress and signs the Declaration"},{"date":"1779","event":"Dies in Pennsylvania"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["the-founding-documents"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-founding-documents","url":"/works/the-founding-documents/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":null,"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"edmond-rostand","name":"Edmond Rostand","url":"/great-lives/edmond-rostand/","dates":"1868–1918","born":1868,"died":1918,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"French poet and playwright, author of Cyrano de Bergerac.","bio":"Edmond Rostand was born in Marseille in 1868 into a wealthy and cultured family. He studied law in Paris but turned to writing, publishing a book of poems and having his first plays staged in the 1890s. In 1890 he married the poet Rosemonde Gérard. His romantic verse comedy Cyrano de Bergerac opened in Paris in 1897 and was a triumph. It tells the story of a brilliant swordsman and poet with an enormous nose who secretly writes love letters for a handsome but tongue-tied friend to the woman he himself loves, Roxane. The play was loosely based on the real seventeenth-century writer Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac and revived the popularity of verse drama at a time when realistic plays dominated. Rostand's later play L'Aiglon, about Napoleon's son, starred the actress Sarah Bernhardt. He was elected to the Académie française in 1901, the youngest writer to be elected at that time. Poor health led him to settle in Cambo-les-Bains in the Basque country. He died in Paris in 1918 during the influenza epidemic.","keyDates":[{"date":"1868","event":"Born in Marseille"},{"date":"1890","event":"Marries Rosemonde Gérard"},{"date":"1897","event":"Cyrano de Bergerac opens in Paris"},{"date":"1900","event":"L'Aiglon staged with Sarah Bernhardt"},{"date":"1901","event":"Elected to the Académie française"},{"date":"1918","event":"Dies in Paris"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Edmond Rostand","relatedWorks":["cyrano-de-bergerac"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"cyrano-de-bergerac","url":"/works/cyrano-de-bergerac/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[{"text":"In 1901 he became the youngest writer ever elected to the Académie française.","source":{"title":"Edmond Rostand (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmond_Rostand"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmond_Rostand","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"murray-rothbard","name":"Murray Rothbard","url":"/great-lives/murray-rothbard/","dates":"1926–1995","born":1926,"died":1995,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["philosophers"],"knownFor":"American economist of the Austrian School, student of Ludwig von Mises, and leading theorist of anarcho-capitalism.","bio":"Murray Newton Rothbard was born in New York City in 1926, the son of Jewish immigrants; his father was a chemist. He studied mathematics and then economics at Columbia University, which granted him a doctorate in 1956. After reading Mises's Human Action in 1949 he joined Mises's seminar in New York, and his treatise Man, Economy, and State (1962) began as a textbook explaining Mises's system. America's Great Depression (1963) blamed the slump on government and central-bank policy rather than on the market. Rothbard went further than Mises: in For a New Liberty (1973) and The Ethics of Liberty (1982) he argued that even police, courts, and defense should be provided privately, a view called anarcho-capitalism. He opposed central banking and foreign military intervention. He taught at Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute from 1966 and at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, from 1986, and in 1982 helped found the Mises Institute. His later alliances with paleoconservatives and right-wing populists, and friendships with Holocaust deniers, drew sharp criticism, including from other libertarians. He died in New York in 1995.","keyDates":[{"date":"1926","event":"Born in New York City"},{"date":"1949","event":"Reads Mises's Human Action and soon joins his New York seminar"},{"date":"1956","event":"Receives his doctorate in economics from Columbia University"},{"date":"1962","event":"Man, Economy, and State published"},{"date":"1963","event":"America's Great Depression published"},{"date":"1973","event":"For a New Liberty published"},{"date":"1982","event":"The Ethics of Liberty published; helps found the Mises Institute"},{"date":"1995","event":"Dies in New York City"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["mises-human-action"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"mises-human-action","url":"/works/mises-human-action/"}],"majorWorks":[{"title":"Man, Economy, and State","year":"1962","note":"Two-volume treatise on economic principles in the tradition of Mises's Human Action","work":null,"url":null},{"title":"America's Great Depression","year":"1963","note":"Blames the Depression on the credit expansion of the 1920s and on government intervention","work":null,"url":null},{"title":"What Has Government Done to Our Money?","year":"1963","note":"Short popular essay on money, banking, and inflation","work":null,"url":null},{"title":"Power and Market","year":"1970","note":"Critique of government intervention, first planned as part of Man, Economy, and State","work":null,"url":null},{"title":"For a New Liberty","year":"1973","note":"His manifesto for a society without a state","work":null,"url":null},{"title":"Conceived in Liberty","year":"1975–1979","note":"Four-volume history of colonial America to the Revolution","work":null,"url":null},{"title":"The Ethics of Liberty","year":"1982","note":"Natural-law argument for property rights and against the state","work":null,"url":null},{"title":"An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought","year":"1995","note":"Two-volume history, published the year he died","work":null,"url":null}],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Raised in a secular Jewish family, he was not religious and described himself as part agnostic, part Reform Jew; he criticized libertarian hostility to religion, and friends expected him to become a Catholic late in life, but he never did.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray_Rothbard","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"jean-jacques-rousseau","name":"Jean-Jacques Rousseau","url":"/great-lives/jean-jacques-rousseau/","dates":"1712–1778","born":1712,"died":1778,"era":"18th-century","categories":["philosophers"],"knownFor":"Geneva-born writer of The Social Contract and Emile, whose ideas influenced the French Revolution.","bio":"Jean-Jacques Rousseau was born in Geneva; his mother died days after his birth, and his father, a watchmaker, later left him with relatives. At sixteen he ran away and wandered for years, becoming a Catholic convert and living for a time with a patroness, Madame de Warens. In Paris he worked as a music copyist and wrote an opera. In 1750 he won an essay prize by arguing that the arts and sciences had corrupted morals. His Discourse on Inequality claimed that humans are naturally good but are made unhappy and unequal by society and property. In 1762 he published The Social Contract, which begins by saying that man is born free and everywhere he is in chains, and argues that legitimate government rests on the general will of the people. That year he also published Emile, a novel about education. Both books were condemned and burned in Paris and Geneva, and he fled. With his companion Thérèse Levasseur he had five children, all of whom he placed in a foundling hospital. His Confessions were published after his death in 1778.","keyDates":[{"date":"1712","event":"Born in Geneva"},{"date":"1750","event":"Wins the Dijon essay prize"},{"date":"1755","event":"Discourse on Inequality"},{"date":"1762","event":"The Social Contract and Emile; condemned and flees"},{"date":"1778","event":"Dies at Ermenonville"}],"quotes":[{"text":"Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains.","work":"the-social-contract","location":"Book I, Chapter I","verified":true}],"author":"Jean-Jacques Rousseau","relatedWorks":["the-social-contract","rousseau-discourse-on-inequality","rousseaus-confessions","rousseau-discourse-on-political-economy"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-social-contract","url":"/works/the-social-contract/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"rousseau-discourse-on-inequality","url":"/works/rousseau-discourse-on-inequality/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"rousseaus-confessions","url":"/works/rousseaus-confessions/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"rousseau-discourse-on-political-economy","url":"/works/rousseau-discourse-on-political-economy/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"As a boy his favourite book was Plutarch's Lives, which he read aloud to his father while his father made watches.","source":{"title":"Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Jacques_Rousseau"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Left Calvinist Geneva at sixteen and converted to Roman Catholicism in Turin in 1728; his later beliefs were his own.","source":"https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rousseau/","sourceName":"Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy","documented":true},"furtherReading":[{"series":"Very Short Introductions","title":"Rousseau: A Very Short Introduction","author":"Robert Wokler","publisher":"Oxford University Press","year":2001,"isbn13":"9780192801982","url":"https://bookshop.org/a/130650/9780192801982"}],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"mary-rowlandson","name":"Mary Rowlandson","url":"/great-lives/mary-rowlandson/","dates":"c. 1637–1711","born":1637,"died":1711,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Colonial American author of one of the first captivity narratives, written after she was held captive during King Philip's War.","bio":"Mary White was born in Somerset, England, about 1637. Her family emigrated to the Massachusetts Bay Colony, settling first at Salem and in 1653 at Lancaster, on the frontier, where in 1656 she married the Reverend Joseph Rowlandson; they had four children. In February 1676, during King Philip's War between the English colonists and several Native American nations, Lancaster was attacked, and Rowlandson and three of her children were among those taken captive. Her youngest daughter, Sarah, died of her wounds after a week. For more than eleven weeks Rowlandson traveled with her captors through the wilderness, separated from her other children, until she was ransomed in May 1676 for twenty pounds raised by the women of Boston. Her family was reunited, and in 1677 they moved to Wethersfield, Connecticut, where her husband became pastor; he died the next year. Her account, The Sovereignty and Goodness of God, published in 1682, describes her ordeal and her reliance on the Bible, and it was widely read in New England and England. In 1679 she married Samuel Talcott. She died in 1711.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 1637","event":"Born in Somerset, England"},{"date":"1656","event":"Marries Joseph Rowlandson"},{"date":"1676","event":"Taken captive at Lancaster; ransomed after eleven weeks"},{"date":"1679","event":"Marries Samuel Talcott"},{"date":"1682","event":"Her captivity narrative published"},{"date":"1711","event":"Dies"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Mary Rowlandson","relatedWorks":["rowlandson-narrative-of-the-captivity"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"rowlandson-narrative-of-the-captivity","url":"/works/rowlandson-narrative-of-the-captivity/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[{"text":"Her captivity narrative went through four printings in 1682, and some consider it the first American 'bestseller'.","source":{"title":"Mary Rowlandson (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Rowlandson"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A Puritan whose faith shaped her account of her captivity.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Rowlandson","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"steven-runciman","name":"Steven Runciman","url":"/great-lives/steven-runciman/","dates":"1903–2000","born":1903,"died":2000,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"British historian of the Byzantine Empire and the Crusades, author of A History of the Crusades.","bio":"Steven Runciman was born in 1903 in Northumberland, into a family of politicians; both of his parents served in Parliament. He said he began reading Greek at the age of seven or eight. He was educated at Eton College and Trinity College, Cambridge. His work on the Byzantine Empire earned him a fellowship at Trinity in 1927. After receiving an inheritance he resigned his fellowship in 1938 and became an independent scholar. In the Second World War he was a press attaché in Sofia and Cairo, and from 1942 to 1945 he taught Byzantine art and history at Istanbul University. His best-known work, the three-volume A History of the Crusades (1951–1954), told the story from the viewpoint of the Byzantine and Muslim worlds as well as the West, and was widely read. He also wrote The Fall of Constantinople 1453 and The Sicilian Vespers. He travelled widely, especially in Greece and the Orthodox world, and was knighted in 1958. He never married. He died in 2000, at the age of 97.","keyDates":[{"date":"1903","event":"Born in Northumberland"},{"date":"1927","event":"Fellowship at Trinity College, Cambridge"},{"date":"1951","event":"A History of the Crusades begins publication"},{"date":"1958","event":"Knighted"},{"date":"2000","event":"Dies, aged 97"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Steven Runciman","relatedWorks":["runciman-the-fall-of-constantinople-1453"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"runciman-the-fall-of-constantinople-1453","url":"/works/runciman-the-fall-of-constantinople-1453/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Runciman","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"benjamin-rush","name":"Benjamin Rush","url":"/great-lives/benjamin-rush/","dates":"1746–1813","born":1746,"died":1813,"era":"18th-century","categories":["physicians-medicine","statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"Philadelphia physician and signer of the Declaration of Independence who wrote on medicine, mental illness and education.","bio":"Benjamin Rush was born in 1746 in Byberry Township, near Philadelphia, and graduated from the College of New Jersey (now Princeton) at fourteen. He studied medicine in Philadelphia and at the University of Edinburgh, and in 1769 became a professor of chemistry in Philadelphia. He was a delegate to the Continental Congress and signed the Declaration of Independence, and he served as a surgeon general in the Continental Army. Rush became one of the best-known physicians in America, teaching thousands of medical students. During the yellow fever epidemic of 1793 he stayed in Philadelphia to treat patients, relying heavily on bloodletting, a treatment that was controversial even then. He campaigned for public schools, education for women and the abolition of slavery, and he helped reconcile the estranged John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. His Medical Inquiries and Observations upon the Diseases of the Mind (1812) was one of the first American books on mental illness. He died in Philadelphia in 1813.","keyDates":[{"date":"1746","event":"Born near Philadelphia"},{"date":"1769","event":"Professor of chemistry in Philadelphia"},{"date":"1776","event":"Signs the Declaration of Independence"},{"date":"1793","event":"Treats patients in the yellow fever epidemic"},{"date":"1812","event":"Diseases of the Mind published"},{"date":"1813","event":"Dies in Philadelphia"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Benjamin Rush","relatedWorks":["medical-inquiries-and-observations-upon-diseases-of-the-mind","rush-essays-on-education-in-a-republic","the-founding-documents"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"medical-inquiries-and-observations-upon-diseases-of-the-mind","url":"/works/medical-inquiries-and-observations-upon-diseases-of-the-mind/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"rush-essays-on-education-in-a-republic","url":"/works/rush-essays-on-education-in-a-republic/"},{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-founding-documents","url":"/works/the-founding-documents/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[{"text":"He published the first American textbook on chemistry, and was the first American to study mental illness in a systematic way.","source":{"title":"Benjamin Rush (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Rush"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Born into a pious Presbyterian family.","source":"https://www.britannica.com/biography/Benjamin-Rush","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"bertrand-russell","name":"Bertrand Russell","url":"/great-lives/bertrand-russell/","dates":"1872–1970","born":1872,"died":1970,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["philosophers","scientists-mathematicians"],"knownFor":"British philosopher, logician and campaigner, coauthor of Principia Mathematica and winner of the 1950 Nobel Prize in Literature.","bio":"Bertrand Russell was born in 1872 in Wales into an aristocratic family; his grandfather, Lord John Russell, had twice been prime minister. Orphaned young, he was raised by his grandmother and educated at home before studying mathematics and philosophy at Trinity College, Cambridge. With Alfred North Whitehead he wrote Principia Mathematica (1910–1913), which tried to base mathematics on logic, and he helped found the tradition of analytic philosophy. The Problems of Philosophy (1912) is a short introduction for general readers. A pacifist during the First World War, he lost his Cambridge lectureship and was imprisoned for six months in 1918 for an article opposing the war. He wrote on education, marriage, religion and politics, ran an experimental school with his wife Dora, and published A History of Western Philosophy (1945). He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1950. In later life he campaigned against nuclear weapons. He died in Wales in 1970, aged 97.","keyDates":[{"date":"1872","event":"Born in Wales"},{"date":"1910–1913","event":"Principia Mathematica, with Whitehead"},{"date":"1912","event":"The Problems of Philosophy published"},{"date":"1918","event":"Imprisoned for opposing the war"},{"date":"1945","event":"A History of Western Philosophy"},{"date":"1950","event":"Nobel Prize in Literature"},{"date":"1970","event":"Dies in Wales"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Bertrand Russell","relatedWorks":["russell-problems-of-philosophy"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"russell-problems-of-philosophy","url":"/works/russell-problems-of-philosophy/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"An agnostic who, in public, was known for his outspoken atheism.","source":"https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/russell/","sourceName":"Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy","documented":true},"furtherReading":[{"series":"Very Short Introductions","title":"Russell: A Very Short Introduction","author":"A. C. Grayling","publisher":"Oxford University Press","year":2002,"isbn13":"9780192802583","url":"https://bookshop.org/a/130650/9780192802583"}],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"samuel-rutherford","name":"Samuel Rutherford","url":"/great-lives/samuel-rutherford/","dates":"1600–1661","born":1600,"died":1661,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["theologians-church-fathers"],"knownFor":"Scottish Presbyterian minister and theologian, author of Lex, Rex and of much-reprinted Letters.","bio":"Samuel Rutherford was born about 1600 in the parish of Nisbet, Roxburghshire, in the Scottish Borders. He studied at Jedburgh Grammar School and the University of Edinburgh, where he became a teacher of Latin in 1623. In 1627 he became minister of Anwoth in Galloway, known for his tireless preaching and visiting of the sick. In 1636, mainly because of a book he wrote against Arminianism, he was barred from his ministry and ordered to live in Aberdeen. There he wrote most of his Letters, which have been reprinted in some forty editions. In 1639 he became Professor of Divinity at St Andrews, and later principal of St Mary's College there. From 1643 he spent four years in London as one of Scotland's commissioners to the Westminster Assembly. He supported the Covenanters. After the Restoration of Charles II, his political book Lex, Rex was ordered to be burned, he lost all his offices and he was summoned on a charge of treason, but he died at St Andrews in 1661 before he could be tried.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 1600","event":"Born in Nisbet, Roxburghshire"},{"date":"1627","event":"Becomes minister of Anwoth"},{"date":"1636","event":"Banished to Aberdeen"},{"date":"1639","event":"Professor of Divinity at St Andrews"},{"date":"1643","event":"Commissioner to the Westminster Assembly"},{"date":"1661","event":"Dies at St Andrews"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Samuel Rutherford","relatedWorks":["lex-rex"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"lex-rex","url":"/works/lex-rex/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Scottish Presbyterian minister and theologian, pastor of Anwoth from 1627.","source":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dictionary_of_National_Biography%2C_1885-1900/Rutherford%2C_Samuel","sourceName":"Dictionary of National Biography (1885–1900) (via Wikisource)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"edward-rutledge","name":"Edward Rutledge","url":"/great-lives/edward-rutledge/","dates":"1749–1800","born":1749,"died":1800,"era":"18th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"Youngest signer of the Declaration, later a prisoner of war at St. Augustine and governor of South Carolina.","bio":"Edward Rutledge was born in 1749 in South Carolina, studied law in England, and returned to practice in Charleston. At twenty-six he was the youngest man to sign the Declaration of Independence, the same age as Thomas Lynch Jr. In the July debates he at first sought delay, hoping the colonies might act together more slowly; he then joined the majority and signed. In 1780, when Charleston fell, he was captured with other South Carolina leaders and imprisoned at St. Augustine until exchanged. After the war he served in the state legislature and became governor of South Carolina in 1798. He was a planter and lawyer who held people in slavery, and he defended that system in state politics. He died in 1800, while governor. His youth at the signing, his imprisonment, and his later defense of slavery are all part of the same life, and none of them should be left out to make the story simpler.","keyDates":[{"date":"1749","event":"Born in Christ Church Parish, South Carolina"},{"date":"1776","event":"Signs the Declaration, the youngest of the fifty-six"},{"date":"1780","event":"Is captured at the fall of Charleston and imprisoned at St. Augustine"},{"date":"1798","event":"Becomes governor of South Carolina"},{"date":"1800","event":"Dies in office as governor"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["the-founding-documents"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-founding-documents","url":"/works/the-founding-documents/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":null,"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"sacagawea","name":"Sacagawea","url":"/great-lives/sacagawea/","dates":"c. 1788–1812","born":1788,"died":1812,"era":"19th-century","categories":["explorers"],"knownFor":"Shoshone woman who traveled with the Lewis and Clark expedition to the Pacific.","bio":"Sacagawea was born into the Lemhi Shoshone people in what is now Idaho. When she was about twelve, a Hidatsa raiding party captured her and took her to their villages near the Knife River in present-day North Dakota. In the winter of 1804–1805, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark hired Charbonneau as an interpreter for their expedition, because Sacagawea could speak Shoshone, and they would need Shoshone horses to cross the mountains. In February 1805 she gave birth to a son, Jean Baptiste, and she carried him in a cradleboard for the whole journey. She recognized landmarks in her homeland, identified edible plants, and saved valuable papers and instruments when a boat nearly capsized. When the expedition met the Shoshone, their chief turned out to be her brother, Cameahwait, and the explorers got the horses they needed. The presence of a woman and baby also signaled to other nations that the group was not a war party. Records suggest she died at Fort Manuel in 1812, though some later accounts claimed she lived much longer.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 1800","event":"Captured by a Hidatsa raiding party"},{"date":"1805","event":"Gives birth to Jean Baptiste; joins the expedition"},{"date":"1805","event":"Meets her brother Cameahwait"},{"date":"1806","event":"Expedition returns"},{"date":"1812","event":"Probably dies at Fort Manuel"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"Members of the Lewis and Clark expedition nicknamed her baby son 'Pomp', and she carried him with her on the journey.","source":{"title":"Sacagawea (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacagawea"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacagawea","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["Her date of death is disputed; most historians accept 1812."]},{"slug":"antoine-de-saint-exupery","name":"Antoine de Saint-Exupéry","url":"/great-lives/antoine-de-saint-exupery/","dates":"1900–1944","born":1900,"died":1944,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"French aviator and writer, author of The Little Prince and memoirs of early flying.","bio":"Antoine de Saint-Exupéry was born in Lyon, France, in 1900 into an old aristocratic family. His father died when he was a small boy. He trained as a pilot during his military service and in the 1920s flew airmail routes for the company Aéropostale across North Africa and later in South America, where he managed an airline in Argentina. These years gave him the material for his books Southern Mail, Night Flight and Wind, Sand and Stars, which describe the dangers and loneliness of early aviation. In 1935 he and his navigator crashed in the Sahara while trying to set a speed record and nearly died of thirst before being rescued by a Bedouin. After the fall of France in 1940 he went to the United States, where he wrote and illustrated The Little Prince, published in 1943. He then rejoined the Free French air force, and in July 1944 he disappeared on a reconnaissance flight over the Mediterranean.","keyDates":[{"date":"1900","event":"Born in Lyon"},{"date":"1931","event":"Night Flight published"},{"date":"1935","event":"Crashes in the Sahara and survives"},{"date":"1943","event":"The Little Prince published in New York"},{"date":"1944","event":"Disappears on a reconnaissance flight"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Antoine de Saint-Exupéry","relatedWorks":["the-little-prince"],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"library","work":"the-little-prince","url":"/works/the-little-prince/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"An asteroid, 2578 Saint-Exupéry, is named after him, and another is named in honour of B-612, the little asteroid home of the Little Prince.","source":{"title":"Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine_de_Saint-Exup%C3%A9ry"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Born into an aristocratic French Catholic family; his adult beliefs are not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine_de_Saint-Exup%C3%A9ry","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"augustus-saint-gaudens","name":"Augustus Saint-Gaudens","url":"/great-lives/augustus-saint-gaudens/","dates":"1848–1907","born":1848,"died":1907,"era":"19th-century","categories":["artists-composers-architects"],"knownFor":"Irish-born American sculptor of the Shaw Memorial in Boston and of standing and seated portraits of Abraham Lincoln.","bio":"Augustus Saint-Gaudens was born in Dublin on 1 March 1848 and was brought to New York as an infant. He learned cameo-cutting in his father’s shop, studied at the Cooper Union and the National Academy of Design, and trained as a sculptor in Paris and Rome. Returning to the United States, he became the leading American sculptor of his generation. His Robert Gould Shaw and the 54th Massachusetts Regiment Memorial, dedicated on Boston Common in 1897, shows Shaw on horseback beside the marching ranks of his men; it is widely counted among the finest public sculptures in the country. He also made a standing Lincoln for Chicago and a seated Lincoln, and he designed the United States $20 gold coin often called the Saint-Gaudens double eagle. He worked for many years at his studio in Cornish, New Hampshire, now Saint-Gaudens National Historical Park, and died there on 3 August 1907.","keyDates":[{"date":"1848","event":"Born in Dublin, 1 March; raised in New York"},{"date":"1897","event":"Shaw Memorial dedicated on Boston Common"},{"date":"1907","event":"Dies at Cornish, New Hampshire, 3 August"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["narrative-and-fourth-of-july"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"narrative-and-fourth-of-july","url":"/works/narrative-and-fourth-of-july/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":null,"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"saladin","name":"Saladin","url":"/great-lives/saladin/","dates":"1137–1193","born":1137,"died":1193,"era":"medieval","categories":["military-leaders","kings-queens-emperors"],"knownFor":"Sultan of Egypt and Syria who recaptured Jerusalem from the crusaders in 1187.","bio":"Salah al-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub, known in Europe as Saladin, was born in Tikrit in present-day Iraq into a Kurdish military family. He grew up in Syria and served under his uncle Shirkuh in the army of Nur al-Din, the ruler of Damascus. Sent with his uncle to Egypt, he became vizier there in 1169, and soon ended the Fatimid caliphate, restoring the Sunni Abbasid allegiance. After Nur al-Din's death, Saladin united Egypt and Syria under his rule and founded the Ayyubid dynasty. In 1187 he destroyed the army of the crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem at the Horns of Hattin and then took Jerusalem, sparing its Christian inhabitants who could pay ransom. The loss of Jerusalem launched the Third Crusade, led by Richard I of England, Philip II of France and the emperor Frederick Barbarossa. Richard won battles at Acre and Arsuf but could not retake Jerusalem, and in 1192 the two rulers made a truce allowing Christian pilgrims to visit the city. He died in Damascus in 1193, leaving so little money that his funeral had to be paid for by others.","keyDates":[{"date":"1169","event":"Becomes vizier of Egypt"},{"date":"1174","event":"Takes power in Syria"},{"date":"1187","event":"Victory at Hattin; takes Jerusalem"},{"date":"1192","event":"Truce with Richard I"},{"date":"1193","event":"Dies in Damascus"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["villehardouin-conquest-of-constantinople"],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"Salahaddin University in Erbil, Iraq, is named after him.","source":{"title":"Saladin (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saladin"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A Sunni Muslim ruler of Kurdish origin.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saladin","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"j-d-salinger","name":"J. D. Salinger","url":"/great-lives/j-d-salinger/","dates":"1919–2010","born":1919,"died":2010,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American writer, author of The Catcher in the Rye.","bio":"Jerome David Salinger was born in New York City in 1919, the son of a cheese importer. He attended Valley Forge Military Academy in Pennsylvania and took writing classes at Columbia University, and he began publishing short stories in magazines. Drafted into the army in 1942, he landed at Utah Beach on D-Day in 1944 and fought through the campaigns in France and Germany, reportedly carrying chapters of his novel with him. After the war his stories appeared in The New Yorker. The Catcher in the Rye (1951), narrated by sixteen-year-old Holden Caulfield as he wanders New York after being expelled from his prep school, became one of the most widely read American novels, admired for its voice and often controversial in schools. Later books included Nine Stories and Franny and Zooey, about the Glass family. Disliking publicity, Salinger moved to Cornish, New Hampshire, in 1953 and lived there quietly for the rest of his life. He published his last story in 1965 and rarely gave interviews. He died in Cornish in 2010.","keyDates":[{"date":"1919","event":"Born in New York City"},{"date":"1944","event":"Lands at Utah Beach on D-Day"},{"date":"1951","event":"The Catcher in the Rye published"},{"date":"1953","event":"Moves to Cornish, New Hampshire; Nine Stories"},{"date":"1965","event":"Publishes his last story"},{"date":"2010","event":"Dies in Cornish"}],"quotes":[],"author":"J. D. Salinger","relatedWorks":["the-catcher-in-the-rye"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-catcher-in-the-rye","url":"/works/the-catcher-in-the-rye/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"His favourite films included The Lady Vanishes and The 39 Steps, which is also Phoebe's favourite film in The Catcher in the Rye.","source":{"title":"J. D. Salinger (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._D._Salinger"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Born to a father of Jewish descent; he practiced Zen Buddhism and later followed Advaita Vedanta Hinduism.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._D._Salinger","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"jonas-salk","name":"Jonas Salk","url":"/great-lives/jonas-salk/","dates":"1914–1995","born":1914,"died":1995,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["physicians-medicine","scientists-mathematicians"],"knownFor":"American physician who developed the first safe and effective polio vaccine, tested on 1.8 million children in 1954.","bio":"Jonas Edward Salk was born in New York City on 28 October 1914, the son of Jewish immigrants. He studied at City College and at New York University's medical school, where he chose research over private practice. Working with Thomas Francis at the University of Michigan in the 1940s, he helped develop a vaccine against influenza made from killed virus. In 1947 he moved to the University of Pittsburgh. Paralytic polio epidemics were then terrifying American parents each summer. Funded by the March of Dimes, Salk developed a vaccine using poliovirus killed with formaldehyde, which he tested on himself and his family. In 1954 about 1.8 million schoolchildren, the 'Polio Pioneers', took part in a national field trial directed by Thomas Francis. On 12 April 1955 the vaccine was announced as safe and effective, and mass vaccination began. Salk did not patent the vaccine. Polio cases in the United States fell dramatically, and Albert Sabin's oral vaccine followed in the early 1960s. In 1960 Salk founded the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California. He died there on 23 June 1995.","keyDates":[{"date":"1914","event":"Born in New York City on 28 October"},{"date":"1947","event":"Joins the University of Pittsburgh"},{"date":"1954","event":"National field trial of his polio vaccine"},{"date":"1955","event":"Vaccine declared safe and effective on 12 April"},{"date":"1960","event":"Founds the Salk Institute"},{"date":"1995","event":"Dies in La Jolla on 23 June"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"jenner-inquiry-into-the-variolae-vaccinae","url":"/works/jenner-inquiry-into-the-variolae-vaccinae/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Born to Jewish parents; his personal beliefs are not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonas_Salk","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["About 1.8 million children took part in the 1954 trial, counting both vaccinated children and observed controls."]},{"slug":"sallust","name":"Sallust","url":"/great-lives/sallust/","dates":"c. 86–35 BC","born":-86,"died":-35,"era":"ancient","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Roman historian and politician, author of The Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jugurthine War.","bio":"Gaius Sallustius Crispus, known as Sallust, was a Roman historian and politician born around 86 BC in Amiternum, in the Sabine country of central Italy. He came from a plebeian family, not the old Roman nobility. He entered politics in Rome and was a tribune of the plebs in 52 BC. In 50 BC he was expelled from the Senate by the censor Appius Claudius Pulcher. He joined the side of Julius Caesar in the civil war, commanded troops, and was later made governor of the province of Africa Nova. On his return he faced charges of corruption and extortion and escaped conviction, it is said, only through Caesar's influence. He retired from public life after Caesar's murder in 44 BC and laid out the famous Gardens of Sallust on Rome's Quirinal Hill. There he wrote history. The Conspiracy of Catiline describes a plot to seize power in Rome in 63 BC, and The Jugurthine War tells of Rome's war against Jugurtha, a king of Numidia in Africa. Both stress what Sallust saw as the decline of Roman morals. He died around 35 BC.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 86 BC","event":"Born in Amiternum"},{"date":"52 BC","event":"Tribune of the plebs"},{"date":"46 BC","event":"Governor of Africa Nova"},{"date":"44 BC","event":"Retires after Caesar's death"},{"date":"c. 35 BC","event":"Dies"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Sallust (Gaius Sallustius Crispus)","relatedWorks":["sallust-catiline-and-jugurtha"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"sallust-catiline-and-jugurtha","url":"/works/sallust-catiline-and-jugurtha/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sallust","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"jean-paul-sartre","name":"Jean-Paul Sartre","url":"/great-lives/jean-paul-sartre/","dates":"1905–1980","born":1905,"died":1980,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["philosophers","writers-poets"],"knownFor":"French philosopher, novelist and playwright, a leading figure of existentialism and author of No Exit.","bio":"Jean-Paul Sartre was born in Paris in 1905. His father died when he was a baby, and he was raised partly by his grandfather, a language teacher, in whose library he read constantly. He studied philosophy at the École Normale Supérieure, where he met Simone de Beauvoir, who became his lifelong companion. He taught philosophy at secondary schools and studied in Berlin. His novel Nausea (1938) made his name. Drafted into the French army in 1939, he was captured in 1940 and held for about nine months as a prisoner of war. Back in Paris under the German occupation, he published Being and Nothingness (1943), his major philosophical work, which argues that human beings are free and responsible for creating themselves through their choices, summed up as 'existence precedes essence'. His play No Exit (1944), in which three people are trapped together after death, contains the line 'Hell is other people'. After the war he founded the journal Les Temps modernes and was active in left-wing politics. In 1964 he declined the Nobel Prize in Literature. He died in Paris in 1980.","keyDates":[{"date":"1905","event":"Born in Paris"},{"date":"1938","event":"Nausea published"},{"date":"1940","event":"Taken prisoner of war"},{"date":"1943","event":"Being and Nothingness published"},{"date":"1944","event":"No Exit staged"},{"date":"1964","event":"Declines the Nobel Prize"},{"date":"1980","event":"Dies in Paris"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Jean-Paul Sartre","relatedWorks":["sartre-no-exit-and-three-other-plays"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"sartre-no-exit-and-three-other-plays","url":"/works/sartre-no-exit-and-three-other-plays/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"An atheist philosopher.","source":"https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sartre/","sourceName":"Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"cicely-saunders","name":"Cicely Saunders","url":"/great-lives/cicely-saunders/","dates":"1918–2005","born":1918,"died":2005,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["physicians-medicine","saints-reformers"],"knownFor":"English nurse, social worker and physician who founded the modern hospice movement at St Christopher's Hospice, London.","bio":"Cicely Mary Strode Saunders was born on 22 June 1918 in Barnet, Hertfordshire. During the Second World War she trained as a nurse at St Thomas's Hospital, but a back injury led her to become a hospital almoner (medical social worker). Around 1945 she underwent a Christian conversion, and her faith shaped the rest of her life's work. In 1948 she cared for David Tasma, a Polish Jewish refugee dying of cancer, who left her £500 to be 'a window in your home'. Convinced that the dying were neglected, she qualified as a doctor in 1957 and researched pain control at St Joseph's Hospice in Hackney. She taught that the dying suffer 'total pain', physical, emotional, social and spiritual, and that regular doses of pain relief should be given before pain returned. In 1967 she opened St Christopher's Hospice in Sydenham, south London, founded as a Christian community open to all, which combined care, teaching and research. It inspired hospices worldwide. She was made a Dame in 1979 and received the Order of Merit in 1989. She died at St Christopher's on 14 July 2005.","keyDates":[{"date":"1918","event":"Born in Barnet on 22 June"},{"date":"1948","event":"Cares for David Tasma, whose bequest inspires her hospice"},{"date":"1957","event":"Qualifies as a physician"},{"date":"1967","event":"Opens St Christopher's Hospice"},{"date":"1979","event":"Made a Dame"},{"date":"2005","event":"Dies at St Christopher's on 14 July"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A committed Christian whose faith shaped her work founding the modern hospice movement.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cicely_Saunders","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["Her conversion is usually dated to 1945; she described it as happening on holiday in Cornwall.","The Tasma quotation is given as she reported it in later interviews."]},{"slug":"jean-baptiste-say","name":"Jean-Baptiste Say","url":"/great-lives/jean-baptiste-say/","dates":"1767–1832","born":1767,"died":1832,"era":"19th-century","categories":["philosophers"],"knownFor":"French economist who popularized Adam Smith's ideas in France and gave his name to Say's law of markets.","bio":"Jean-Baptiste Say was born in Lyon in 1767 into a Protestant family of cloth merchants and received a commercial education, partly in England. Working for an insurance company in Paris, he read Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, which shaped his life's work. During the Revolution he edited the journal La Décade philosophique, and in 1799 he was named to the Tribunate. His Treatise on Political Economy (1803) set out a clear system of economics and the law of markets, the idea that production creates the means to buy other goods. When he refused to change the book to support Napoleon's policies, he was removed from office, and he ran a cotton-spinning mill for several years. After Napoleon's fall he published new editions, lectured at the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers and, from 1831, held the first chair of political economy at the Collège de France. He died in Paris in 1832.","keyDates":[{"date":"1767","event":"Born in Lyon"},{"date":"1794","event":"Begins editing La Décade philosophique"},{"date":"1803","event":"Treatise on Political Economy published"},{"date":"1804","event":"Removed from the Tribunate"},{"date":"1831","event":"Chair of political economy at the Collège de France"},{"date":"1832","event":"Dies in Paris"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Jean-Baptiste Say","relatedWorks":["say-treatise-on-political-economy"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"say-treatise-on-political-economy","url":"/works/say-treatise-on-political-economy/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented; his father came from a Protestant family.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Baptiste_Say","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"jack-schaefer","name":"Jack Schaefer","url":"/great-lives/jack-schaefer/","dates":"1907–1991","born":1907,"died":1991,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American writer of Westerns, author of Shane.","bio":"Jack Schaefer was born in 1907 in Cleveland, Ohio, the son of a lawyer; his parents were keen readers, and his father was a friend of the poet Carl Sandburg. He graduated from Oberlin College in 1929 with a major in English and studied briefly at Columbia University, leaving when he was not allowed to write a thesis on the development of motion pictures. He worked for the United Press and then for many years as a newspaper editor in Connecticut, Virginia and elsewhere. Although he had never been to the West, he wrote Shane, first published as a magazine serial and then as a novel in 1949. It is narrated by a boy, Bob Starrett, on a Wyoming homestead in 1889, whose family is visited by a mysterious stranger who helps them stand up to a powerful cattle rancher. It became a classic Western and an acclaimed film in 1953, and the Western Writers of America later named it the greatest Western novel. Schaefer moved to New Mexico, wrote other Westerns and books about animals and the environment, and died in Santa Fe in 1991.","keyDates":[{"date":"1907","event":"Born in Cleveland, Ohio"},{"date":"1929","event":"Graduates from Oberlin College"},{"date":"1949","event":"Shane published"},{"date":"1953","event":"Film version of Shane"},{"date":"1991","event":"Dies in Santa Fe"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Jack Schaefer","relatedWorks":["shane"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"shane","url":"/works/shane/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"As a child he read constantly, and he was fascinated by the Old West stories of Zane Grey.","source":{"title":"Jack Schaefer (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Schaefer"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Schaefer","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"arthur-schopenhauer","name":"Arthur Schopenhauer","url":"/great-lives/arthur-schopenhauer/","dates":"1788–1860","born":1788,"died":1860,"era":"19th-century","categories":["philosophers"],"knownFor":"German philosopher, author of The World as Will and Representation, known for his pessimism and his influence on artists and later thinkers.","bio":"Arthur Schopenhauer was born in 1788 in Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland), the son of a wealthy merchant. His father hoped he would become a merchant too, and Arthur traveled through Europe with his parents as a boy. After his father's death in 1805 he turned to study, attending the universities of Göttingen and Berlin and earning a doctorate at Jena in 1813. His mother, Johanna Schopenhauer, became a well-known novelist in Weimar, where Arthur met Goethe. His main work, The World as Will and Representation (1818), drew on Plato, Kant and Indian philosophy, describing the world as the expression of a blind, striving will that causes suffering, which art, compassion and self-denial can relieve. He lectured briefly at Berlin, scheduling his classes at the same hour as Hegel's, but few students came. He lived quietly in Frankfurt from 1833, and his essays, Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), finally brought him fame. He died in Frankfurt in 1860.","keyDates":[{"date":"1788","event":"Born in Danzig"},{"date":"1813","event":"Doctorate from the University of Jena"},{"date":"1818","event":"The World as Will and Representation published"},{"date":"1833","event":"Settles in Frankfurt"},{"date":"1851","event":"Parerga and Paralipomena published"},{"date":"1860","event":"Dies in Frankfurt"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Arthur Schopenhauer","relatedWorks":["the-world-as-will-and-representation","essays-and-aphorisms"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-world-as-will-and-representation","url":"/works/the-world-as-will-and-representation/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"essays-and-aphorisms","url":"/works/essays-and-aphorisms/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"He started playing the flute as a boy and kept playing it all his life.","source":{"title":"Arthur Schopenhauer (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Schopenhauer"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"His philosophy drew on Buddhist thought.","source":"https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/schopenhauer/","sourceName":"Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy","documented":true},"furtherReading":[{"series":"Very Short Introductions","title":"Schopenhauer: A Very Short Introduction","author":"Christopher Janaway","publisher":"Oxford University Press","year":2002,"isbn13":"9780192802590","url":"https://bookshop.org/a/130650/9780192802590"}],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"erwin-schrodinger","name":"Erwin Schrödinger","url":"/great-lives/erwin-schrodinger/","dates":"1887–1961","born":1887,"died":1961,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["scientists-mathematicians"],"knownFor":"Austrian physicist, a founder of quantum mechanics, whose wave equation won him a Nobel Prize and whose book What Is Life? influenced biology.","bio":"Erwin Schrödinger was born in Vienna in 1887, the only child of a botanist who ran a small factory. He studied physics at the University of Vienna and served as an artillery officer in the First World War. After teaching at several universities, he became professor of physics at Zurich, where in 1926 he published the wave equation that describes how the quantum state of a physical system changes over time; it became one of the foundations of quantum mechanics. He shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1933 with Paul Dirac. In 1927 he succeeded Max Planck in Berlin, but he left Germany in 1933 after the Nazis came to power. In 1935 he described his famous thought experiment of a cat in a box to show the strangeness of quantum theory. From 1939 he worked at the new Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies in Ireland, where his lectures were published as What Is Life? (1944), which asked how living cells store hereditary information and inspired many biologists. He returned to Vienna and died there in 1961.","keyDates":[{"date":"1887","event":"Born in Vienna"},{"date":"1926","event":"Publishes his wave equation"},{"date":"1933","event":"Leaves Germany; Nobel Prize in Physics"},{"date":"1935","event":"Describes the cat thought experiment"},{"date":"1939","event":"Moves to Dublin"},{"date":"1944","event":"What Is Life? published"},{"date":"1961","event":"Dies in Vienna"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Erwin Schrödinger","relatedWorks":["schrodinger-what-is-life"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"schrodinger-what-is-life","url":"/works/schrodinger-what-is-life/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"A crater on the far side of the Moon is named after him, and his portrait appeared on Austria's 1,000-schilling banknote.","source":{"title":"Erwin Schrödinger (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erwin_Schr%C3%B6dinger"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"An atheist with a strong interest in Eastern religions; his father was Catholic and his mother Lutheran.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erwin_Schr%C3%B6dinger","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"scipio-africanus","name":"Scipio Africanus","url":"/great-lives/scipio-africanus/","dates":"236–183 BC","born":-236,"died":-183,"era":"ancient","categories":["military-leaders","statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"Roman general who defeated Hannibal at Zama and ended the Second Punic War.","bio":"Publius Cornelius Scipio came from one of Rome's leading families. As a young officer in the Second Punic War, he is said to have saved his father's life in a cavalry battle, and he survived the disaster at Cannae. After his father and uncle were killed fighting the Carthaginians in Spain, the Roman people gave him command there in 210 BC, though he was only about twenty-five. He captured the main Carthaginian base, New Carthage, in a daring attack, and by 206 BC had driven Carthage out of Spain. Elected consul, he took an army to Africa to threaten Carthage itself, forcing it to call Hannibal home from Italy. In 202 BC at Zama, Scipio defeated Hannibal, ending the war, and he received the name Africanus. He later served as censor and fought in the east against King Antiochus. His political enemies, led by Cato the Elder, accused his family of misusing funds. Bitter, he retired to his estate at Liternum, where he died around 183 BC, about the same time as Hannibal.","keyDates":[{"date":"216 BC","event":"Survives the Battle of Cannae"},{"date":"210 BC","event":"Takes command in Spain"},{"date":"206 BC","event":"Drives Carthage from Spain"},{"date":"202 BC","event":"Defeats Hannibal at Zama"},{"date":"c. 183 BC","event":"Dies at Liternum"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["livy-history-of-rome-books-i-v","plutarch-lives"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"livy-history-of-rome-books-i-v","url":"/works/livy-history-of-rome-books-i-v/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"He helped make the clean-shaven face fashionable among Romans, following the example of Alexander the Great, and the style lasted until the time of the emperor Hadrian.","source":{"title":"Scipio Africanus (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scipio_Africanus"}}],"records":[{"text":"He was the first person given a proconsul's command (imperium) without first having been consul.","source":{"title":"Scipio Africanus (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scipio_Africanus"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Practiced Roman religion and was known for frequent visits to the Temple of Jupiter.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scipio_Africanus","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"walter-scott","name":"Walter Scott","url":"/great-lives/walter-scott/","dates":"1771–1832","born":1771,"died":1832,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Scottish novelist and poet, author of Waverley, Rob Roy and Ivanhoe, and creator of the historical novel.","bio":"Walter Scott was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1771, the son of a lawyer. As a small child he survived polio, which left him lame, and he was sent to recover at his grandparents' farm in the Scottish Borders, where he heard many old songs, ballads and stories of Scottish history. He studied at the University of Edinburgh and became a lawyer. He first became famous as a poet with long narrative poems such as The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805) and The Lady of the Lake (1810). In 1814 he published his first novel, Waverley, set during the Jacobite rising of 1745. It was a great success, and he followed it with many more historical novels, including Rob Roy (1817), Ivanhoe (1820), set in twelfth-century England, and Kenilworth. His novels were enormously popular across Europe and America. He built a large house, Abbotsford, near the River Tweed. In 1826 the collapse of his publisher left him deeply in debt, and he worked hard to repay it with his writing. He died at Abbotsford in 1832.","keyDates":[{"date":"1771","event":"Born in Edinburgh"},{"date":"1805","event":"The Lay of the Last Minstrel published"},{"date":"1814","event":"Waverley published"},{"date":"1820","event":"Ivanhoe published"},{"date":"1826","event":"Financial ruin"},{"date":"1832","event":"Dies at Abbotsford"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Walter Scott","relatedWorks":["ivanhoe"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"ivanhoe","url":"/works/ivanhoe/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"His favourite dog was Maida, a large staghound.","source":{"title":"Walter Scott (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Scott"}},{"text":"He renamed his farm, nicknamed 'Clarty Hole', Abbotsford, after a nearby ford once used by the monks of Melrose Abbey.","source":{"title":"Walter Scott (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Scott"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Raised in a Presbyterian household with a Presbyterian tutor.","source":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dictionary_of_National_Biography%2C_1885-1900/Scott%2C_Walter_%281771-1832%29","sourceName":"Dictionary of National Biography (1885–1900) (via Wikisource)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"mary-seacole","name":"Mary Seacole","url":"/great-lives/mary-seacole/","dates":"1805–1881","born":1805,"died":1881,"era":"19th-century","categories":["physicians-medicine","writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Jamaican nurse and businesswoman who cared for soldiers in the Crimean War and wrote of her travels.","bio":"Mary Jane Grant was born in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1805, the daughter of a Scottish army officer and a free Jamaican woman who ran a boarding house for invalid soldiers and practiced traditional Caribbean medicine. Mary learned nursing and herbal remedies from her mother. As a young woman she traveled to the Bahamas, Haiti, Cuba and Britain. In 1836 she married Edwin Seacole, who died a few years later. She treated patients during cholera and yellow fever outbreaks in Jamaica and in Panama, where she also ran a hotel. When the Crimean War began, she traveled to London and offered to serve as a nurse, but was turned down. She went to the Crimea at her own expense and, with a business partner, opened the British Hotel near Balaclava, where she sold food and supplies to officers and cared for sick and wounded soldiers, sometimes on the battlefield. She returned to London bankrupt, and soldiers and newspapers organized a fund to help her. Her autobiography, Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands (1857), was a success. She died in London in 1881.","keyDates":[{"date":"1805","event":"Born in Kingston, Jamaica"},{"date":"1836","event":"Marries Edwin Seacole"},{"date":"1850s","event":"Treats cholera patients in Jamaica and Panama"},{"date":"1855","event":"Opens the British Hotel in the Crimea"},{"date":"1857","event":"Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole published"},{"date":"1881","event":"Dies in London"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Mary Seacole","relatedWorks":["wonderful-adventures-of-mrs-seacole"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"wonderful-adventures-of-mrs-seacole","url":"/works/wonderful-adventures-of-mrs-seacole/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"Her mother, a healer who used Caribbean and African herbal medicines, was nicknamed 'The Doctress'.","source":{"title":"Mary Seacole (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Seacole"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Seacole","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"sei-shonagon","name":"Sei Shōnagon","url":"/great-lives/sei-shonagon/","dates":"c. 966–after 1017","born":966,"died":1017,"era":"medieval","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Japanese court lady and author of The Pillow Book, a witty miscellany of Heian court life.","bio":"Sei Shōnagon was a Japanese writer of the Heian period, born around 966 into the Kiyohara family of scholars and poets; her father, Kiyohara no Motosuke, was a noted poet. Her real personal name is unknown: Sei comes from her family name, and Shōnagon was a court title. She was probably married young and had a son. Around 993 she entered the service of the Empress Sadako, consort of Emperor Ichijō, and became one of her favorite ladies-in-waiting, admired for her learning, quick wit and knowledge of Chinese poetry. During these years she wrote the notes that became The Pillow Book, filled with lists, anecdotes and sharp opinions about court life. The Empress's family lost power after the death of her father, Fujiwara no Michitaka, in 995, and the Empress herself died in 1000. Little is known of Sei Shōnagon's life after she left court; she may have married again. Her contemporary Murasaki Shikibu criticized her in her diary as vain. The Pillow Book is a classic of Japanese prose.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 966","event":"Born into the Kiyohara family"},{"date":"c. 993","event":"Enters the Empress Sadako's service"},{"date":"1000","event":"Death of the Empress"},{"date":"c. 1002","event":"The Pillow Book substantially complete"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Sei Shōnagon","relatedWorks":["sei-shonagon-the-pillow-book"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"sei-shonagon-the-pillow-book","url":"/works/sei-shonagon-the-pillow-book/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented; by one tradition she spent her last years as a Buddhist nun.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sei_Sh%C5%8Dnagon","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"george-selden","name":"George Selden","url":"/great-lives/george-selden/","dates":"1929–1989","born":1929,"died":1989,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American author of The Cricket in Times Square, about a cricket from Connecticut who becomes a musical star in a New York subway station.","bio":"George Selden Thompson was born in 1929 in Hartford, Connecticut, the son of a doctor. He was educated at the Loomis School and at Yale University, where he wrote for the literary magazine, and he then spent a year studying in Rome. He settled in New York City, where he wrote under the name George Selden and, for some books for adults, under the pseudonym Terry Andrews. According to his own account, the idea for his best-known book came one night when he heard a cricket chirping in the Times Square subway station. The Cricket in Times Square (1960), illustrated by Garth Williams, tells of Chester, a cricket from Connecticut who arrives in New York in a picnic basket, and his friends Tucker Mouse and Harry Cat, who live in a subway newsstand run by a boy named Mario and his family. It was a Newbery Honor Book. Selden wrote several sequels, including Tucker's Countryside and Chester Cricket's Pigeon Ride, as well as other children's books and plays. He died in New York in 1989.","keyDates":[{"date":"1929","event":"Born in Hartford, Connecticut"},{"date":"1960","event":"The Cricket in Times Square published"},{"date":"1961","event":"Newbery Honor"},{"date":"1969","event":"Tucker's Countryside published"},{"date":"1989","event":"Dies in New York"}],"quotes":[],"author":"George Selden","relatedWorks":["the-cricket-in-times-square"],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"library","work":"the-cricket-in-times-square","url":"/works/the-cricket-in-times-square/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Selden_%28author%29","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"ignaz-semmelweis","name":"Ignaz Semmelweis","url":"/great-lives/ignaz-semmelweis/","dates":"1818–1865","born":1818,"died":1865,"era":"19th-century","categories":["physicians-medicine"],"knownFor":"Hungarian doctor who showed that handwashing prevents deaths from childbed fever.","bio":"Ignaz Semmelweis was born in Buda, Hungary, the son of a grocer. He studied medicine in Vienna and in 1846 became an assistant in the maternity clinic of the Vienna General Hospital. The hospital had two maternity wards. In the first, run by doctors and medical students, about one in ten mothers died of childbed fever, far more than in the second, run by midwives. In 1847 a colleague died after being cut with a scalpel during an autopsy, with symptoms like those of childbed fever. Semmelweis concluded that doctors and students, who came straight from dissecting corpses, were carrying something on their hands to the mothers. He ordered them to wash their hands in a chlorine solution before examining patients, and deaths in the first ward fell dramatically. Many senior doctors rejected his idea, which came before germ theory, and his contract was not renewed. He continued his work in Budapest and published a book in 1861, but grew bitter and erratic. He was committed to an asylum in 1865 and died there two weeks later.","keyDates":[{"date":"1846","event":"Assistant at the Vienna maternity clinic"},{"date":"1847","event":"Orders handwashing with chlorine"},{"date":"1851","event":"Moves to Budapest"},{"date":"1861","event":"Publishes his book"},{"date":"1865","event":"Dies in an asylum near Vienna"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["pasteur-and-lister-germ-theory-papers"],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"The minor planet 4170 Semmelweis is named after him.","source":{"title":"Ignaz Semmelweis (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"seneca","name":"Seneca","url":"/great-lives/seneca/","dates":"c. 4 BC–AD 65","born":-4,"died":65,"era":"ancient","categories":["philosophers","statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"Roman Stoic philosopher, playwright and adviser to Nero.","bio":"Lucius Annaeus Seneca was born in Córdoba in Spain, the son of a well-known writer on rhetoric, and was brought to Rome as a child. He suffered poor health but became a successful lawyer, senator and writer. In AD 41 the emperor Claudius exiled him to the island of Corsica, possibly on a false charge. After eight years he was recalled to tutor the young Nero, and when Nero became emperor in 54, Seneca and the soldier Burrus guided the government for several years. He grew enormously rich, which critics pointed out sat oddly with his writing on simple living. As Nero became more violent, Seneca withdrew from court. In his last years he wrote the Moral Letters to Lucilius, short letters about how to live well according to Stoic philosophy: on the shortness of life, true friendship, facing death, and using time wisely. He also wrote tragedies. In 65 Nero accused him of joining a plot and ordered him to take his own life, which he did, calmly, surrounded by friends.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 4 BC","event":"Born in Córdoba"},{"date":"41","event":"Exiled to Corsica"},{"date":"49","event":"Recalled to tutor Nero"},{"date":"54–62","event":"Leading adviser to Nero"},{"date":"65","event":"Ordered to take his own life"}],"quotes":[{"text":"Nothing, Lucilius, is ours, except time","work":"letters-from-a-stoic","location":"Letter I, On Saving Time","verified":true}],"author":"Seneca","relatedWorks":["letters-from-a-stoic","the-annals-of-imperial-rome"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"letters-from-a-stoic","url":"/works/letters-from-a-stoic/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A Stoic philosopher.","source":"https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/seneca/","sourceName":"Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"elizabeth-ann-seton","name":"Elizabeth Ann Seton","url":"/great-lives/elizabeth-ann-seton/","dates":"1774–1821","born":1774,"died":1821,"era":"19th-century","categories":["saints-reformers"],"knownFor":"First person born in the United States to be canonized a saint; founder of Catholic schools.","bio":"Elizabeth Ann Bayley was born in New York City in 1774 to an Episcopalian family; her father was a prominent doctor. In 1794 she married William Magee Seton, a wealthy merchant, and they had five children. When her husband's business failed and he fell ill with tuberculosis, the family sailed to Italy in hope of a cure, but he died there in 1803. Cared for by Catholic friends in Livorno, she was drawn to their faith, and after returning to New York she became a Catholic in 1805, which cost her many friends and much support. In 1808 she moved to Baltimore to open a school for girls. In 1809 she took vows and founded the Sisters of Charity of Saint Joseph's at Emmitsburg, Maryland, the first American congregation of religious sisters. There she opened Saint Joseph's Academy and Free School, an early Catholic school for girls in the country, which helped lay the foundation of Catholic parochial schools. She died at Emmitsburg in 1821, at forty-six. In 1975 she became the first person born in the United States to be canonized.","keyDates":[{"date":"1794","event":"Marries William Seton"},{"date":"1803","event":"Husband dies in Italy"},{"date":"1805","event":"Becomes a Catholic"},{"date":"1809","event":"Founds the Sisters of Charity at Emmitsburg"},{"date":"1821","event":"Dies at Emmitsburg"},{"date":"1975","event":"Canonized"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"She spoke French and English, played the piano and was an accomplished horse rider.","source":{"title":"Elizabeth Ann Seton (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Ann_Seton"}}],"records":[{"text":"In 1975 she became the first person born in what is now the United States to be declared a saint by the Catholic Church.","source":{"title":"Elizabeth Ann Seton (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Ann_Seton"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Foundress and first superior of the Sisters of Charity in the United States.","source":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Catholic_Encyclopedia_%281913%29/Elizabeth_Ann_Seton","sourceName":"Catholic Encyclopedia (1913) (via Wikisource)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"sulpicius-severus","name":"Sulpicius Severus","url":"/great-lives/sulpicius-severus/","dates":"c. 363–c. 425","born":363,"died":425,"era":"ancient","categories":["saints-reformers","writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Christian writer of Roman Gaul and friend of Saint Martin of Tours, whose Life of Saint Martin became a model for saints' lives.","bio":"Sulpicius Severus was born about 363 to a noble family in Aquitaine, in Roman Gaul, now southwestern France. He received an excellent education, studied law at Burdigala, now Bordeaux, and became known as an eloquent lawyer. He married the daughter of a wealthy family, but she died young. Under the influence of Martin, bishop of Tours, he gave his wealth to the Christian poor and turned to a life of prayer and good works, against his father's wishes but with the encouragement of his mother-in-law. His friend Paulinus of Nola wrote that he broke with his father and followed Christ. He was ordained a priest and spent most of his later life near Toulouse. He wrote the Life of Saint Martin, adding letters and dialogues about the bishop's life and miracles. These became among the most popular books of the Middle Ages and a model for later lives of saints. He also wrote a Chronicle, a summary of sacred history from the creation of the world to his own time. He died about 425.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 363","event":"Born in Aquitaine"},{"date":"397","event":"Death of his teacher, Martin of Tours"},{"date":"c. 403","event":"Chronicle written"},{"date":"c. 425","event":"Dies"}],"quotes":[{"text":"Taking, therefore, his sword with which he was girt, he divided his cloak into two equal parts, and gave one part to the poor man, while he again clothed himself with the remainder","work":"life-of-st-martin","location":"Life of St. Martin, Ch. 3","verified":true}],"author":"Sulpitius Severus; Alexander Roberts","relatedWorks":["life-of-st-martin"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"life-of-st-martin","url":"/works/life-of-st-martin/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A Christian writer, friend and disciple of Saint Martin of Tours.","source":"https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14332a.htm","sourceName":"Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"anna-sewell","name":"Anna Sewell","url":"/great-lives/anna-sewell/","dates":"1820–1878","born":1820,"died":1878,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"English author of Black Beauty, the novel told by a horse that drew attention to the treatment of working animals.","bio":"Anna Sewell was born in 1820 in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, into a Quaker family. Her mother, Mary Wright Sewell, was a successful writer of books for children. At the age of fourteen she slipped and injured her ankle, which never healed properly, and walking was difficult for the rest of her life, so she often used a horse-drawn carriage to get around. She grew close to horses and disliked the cruel ways some were treated, such as the bearing rein, which held a horse's head painfully high for fashion. In her fifties, while her health was failing, she wrote Black Beauty, the life story of a horse told in his own words. It was published in 1877 with the subtitle 'The Autobiography of a Horse'. Anna Sewell died in 1878, only a few months after the book appeared, but Black Beauty became one of the best-selling books in English.","keyDates":[{"date":"1820","event":"Born in Great Yarmouth"},{"date":"As a teenager","event":"Injures her ankle in a fall"},{"date":"1877","event":"Black Beauty published"},{"date":"1878","event":"Dies near Norwich"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Anna Sewell","relatedWorks":["black-beauty"],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"library","work":"black-beauty","url":"/works/black-beauty/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Born into a Quaker family in Norfolk.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Sewell","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"william-j-seymour","name":"William J. Seymour","url":"/great-lives/william-j-seymour/","dates":"1870–1922","born":1870,"died":1922,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["saints-reformers"],"knownFor":"African American preacher who led the Azusa Street revival in Los Angeles (1906-1909), a starting point of the worldwide Pentecostal movement.","bio":"William Joseph Seymour was born in 1870 in Centerville, Louisiana, to parents who had been enslaved. He worked as a waiter and labourer in Indianapolis, Cincinnati and elsewhere, joined holiness churches and lost the sight of one eye to smallpox. In Houston in 1905 he attended Charles Parham's Bible school, sitting in the hallway because of segregation, and accepted Parham's teaching that speaking in tongues was the sign of baptism in the Holy Spirit. Invited to preach in Los Angeles in 1906, he was locked out of the church that had called him, and began meetings in a house on Bonnie Brae Street. In April 1906 the gatherings moved to a former church building at 312 Azusa Street, where for about three years Black, white, Latino and Asian worshippers met together, drawing visitors from around the world. Seymour published The Apostolic Faith newspaper, which spread the revival. Later divisions reduced his congregation, but he remained its pastor until his death in Los Angeles in 1922. Many Pentecostal churches worldwide trace their roots to the Azusa Street revival.","keyDates":[{"date":"1870","event":"Born in Centerville, Louisiana"},{"date":"1905","event":"Studies under Charles Parham in Houston"},{"date":"1906","event":"Azusa Street revival begins"},{"date":"1906–1908","event":"Publishes The Apostolic Faith"},{"date":"1922","event":"Dies in Los Angeles"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"African American holiness preacher who led the Azusa Street Revival, from which Pentecostal denominations trace their origins.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_J._Seymour","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"ernest-shackleton","name":"Ernest Shackleton","url":"/great-lives/ernest-shackleton/","dates":"1874–1922","born":1874,"died":1922,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["explorers"],"knownFor":"Antarctic explorer who brought his whole crew home after the Endurance was crushed by ice.","bio":"Ernest Shackleton was born in Ireland and grew up in London. He joined Robert Falcon Scott's Discovery expedition to Antarctica in 1901. On his own Nimrod expedition in 1907–1909 he came within about a hundred miles of the South Pole before turning back to save his men's lives, and he was knighted. In 1914 he set out to cross Antarctica on foot. His ship, Endurance, was trapped in the pack ice of the Weddell Sea and slowly crushed, sinking in November 1915. The twenty-eight men camped on the drifting ice for months, then sailed three small boats to bleak Elephant Island. Shackleton and five others then sailed the twenty-three-foot lifeboat James Caird about eight hundred miles across the stormy Southern Ocean to South Georgia, and crossed its unmapped mountains on foot to reach a whaling station. After several attempts he rescued all the men on Elephant Island in August 1916. Not one of the Endurance crew died. Shackleton died of a heart attack on South Georgia in 1922 at the start of another expedition and was buried there.","keyDates":[{"date":"1907–1909","event":"Nimrod expedition comes within 100 miles of the Pole"},{"date":"1914","event":"Endurance expedition sets out"},{"date":"1915","event":"Endurance sinks"},{"date":"1916","event":"James Caird voyage; all men rescued"},{"date":"1922","event":"Dies on South Georgia"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"book","title":"Shipwreck at the Bottom of the World","author":"Jennifer Armstrong","isbn13":"9780375810497","publisher":"Crown Books for Young Readers","year":2000,"format":""},{"band":"9-12","kind":"book","title":"Endurance","author":"Alfred Lansing","isbn13":"9780465062881","publisher":"Basic Books","year":2014,"format":""}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"After his men's ship was crushed by ice, they camped on the sea ice and then sailed lifeboats to Elephant Island and on to South Georgia.","source":{"title":"Ernest Shackleton (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Shackleton"}},{"text":"His only comment to his wife about not reaching the South Pole was: 'a live donkey is better than a dead lion, isn't it?'","source":{"title":"Ernest Shackleton (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Shackleton"}}],"records":[{"text":"On the Nimrod Expedition of 1907–1909, he and three companions set a new record for the farthest south anyone had reached, 88°23′ S, only about 112 miles from the South Pole.","source":{"title":"Ernest Shackleton (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Shackleton"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"From a family of Quaker descent; his adult beliefs are not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Shackleton","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"william-shakespeare","name":"William Shakespeare","url":"/great-lives/william-shakespeare/","dates":"1564–1616","born":1564,"died":1616,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"English playwright, poet and actor, author of Hamlet, Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language.","bio":"William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, in 1564, the son of John Shakespeare, a glove-maker and town alderman, and Mary Arden. At eighteen he married Anne Hathaway, and they had three children: Susanna and the twins Hamnet and Judith. Sometime between 1585 and 1592 he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer and part-owner of a playing company, the Lord Chamberlain's Men, which became the King's Men after James I came to the throne. In 1599 members of the company built their own theatre on the south bank of the River Thames, the Globe. Shakespeare's surviving works, including collaborations, number about 39 plays, 154 sonnets and three long narrative poems. They include comedies such as A Midsummer Night's Dream, histories, and tragedies such as Hamlet, King Lear and Macbeth. His success made him wealthy, and in 1597 he bought New Place, the second-largest house in Stratford. He died in 1616 and was buried in Holy Trinity Church. In 1623 two fellow actors published the First Folio, a collected edition of 36 of his plays.","keyDates":[{"date":"1564","event":"Born in Stratford-upon-Avon"},{"date":"1582","event":"Marries Anne Hathaway"},{"date":"1599","event":"The Globe theatre is built"},{"date":"1616","event":"Dies in Stratford"},{"date":"1623","event":"First Folio published"}],"quotes":[],"author":"William Shakespeare","relatedWorks":["julius-caesar","henry-iv-part-1","hamlet","king-lear","st-crispins-day-speech","much-ado-about-nothing","the-comedy-of-errors","richard-iii","the-taming-of-the-shrew","twelfth-night","a-midsummer-nights-dream","friends-romans-countrymen","the-tempest","shakespeares-sonnets","as-you-like-it","romeo-and-juliet","henry-v","sonnet-116","the-merchant-of-venice","macbeth","othello","henry-vi-part-1","henry-vi-part-2","henry-vi-part-3","titus-andronicus","the-two-gentlemen-of-verona","loves-labours-lost","richard-ii","king-john","henry-iv-part-2","the-merry-wives-of-windsor","troilus-and-cressida","alls-well-that-ends-well","measure-for-measure","antony-and-cleopatra","coriolanus","timon-of-athens","pericles","cymbeline","the-winters-tale","henry-viii"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-comedy-of-errors","url":"/works/the-comedy-of-errors/"},{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"a-midsummer-nights-dream","url":"/works/a-midsummer-nights-dream/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"julius-caesar","url":"/works/julius-caesar/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"henry-iv-part-1","url":"/works/henry-iv-part-1/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"hamlet","url":"/works/hamlet/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"king-lear","url":"/works/king-lear/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"st-crispins-day-speech","url":"/works/st-crispins-day-speech/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"much-ado-about-nothing","url":"/works/much-ado-about-nothing/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"richard-iii","url":"/works/richard-iii/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-taming-of-the-shrew","url":"/works/the-taming-of-the-shrew/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"twelfth-night","url":"/works/twelfth-night/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"friends-romans-countrymen","url":"/works/friends-romans-countrymen/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-tempest","url":"/works/the-tempest/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"shakespeares-sonnets","url":"/works/shakespeares-sonnets/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"as-you-like-it","url":"/works/as-you-like-it/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"romeo-and-juliet","url":"/works/romeo-and-juliet/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"henry-v","url":"/works/henry-v/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"sonnet-116","url":"/works/sonnet-116/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-merchant-of-venice","url":"/works/the-merchant-of-venice/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"macbeth","url":"/works/macbeth/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"othello","url":"/works/othello/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"henry-vi-part-1","url":"/works/henry-vi-part-1/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"henry-vi-part-2","url":"/works/henry-vi-part-2/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"henry-vi-part-3","url":"/works/henry-vi-part-3/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"titus-andronicus","url":"/works/titus-andronicus/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-two-gentlemen-of-verona","url":"/works/the-two-gentlemen-of-verona/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"loves-labours-lost","url":"/works/loves-labours-lost/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"richard-ii","url":"/works/richard-ii/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"king-john","url":"/works/king-john/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"henry-iv-part-2","url":"/works/henry-iv-part-2/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-merry-wives-of-windsor","url":"/works/the-merry-wives-of-windsor/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"troilus-and-cressida","url":"/works/troilus-and-cressida/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"alls-well-that-ends-well","url":"/works/alls-well-that-ends-well/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"measure-for-measure","url":"/works/measure-for-measure/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"antony-and-cleopatra","url":"/works/antony-and-cleopatra/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"coriolanus","url":"/works/coriolanus/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"timon-of-athens","url":"/works/timon-of-athens/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"pericles","url":"/works/pericles/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"cymbeline","url":"/works/cymbeline/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-winters-tale","url":"/works/the-winters-tale/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"henry-viii","url":"/works/henry-viii/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[{"name":"Shakespeare Birthplace Trust","note":"Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon. The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust cares for his birthplace and family houses there, and it offers school visits and workshops.","url":"https://www.shakespeare.org.uk/education/how-to-book/","urlLabel":"Shakespeare Birthplace Trust — school visits"}],"faith":{"note":"A confirmed member of the Church of England; his private religious views are debated.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Shakespeare","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[{"series":"Very Short Introductions","title":"William Shakespeare: A Very Short Introduction","author":"Stanley Wells","publisher":"Oxford University Press","year":2015,"isbn13":"9780191028694","url":"https://bookshop.org/a/130650/9780191028694"}],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"claude-shannon","name":"Claude Shannon","url":"/great-lives/claude-shannon/","dates":"1916–2001","born":1916,"died":2001,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["scientists-mathematicians","inventors"],"knownFor":"American mathematician and engineer who founded information theory.","bio":"Claude Shannon was born in 1916 in Petoskey, Michigan, and grew up in nearby Gaylord, where as a boy he built model planes and a telegraph line to a friend's house. He studied electrical engineering and mathematics at the University of Michigan and went on to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His master's thesis (1937) showed that the true-or-false logic of George Boole could be used to design electrical switching circuits, an idea basic to digital computers. During the Second World War he worked at Bell Labs on cryptography and on systems for aiming anti-aircraft guns. In 1948 he published 'A Mathematical Theory of Communication', which showed how to measure information in bits and how much information can be sent reliably over a noisy channel; it founded the field of information theory. Shannon was also known for his playful inventions, including a mechanical mouse that could learn its way through a maze, juggling machines and a motorized unicycle. He later taught at MIT and died in Massachusetts in 2001.","keyDates":[{"date":"1916","event":"Born in Petoskey, Michigan"},{"date":"1937","event":"Master's thesis on switching circuits"},{"date":"1948","event":"A Mathematical Theory of Communication"},{"date":"1950","event":"Builds the maze-solving mouse Theseus"},{"date":"1956","event":"Joins the MIT faculty"},{"date":"2001","event":"Dies in Massachusetts"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Claude Shannon","relatedWorks":["mathematical-theory-of-communication"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"mathematical-theory-of-communication","url":"/works/mathematical-theory-of-communication/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"In his spare time he enjoyed juggling, riding a unicycle and playing chess, and he built juggling machines and a calculator that worked in Roman numerals.","source":{"title":"Claude Shannon (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Shannon"}},{"text":"In 1950 he wrote one of the first papers on programming a computer to play chess.","source":{"title":"Claude Shannon (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Shannon"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"His family was active in their Methodist church during his youth; his adult beliefs are not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Shannon","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"granville-sharp","name":"Granville Sharp","url":"/great-lives/granville-sharp/","dates":"1735–1813","born":1735,"died":1813,"era":"18th-century","categories":["saints-reformers","legal-scholars-lawgivers"],"knownFor":"English clerk and self-taught scholar who used the courts to fight slavery and helped found the abolition movement.","bio":"Granville Sharp was born in Durham on 10 November 1735, the son of an archdeacon. Apprenticed to a London draper, he taught himself Greek and Hebrew to argue about the Bible, and later worked as a clerk in the government's Ordnance office. In 1765 he met Jonathan Strong, a young African who had been savagely beaten by his master and left in the street. Sharp and his brother, a surgeon, nursed him back to health, and when the master later tried to sell Strong back into slavery Sharp took the matter to court. Finding that lawyers assumed slavery was legal in England, he studied English law himself and published a pamphlet in 1769 arguing the opposite. He supported James Somerset in the case that Lord Mansfield decided in 1772, publicized the massacre on the slave ship Zong in 1783, and in 1787 became chairman of the new Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade. He also helped settle free Black Londoners in Sierra Leone. A devout Anglican, he wrote on Greek grammar and Scripture. He died in Fulham on 6 July 1813.","keyDates":[{"date":"1735","event":"Born in Durham on 10 November"},{"date":"1765","event":"Rescues Jonathan Strong"},{"date":"1769","event":"Publishes his legal case against slavery in England"},{"date":"1772","event":"Supports James Somerset's case"},{"date":"1787","event":"Chairs the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade"},{"date":"1813","event":"Dies in Fulham on 6 July"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"somerset-v-stewart","url":"/works/somerset-v-stewart/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"An Anglican who taught himself Greek and Hebrew to argue questions of theology.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Granville_Sharp","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"george-bernard-shaw","name":"George Bernard Shaw","url":"/great-lives/george-bernard-shaw/","dates":"1856–1950","born":1856,"died":1950,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Irish playwright and critic, author of Pygmalion and Saint Joan, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1925.","bio":"George Bernard Shaw was born in Dublin in 1856. His father was a struggling grain merchant, and his mother, a singer, moved to London with her music teacher; Shaw followed in 1876. He educated himself in the British Museum reading room, wrote five unsuccessful novels, and became a well-known critic of music and theater. He was an active member of the Fabian Society, which promoted socialism through gradual reform, and he gave many public lectures. His plays, often comedies of ideas that challenged social conventions, include Arms and the Man, Candida, Man and Superman, Major Barbara and Pygmalion (1913), about a phonetics professor who teaches a London flower girl to speak like a duchess; it later became the musical My Fair Lady. Saint Joan (1923) treats Joan of Arc as a person of genius and faith. Shaw was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1925 and later won an Academy Award for the screenplay of Pygmalion. A vegetarian who did not drink, he lived to 94 and died at Ayot St Lawrence, Hertfordshire, in 1950.","keyDates":[{"date":"1856","event":"Born in Dublin"},{"date":"1876","event":"Moves to London"},{"date":"1884","event":"Joins the Fabian Society"},{"date":"1913","event":"Pygmalion first staged"},{"date":"1923","event":"Saint Joan staged"},{"date":"1925","event":"Nobel Prize in Literature"},{"date":"1950","event":"Dies in Hertfordshire"}],"quotes":[],"author":"George Bernard Shaw","relatedWorks":["shaw-saint-joan"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"shaw-saint-joan","url":"/works/shaw-saint-joan/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"As a boy in Dublin he taught himself to play the piano.","source":{"title":"George Bernard Shaw (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Bernard_Shaw"}},{"text":"He grew his famous beard partly to hide a scar left by smallpox.","source":{"title":"George Bernard Shaw (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Bernard_Shaw"}}],"records":[{"text":"He was the first person to win both a Nobel Prize and an Oscar.","source":{"title":"George Bernard Shaw (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Bernard_Shaw"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Born into an Irish Protestant family; he opposed organised religion.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Bernard_Shaw","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[{"series":"Very Short Introductions","title":"George Bernard Shaw: A Very Short Introduction","author":"Christopher Wixson","publisher":"Oxford University Press","year":2020,"isbn13":"9780198850090","url":"https://bookshop.org/a/130650/9780198850090"}],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"robert-gould-shaw","name":"Robert Gould Shaw","url":"/great-lives/robert-gould-shaw/","dates":"1837–1863","born":1837,"died":1863,"era":"19th-century","categories":["military-leaders"],"knownFor":"Colonel of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry, one of the first official Black regiments in the Union Army, killed leading the assault on Fort Wagner.","bio":"Robert Gould Shaw was born in Boston on 10 October 1837 into a wealthy family active in the abolitionist cause. He studied briefly at Harvard, traveled in Europe, and when the Civil War began he enlisted as a private in the 7th New York Militia, then took a commission in the 2nd Massachusetts Infantry. In 1863 Governor John A. Andrew offered him command of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry, a regiment of Black volunteers. Shaw, after some hesitation, accepted and was made colonel. He insisted that his men be treated as soldiers, and he led them in their first fights along the South Carolina coast. On 18 July 1863 he commanded the 54th in a frontal assault on Confederate Battery Wagner, on Morris Island near Charleston. He was killed on the parapet. The Confederate garrison buried him in a mass grave with his soldiers, intending it as an insult; his family later declined to have the body moved, saying he was honored to lie with his men.","keyDates":[{"date":"1837","event":"Born in Boston, 10 October"},{"date":"1861","event":"Enlists at the outbreak of the Civil War"},{"date":"1863","event":"Takes command of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry"},{"date":"18 July 1863","event":"Killed leading the assault on Fort Wagner"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["narrative-and-fourth-of-july","gettysburg-address"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"narrative-and-fourth-of-july","url":"/works/narrative-and-fourth-of-july/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"gettysburg-address","url":"/works/gettysburg-address/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":null,"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"bruce-l-shelley","name":"Bruce L. Shelley","url":"/great-lives/bruce-l-shelley/","dates":"1927–2010","born":1927,"died":2010,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["writers-poets","theologians-church-fathers"],"knownFor":"American evangelical church historian at Denver Seminary, author of Church History in Plain Language.","bio":"Bruce Leon Shelley was born on December 20, 1927, in Owensboro, Kentucky, and grew up during the Great Depression in Evansville, Indiana. After high school he served in the U.S. Army in Japan shortly after the Second World War. He then studied at Columbia Bible College in South Carolina, where he met Mary Harrington; they married in 1952 and had three children. He earned a Master of Divinity degree at Fuller Seminary in Pasadena, California, and a doctorate in history from the University of Iowa. In 1957 he joined the faculty of Denver Seminary, where he taught church history and historical theology for more than fifty years. He was an ordained pastor and wanted to teach 'ordinary people' about Jesus Christ and his church. He wrote or edited more than twenty books, and his Church History in Plain Language (1982) became a standard textbook in colleges and churches. He died in Denver on February 20, 2010, after a stroke.","keyDates":[{"date":"1927","event":"Born in Owensboro, Kentucky"},{"date":"1952","event":"Marries Mary Harrington"},{"date":"1957","event":"Joins the faculty of Denver Seminary"},{"date":"1982","event":"Church History in Plain Language published"},{"date":"2010","event":"Dies in Denver"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Bruce L. Shelley","relatedWorks":["shelley-church-history-in-plain-language"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"shelley-church-history-in-plain-language","url":"/works/shelley-church-history-in-plain-language/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"An ordained pastor and church historian who taught at Denver Seminary for over 50 years.","source":"https://www.christianitytoday.com/2010/02/bruce-shelley-historian-for-people/","sourceName":"Christianity Today","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["No Wikipedia article. Sources: obituary (Altogether Funeral, Feb 2010), Evansville Courier & Press obituary (legacy.com), Christianity Today tribute by Scott Wenig (24 Feb 2010).","The 1982 first-edition year is from the library work's author note."]},{"slug":"mary-shelley","name":"Mary Shelley","url":"/great-lives/mary-shelley/","dates":"1797–1851","born":1797,"died":1851,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"English novelist, author of Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus.","bio":"Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin was born in London in 1797, the daughter of the philosopher William Godwin and the writer Mary Wollstonecraft, who died eleven days after her birth. She was educated mostly at home and read widely in her father's library, and she met many of the writers who visited him. In 1814 she fell in love with the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, a follower of her father, who was already married, and the two left England together. In the summer of 1816, near Geneva with Lord Byron, John Polidori and her stepsister Claire Clairmont, she took part in a ghost-story contest and began Frankenstein, about a young scientist who creates a living being and then abandons it. She married Shelley later that year, and Frankenstein was published anonymously in 1818. The couple lived in Italy, where three of their children died young. In 1822 Shelley drowned in a sailing accident. Mary returned to England with her surviving son, Percy, and supported him by writing novels, including The Last Man, stories, travel books and biographies, and by editing her husband's poems. She died in London in 1851.","keyDates":[{"date":"1797","event":"Born in London"},{"date":"1814","event":"Leaves England with Percy Bysshe Shelley"},{"date":"1816","event":"Begins Frankenstein near Geneva"},{"date":"1818","event":"Frankenstein published"},{"date":"1822","event":"Death of Percy Bysshe Shelley"},{"date":"1826","event":"The Last Man published"},{"date":"1851","event":"Dies in London"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Mary Shelley","relatedWorks":["frankenstein"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"frankenstein","url":"/works/frankenstein/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"As a child her favourite pastime was writing stories, and her father encouraged her to learn to write by composing letters.","source":{"title":"Mary Shelley (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Shelley"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Shelley","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[{"series":"Very Short Introductions","title":"Mary Shelley: A Very Short Introduction","author":"Charlotte Gordon","publisher":"Oxford University Press","year":2022,"isbn13":"9780198869191","url":"https://bookshop.org/a/130650/9780198869191"}],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"percy-bysshe-shelley","name":"Percy Bysshe Shelley","url":"/great-lives/percy-bysshe-shelley/","dates":"1792–1822","born":1792,"died":1822,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"English Romantic poet, author of Ozymandias, Ode to the West Wind and Prometheus Unbound.","bio":"Percy Bysshe Shelley was born in 1792 at Field Place, near Horsham, Sussex, the eldest son of a wealthy landowner and member of Parliament. At school he was bullied and unhappy, and he went on to Eton College. In 1811 he was expelled from University College, Oxford, for publishing a pamphlet, The Necessity of Atheism. That year he eloped with sixteen-year-old Harriet Westbrook. He wrote the long poem Queen Mab. In 1814 he left Harriet and went abroad with Mary Godwin, daughter of the philosopher William Godwin, whom he married in 1816 after Harriet's death. In 1816 they spent a summer near Geneva with Lord Byron, during which Mary began Frankenstein. From 1818 the Shelleys lived in Italy, where he wrote many of his greatest works, including the sonnet 'Ozymandias' (1818), about a broken statue of a forgotten king in the desert, 'Ode to the West Wind', 'To a Skylark', the verse drama Prometheus Unbound and the essay A Defence of Poetry. In 1822, at 29, he drowned when his sailing boat sank in a storm off the coast of Italy.","keyDates":[{"date":"1792","event":"Born near Horsham, Sussex"},{"date":"1811","event":"Expelled from Oxford"},{"date":"1816","event":"Marries Mary Godwin"},{"date":"1818","event":"Ozymandias published; moves to Italy"},{"date":"1820","event":"Prometheus Unbound published"},{"date":"1822","event":"Drowns off the Italian coast"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Percy Bysshe Shelley","relatedWorks":["ozymandias"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"ozymandias","url":"/works/ozymandias/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Known at school as 'Shelley the Atheist'; his biographer describes his views as a pantheism that he and others called atheism.","source":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dictionary_of_National_Biography%2C_1885-1900/Shelley%2C_Percy_Bysshe","sourceName":"Dictionary of National Biography (1885–1900) (via Wikisource)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"roger-sherman","name":"Roger Sherman","url":"/great-lives/roger-sherman/","dates":"1721–1793","born":1721,"died":1793,"era":"18th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders","legal-scholars-lawgivers"],"knownFor":"Connecticut shoemaker-turned-lawyer who signed the Declaration and the Constitution and served on the committee that drafted the Declaration.","bio":"Roger Sherman was born in 1721 in Newton, Massachusetts, worked as a shoemaker and surveyor, and taught himself law after moving to Connecticut. He became a respected attorney, a judge, and mayor of New Haven, and was known for plain speech and patience in argument. In the Continental Congress he served on the Committee of Five that drafted the Declaration of Independence, together with Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, and Robert R. Livingston, and he signed the finished document. He also signed the Articles of Confederation and, at the Constitutional Convention of 1787, helped shape the compromise between large and small states. He is the only person who signed all four of the principal American founding documents: the Continental Association of 1774, the Declaration, the Articles, and the Constitution. A serious Congregationalist, he lived modestly and ended his career as a United States senator from Connecticut. He died in 1793.","keyDates":[{"date":"1721","event":"Born in Newton, Massachusetts"},{"date":"1774","event":"Signs the Continental Association"},{"date":"1776","event":"Serves on the Committee of Five and signs the Declaration"},{"date":"1787","event":"Helps frame the Connecticut Compromise at the Constitutional Convention"},{"date":"1793","event":"Dies while serving as a United States senator"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["the-founding-documents"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-founding-documents","url":"/works/the-founding-documents/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":null,"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"william-tecumseh-sherman","name":"William Tecumseh Sherman","url":"/great-lives/william-tecumseh-sherman/","dates":"1820–1891","born":1820,"died":1891,"era":"19th-century","categories":["military-leaders","writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Union general in the American Civil War who captured Atlanta and led the March to the Sea, later Commanding General of the U.S. Army.","bio":"William Tecumseh Sherman was born in Lancaster, Ohio, in 1820. His father, a justice of the Ohio Supreme Court, died when William was nine, leaving eleven children, and the boy was raised by a neighbour, the lawyer and politician Thomas Ewing. Sherman graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1840 and in 1850 married Ewing's daughter Ellen. After leaving the army for business in 1853, in 1859 he became superintendent of the military academy that is now Louisiana State University, resigning when Louisiana left the Union. In the Civil War he fought at the First Battle of Bull Run and then formed a close partnership with Ulysses S. Grant, serving with him at Shiloh, Vicksburg and Chattanooga. In 1864 he captured Atlanta, a victory that helped re-elect President Abraham Lincoln, and then led the March to the Sea through Georgia and the Carolinas, destroying railways, supplies and property to weaken the Confederacy. When Grant became president in 1869, Sherman succeeded him as Commanding General of the Army, serving until 1883. He wrote his Memoirs and died in New York City in 1891.","keyDates":[{"date":"1820","event":"Born in Lancaster, Ohio"},{"date":"1840","event":"Graduates from West Point"},{"date":"1864","event":"Captures Atlanta; March to the Sea"},{"date":"1869","event":"Commanding General of the U.S. Army"},{"date":"1891","event":"Dies"}],"quotes":[],"author":"William Tecumseh Sherman","relatedWorks":["shermans-memoirs"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"shermans-memoirs","url":"/works/shermans-memoirs/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Baptized Catholic; historians variously describe him as a deist or an agnostic.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Tecumseh_Sherman","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"leslie-marmon-silko","name":"Leslie Marmon Silko","url":"/great-lives/leslie-marmon-silko/","dates":"born 1948","born":1948,"died":null,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American writer of Laguna Pueblo descent, author of the novel Ceremony.","bio":"Leslie Marmon Silko was born in 1948 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to a photographer father and a teacher mother, and grew up at the edge of the Laguna Pueblo reservation. Her family was of mixed Laguna, Mexican and white American descent. She has said that the core theme of her writing is the attempt to understand what it means to be neither white nor fully traditional. She studied English at the University of New Mexico and began law school before turning to writing and teaching. Her first novel, Ceremony (1977), tells of Tayo, a Laguna veteran of the Second World War who returns home troubled by his experiences and finds healing through traditional ceremony and story. It is regarded as a key work of the Native American Renaissance, a period of new writing by Native American authors. She later published Storyteller, a mix of poems, stories and photographs, and the novels Almanac of the Dead and Gardens in the Dunes. In 1981 she was among the first recipients of a MacArthur Fellowship. She lives in Tucson, Arizona.","keyDates":[{"date":"1948","event":"Born in Albuquerque, New Mexico"},{"date":"1977","event":"Ceremony published"},{"date":"1981","event":"MacArthur Fellowship; Storyteller published"},{"date":"1991","event":"Almanac of the Dead published"},{"date":"1994","event":"Native Writers' Circle Lifetime Achievement Award"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Leslie Marmon Silko","relatedWorks":["ceremony"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"ceremony","url":"/works/ceremony/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leslie_Marmon_Silko","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"menno-simons","name":"Menno Simons","url":"/great-lives/menno-simons/","dates":"1496–1561","born":1496,"died":1561,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["saints-reformers"],"knownFor":"Dutch Catholic priest who became the leading Anabaptist teacher of the Low Countries; the Mennonites are named after him.","bio":"Menno Simons was born in 1496 at Witmarsum in Friesland, in the northern Netherlands, and was ordained a Catholic priest in 1524. Reading the New Testament led him to doubt the doctrine of transubstantiation and, after a neighbour was executed for being rebaptized, the practice of infant baptism. The violent Anabaptist kingdom at Münster in 1534 and 1535, in which his own brother was killed in a related uprising, convinced him that peaceful believers needed a shepherd. In January 1536 he renounced the priesthood and joined the Anabaptists, and he was soon ordained an elder. For the rest of his life he lived as a hunted man with a price on his head, travelling with his family through the Netherlands and northern Germany, organizing congregations and writing. His Foundation of Christian Doctrine (1539-40) taught adult baptism, a disciplined church separate from the world, and the refusal of violence and oaths. He died in 1561 at Wüstenfelde in Holstein. Mennonites and, through them, the Amish trace their origins to his followers. He lived as a hunted preacher, with a price on his head.","keyDates":[{"date":"1496","event":"Born at Witmarsum, Friesland"},{"date":"1524","event":"Ordained a Catholic priest"},{"date":"1536","event":"Leaves the priesthood and joins the Anabaptists"},{"date":"1539–1540","event":"Foundation of Christian Doctrine"},{"date":"1561","event":"Dies in Holstein"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["martyrs-mirror-selections"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"martyrs-mirror-selections","url":"/works/martyrs-mirror-selections/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Roman Catholic priest in Friesland who became an Anabaptist leader; his followers became known as Mennonites.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menno_Simons","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"upton-sinclair","name":"Upton Sinclair","url":"/great-lives/upton-sinclair/","dates":"1878–1968","born":1878,"died":1968,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American novelist and reformer whose The Jungle (1906) exposed the meatpacking industry and helped bring federal food-safety laws.","bio":"Upton Beall Sinclair was born in Baltimore in 1878 to a genteel but impoverished Southern family and grew up partly in New York, where he entered college at fourteen. He paid his way by writing dime novels and stories. Converted to socialism, he went to Chicago in 1904 to investigate the stockyards, and The Jungle (1906), his novel of Lithuanian immigrants in Packingtown, became a best seller. Readers were horrified by its description of the meat they ate, and Congress passed the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act that year. Sinclair said he had aimed at the public's heart and hit its stomach. He used the profits to found a cooperative colony in New Jersey, which burned down. He wrote more than ninety books, exposing the press, oil, coal and education, and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1943 for Dragon's Teeth, one of his Lanny Budd novels. In 1934 he ran for governor of California as a Democrat on a plan to End Poverty in California and lost. He died in New Jersey in 1968.","keyDates":[{"date":"1878","event":"Born in Baltimore"},{"date":"1906","event":"The Jungle published; food-safety laws follow"},{"date":"1934","event":"Runs for governor of California"},{"date":"1943","event":"Wins the Pulitzer Prize"},{"date":"1968","event":"Dies in Bound Brook, New Jersey"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Upton Sinclair","relatedWorks":["sinclair-the-jungle"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"sinclair-the-jungle","url":"/works/sinclair-the-jungle/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Raised by a strict Episcopalian mother; he identified as agnostic.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upton_Sinclair","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"esphyr-slobodkina","name":"Esphyr Slobodkina","url":"/great-lives/esphyr-slobodkina/","dates":"1908–2002","born":1908,"died":2002,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["writers-poets","artists-composers-architects"],"knownFor":"Russian-born American abstract artist and author-illustrator of the picture book Caps for Sale.","bio":"Esphyr Slobodkina was born in 1908 in Chelyabinsk, in the Russian Empire, into a Jewish family. After the Russian Revolution, the family moved to Harbin in Manchuria, China, where she studied art and architecture. In 1928 she immigrated to the United States and enrolled at the National Academy of Design in New York, where she met the painter Ilya Bolotowsky, whom she married and later divorced. In 1936 she was a founding member of the American Abstract Artists group, and her abstract paintings and collages are held in museum collections. Through the children's book author Margaret Wise Brown, she began illustrating children's books. Her own picture book Caps for Sale (1940), about a peddler who carries his caps stacked on his head and must outwit a tree full of monkeys who take them, became a classic that has never gone out of print. She wrote and illustrated other children's books as well. She died in Glen Head, New York, in 2002, and a foundation preserves her home and work.","keyDates":[{"date":"1908","event":"Born in Chelyabinsk, Russia"},{"date":"1928","event":"Immigrates to the United States"},{"date":"1936","event":"Founding member of the American Abstract Artists"},{"date":"1940","event":"Caps for Sale published"},{"date":"2002","event":"Dies in New York"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Esphyr Slobodkina","relatedWorks":["caps-for-sale"],"reading":[{"band":"K-2","kind":"library","work":"caps-for-sale","url":"/works/caps-for-sale/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Born into a Jewish family in Siberia; her adult beliefs are not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esphyr_Slobodkina","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"adam-smith","name":"Adam Smith","url":"/great-lives/adam-smith/","dates":"1723–1790","born":1723,"died":1790,"era":"18th-century","categories":["philosophers"],"knownFor":"Scottish philosopher whose Wealth of Nations founded modern economics.","bio":"Adam Smith was born in Kirkcaldy, Scotland; his father, a customs official, died before he was born. As a small child he was briefly carried off by a band of travelers and soon returned. He studied at Glasgow and at Oxford, then became professor of moral philosophy at the University of Glasgow. His first book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, published in 1759, explained moral judgment through sympathy, our ability to imagine ourselves in another's place. In 1764 he left to tutor a young duke on a tour of France, where he met leading French thinkers. Back home, he spent ten years writing An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, published in 1776. It argued that wealth comes from labor and trade, that dividing work into specialized tasks greatly raises productivity, as in a pin factory, and that people pursuing their own interest in free markets are led, as by an invisible hand, to benefit society. He criticized monopolies and trade restrictions. He was a close friend of David Hume. He died in 1790.","keyDates":[{"date":"1723","event":"Born in Kirkcaldy"},{"date":"1751","event":"Professor at Glasgow"},{"date":"1759","event":"The Theory of Moral Sentiments"},{"date":"1776","event":"The Wealth of Nations"},{"date":"1778","event":"Commissioner of customs in Edinburgh"},{"date":"1790","event":"Dies in Edinburgh"}],"quotes":[{"text":"It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.","work":"the-wealth-of-nations","location":"Book I, ch. ii","verified":true},{"text":"No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable.","work":"the-wealth-of-nations","location":"Book I, ch. viii","verified":true}],"author":"Adam Smith","relatedWorks":["the-wealth-of-nations"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-wealth-of-nations","url":"/works/the-wealth-of-nations/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Scholars continue to debate the nature of his personal religious views.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Smith","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[{"series":"Very Short Introductions","title":"Adam Smith: A Very Short Introduction","author":"Christopher J. Berry","publisher":"Oxford University Press","year":2018,"isbn13":"9780198784456","url":"https://bookshop.org/a/130650/9780198784456"}],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"james-smith","name":"James Smith of Pennsylvania","url":"/great-lives/james-smith/","dates":"c. 1719–1806","born":1719,"died":1806,"era":"18th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"Irish-born York, Pennsylvania, lawyer who was added to the state delegation in 1776 and signed the Declaration.","bio":"James Smith was born in northern Ireland about 1719 and came to Pennsylvania as a boy. He studied law, settled at York, and practiced there for decades, also taking part in local militia organization as the break with Britain approached. In the summer of 1776, after Pennsylvania changed its delegation, he was sent to the Continental Congress. He arrived too late for the July vote but signed the engrossed Declaration and later signed the Articles of Confederation. He returned to York, resumed his law practice, and served briefly as a judge. Smith lived to a great age and died in York in 1806. He was not a national figure, but his life shows how the Declaration was signed not only by famous authors and orators but also by local lawyers who accepted a dangerous public trust and then went home to ordinary work.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 1719","event":"Born in northern Ireland"},{"date":"1776","event":"Is seated in Congress and signs the Declaration"},{"date":"1778","event":"Signs the Articles of Confederation"},{"date":"1806","event":"Dies in York, Pennsylvania"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["the-founding-documents"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-founding-documents","url":"/works/the-founding-documents/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":null,"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"john-snow","name":"John Snow","url":"/great-lives/john-snow/","dates":"1813–1858","born":1813,"died":1858,"era":"19th-century","categories":["physicians-medicine"],"knownFor":"English physician who showed that cholera spreads through contaminated water and pioneered safe anaesthesia.","bio":"John Snow was born in York on 15 March 1813, the eldest son of a labourer. At fourteen he was apprenticed to a surgeon in Newcastle upon Tyne, and during the cholera epidemic of 1831–1832 he treated miners stricken by the disease. He later trained in London and qualified as a physician. Snow was a pioneer of anaesthesia: he studied ether and chloroform scientifically, designed inhalers and gave chloroform to Queen Victoria at the births of Prince Leopold in 1853 and Princess Beatrice in 1857. Most doctors then believed cholera spread through 'miasma', bad air. Snow argued that it was caused by something swallowed in water contaminated with the waste of the sick. In 1849 he published On the Mode of Communication of Cholera. During the Soho outbreak of 1854 he mapped deaths clustered around the Broad Street water pump and persuaded the local authorities to remove its handle. He also compared deaths among households supplied by two water companies, one drawing water from the sewage-laden Thames. His enlarged second edition appeared in 1855. A teetotaller, he died of a stroke on 16 June 1858.","keyDates":[{"date":"1813","event":"Born in York on 15 March"},{"date":"1849","event":"Publishes On the Mode of Communication of Cholera"},{"date":"1853","event":"Gives chloroform to Queen Victoria at the birth of Prince Leopold"},{"date":"1854","event":"Broad Street pump handle removed during the Soho outbreak"},{"date":"1855","event":"Second, enlarged edition of his cholera book"},{"date":"1858","event":"Dies in London on 16 June"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["snow-on-the-mode-of-communication-of-cholera"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"snow-on-the-mode-of-communication-of-cholera","url":"/works/snow-on-the-mode-of-communication-of-cholera/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Snow","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["The pump handle was removed on 8 September 1854 by the parish authorities; whether the outbreak was already waning is debated."]},{"slug":"socrates","name":"Socrates","url":"/great-lives/socrates/","dates":"c. 470–399 BC","born":-470,"died":-399,"era":"ancient","categories":["philosophers"],"knownFor":"Athenian philosopher who taught by questioning and was put to death by his city.","bio":"Socrates was an Athenian, the son of a stonemason and a midwife. He served bravely as a foot soldier in the Peloponnesian War, but he spent most of his life in the streets and marketplace of Athens, talking with anyone who would talk with him. He wrote nothing himself; what we know comes mostly from his students Plato and Xenophon and from the comic playwright Aristophanes, who mocked him. Socrates questioned people who claimed to know what courage, justice or piety were, and showed through a series of questions that their answers did not hold together. He said that his only wisdom was knowing that he did not know, and that the unexamined life is not worth living for a human being. Many young men admired him; many powerful citizens resented him. In 399 BC he was tried for not honoring the city's gods and for corrupting the youth, and was condemned to death. He refused to escape and died by drinking hemlock, talking calmly with his friends to the end.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 470 BC","event":"Born in Athens"},{"date":"432–424 BC","event":"Serves as a soldier in the Peloponnesian War"},{"date":"423 BC","event":"Mocked in Aristophanes' Clouds"},{"date":"399 BC","event":"Tried, condemned and executed"}],"quotes":[{"text":"the unexamined life is not worth living","work":"the-last-days-of-socrates","location":"Apology 38a","verified":true}],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["the-last-days-of-socrates","plato-meno","the-symposium","the-republic"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-last-days-of-socrates","url":"/works/the-last-days-of-socrates/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"plato-meno","url":"/works/plato-meno/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-symposium","url":"/works/the-symposium/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Practiced Athenian religion but was tried for impiety; his critique reshaped religious thought.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socrates","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[{"series":"Very Short Introductions","title":"Socrates: A Very Short Introduction","author":"C. C. W. Taylor","publisher":"Oxford University Press","year":2019,"isbn13":"9780198835981","url":"https://bookshop.org/a/130650/9780198835981"}],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"solon","name":"Solon","url":"/great-lives/solon/","dates":"c. 630–560 BC","born":-630,"died":-560,"era":"ancient","categories":["statesmen-founders","legal-scholars-lawgivers"],"knownFor":"Athenian lawgiver and poet whose reforms laid groundwork for Athenian democracy.","bio":"Solon was an Athenian statesman and poet. In his time Athens was close to civil war: many poor farmers had fallen so deep into debt that they had to work for the rich, and some were sold into slavery for unpaid debts. Around 594 BC the Athenians chose Solon as archon, or chief magistrate, with power to reform the laws. He cancelled existing debts that were secured on people's own bodies, freed those enslaved for debt, and forbade such loans in the future, a measure called the shaking off of burdens. He replaced most of the very harsh laws of Draco, divided citizens into classes by wealth for holding office, and allowed any citizen to bring a case on behalf of someone wronged. His laws were written on wooden boards for all to see. Satisfying neither the rich nor the poor fully, he then left Athens for ten years so that he could not be pressed to change them. Ancient writers later counted him among the Seven Sages of Greece, and his poems explaining his reforms partly survive.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 594 BC","event":"Chosen archon to reform the laws"},{"date":"c. 594 BC","event":"Cancels debt-slavery"},{"date":"after 594 BC","event":"Travels abroad for ten years"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["plutarch-lives","athenian-constitution"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"plutarch-lives","url":"/works/plutarch-lives/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"athenian-constitution","url":"/works/athenian-constitution/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solon","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"aleksandr-solzhenitsyn","name":"Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn","url":"/great-lives/aleksandr-solzhenitsyn/","dates":"1918–2008","born":1918,"died":2008,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Russian novelist and historian of the Soviet labor camps, author of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and The Gulag Archipelago.","bio":"Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was born in Kislovodsk, Russia, in 1918, shortly after the revolution, and studied mathematics and physics at Rostov University. He served as an artillery officer in the Red Army during the Second World War, but in 1945 he was arrested for criticizing Stalin in private letters and sentenced to eight years in labor camps, followed by internal exile in Kazakhstan, where he also survived cancer. His short novel One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, about a single day in a camp, was published in the Soviet Union in 1962 with Khrushchev's approval and caused a sensation. Later works such as Cancer Ward and The First Circle could not be published at home. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1970. After The Gulag Archipelago appeared in the West, he was expelled from the Soviet Union in 1974. He lived for many years in Vermont, returned to Russia in 1994, and died in Moscow in 2008.","keyDates":[{"date":"1918","event":"Born in Kislovodsk"},{"date":"1945","event":"Arrested and sent to the labor camps"},{"date":"1962","event":"One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich published"},{"date":"1970","event":"Nobel Prize in Literature"},{"date":"1974","event":"Expelled from the Soviet Union"},{"date":"1994","event":"Returns to Russia"},{"date":"2008","event":"Dies in Moscow"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn","relatedWorks":["one-day-in-the-life-of-ivan-denisovich","solzhenitsyn-the-gulag-archipelago"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"one-day-in-the-life-of-ivan-denisovich","url":"/works/one-day-in-the-life-of-ivan-denisovich/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"solzhenitsyn-the-gulag-archipelago","url":"/works/solzhenitsyn-the-gulag-archipelago/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Favoured a government that would draw on Russia's traditional Christian values.","source":"https://www.britannica.com/biography/Aleksandr-Solzhenitsyn","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"sophocles","name":"Sophocles","url":"/great-lives/sophocles/","dates":"c. 497–406 BC","born":-496,"died":-406,"era":"ancient","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Ancient Athenian playwright, author of Oedipus Rex and Antigone, one of the three great Greek writers of tragedy.","bio":"Sophocles was born around 497 BC in Colonus, a village just outside Athens, to a wealthy family. In 480 BC he was chosen to lead a choral hymn celebrating the Greek victory over Persia at Salamis. In 468 BC he won his first victory in the Athenian drama competitions, defeating the older playwright Aeschylus. Over his long life he wrote about 120 plays and won first prize many times. Only seven complete tragedies survive, including Ajax, Antigone, Electra, Oedipus Rex and Oedipus at Colonus. Antigone tells of a young woman who defies a king in order to bury her brother. Sophocles is credited with adding a third actor to Greek drama, reducing the role of the chorus. He also took part in public life: he served as one of the treasurers of Athena and, in 441 BC, as one of Athens' ten generals. He died around 406 BC, aged about ninety. Aristotle later held up Oedipus Rex as the highest achievement in tragedy, and his plays are still performed today.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 497 BC","event":"Born in Colonus, near Athens"},{"date":"468 BC","event":"First victory in the drama competition"},{"date":"441 BC","event":"Elected one of the ten generals"},{"date":"c. 406 BC","event":"Dies in Athens"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Sophocles","relatedWorks":["the-theban-plays","sophocles-ajax-electra-trachiniae-philoctetes"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-theban-plays","url":"/works/the-theban-plays/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"sophocles-ajax-electra-trachiniae-philoctetes","url":"/works/sophocles-ajax-electra-trachiniae-philoctetes/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented beyond the Athenian religious festivals at which his plays were performed.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophocles","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[{"series":"Very Short Introductions","title":"Sophocles: A Very Short Introduction","author":"Edith Hall","publisher":"Oxford University Press","year":2025,"isbn13":"9780192897800","url":"https://bookshop.org/a/130650/9780192897800"}],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"john-philip-sousa","name":"John Philip Sousa","url":"/great-lives/john-philip-sousa/","dates":"1854–1932","born":1854,"died":1932,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["artists-composers-architects"],"knownFor":"American bandmaster called the March King, composer of The Stars and Stripes Forever.","bio":"John Philip Sousa was born in Washington, D.C., the son of a Portuguese-born father who played trombone in the United States Marine Band. He studied violin and other instruments, and when at thirteen he tried to run away to join a circus band, his father enlisted him as an apprentice in the Marine Band. After leaving, he conducted theater orchestras. In 1880 he returned to lead the Marine Band, serving five presidents and making it the finest military band in the country. In 1892 he formed his own civilian band, which toured the United States and the world for nearly forty years, playing thousands of concerts. He wrote 136 marches, including Semper Fidelis, The Washington Post, The Liberty Bell and The Stars and Stripes Forever, which Congress made the national march of the United States in 1987. He also wrote operettas, novels and an autobiography. He helped develop the sousaphone, a large brass instrument that wraps around the player. During World War I he trained Navy bands at Great Lakes. He died in Reading, Pennsylvania, in 1932, after rehearsing a band.","keyDates":[{"date":"1868","event":"Apprenticed to the Marine Band"},{"date":"1880","event":"Becomes leader of the Marine Band"},{"date":"1892","event":"Forms the Sousa Band"},{"date":"1896","event":"Composes The Stars and Stripes Forever"},{"date":"1932","event":"Dies in Reading, Pennsylvania"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"Before he became the 'March King', he began his career playing the violin, and as a boy he studied violin, piano, flute and several brass instruments.","source":{"title":"John Philip Sousa (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Philip_Sousa"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Philip_Sousa","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"thomas-sowell","name":"Thomas Sowell","url":"/great-lives/thomas-sowell/","dates":"born 1930","born":1930,"died":null,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["writers-poets","philosophers"],"knownFor":"American economist and social theorist, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and author of Basic Economics.","bio":"Thomas Sowell was born in 1930 into a poor family in Gastonia, North Carolina. His father died shortly before his birth, and he was adopted and raised by his great-aunt and her two adult daughters, and grew up in Harlem, in New York City. Because of poverty and difficulties at home, he dropped out of Stuyvesant High School and worked at various jobs before serving in the United States Marine Corps during the Korean War. Afterwards he graduated with honours from Harvard University in 1958, earned a master's degree in economics at Columbia University and, in 1968, a doctorate in economics from the University of Chicago. He has said that he was a Marxist in his twenties. He taught at Cornell University, Brandeis University and the University of California, Los Angeles, and since 1977 he has been a fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He has written more than forty-five books on economics, history, education, race and politics, including Basic Economics, and a column carried by more than 150 newspapers. In 2002 he received the National Humanities Medal.","keyDates":[{"date":"1930","event":"Born in Gastonia, North Carolina"},{"date":"1958","event":"Graduates from Harvard University"},{"date":"1968","event":"Doctorate from the University of Chicago"},{"date":"1977","event":"Joins the Hoover Institution"},{"date":"2002","event":"National Humanities Medal"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Thomas Sowell","relatedWorks":["sowell-basic-economics"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"sowell-basic-economics","url":"/works/sowell-basic-economics/"}],"majorWorks":[{"title":"Knowledge and Decisions","year":"1980","note":"How societies use dispersed knowledge through markets, law, and politics","work":null,"url":null},{"title":"Ethnic America","year":"1981","note":"History of American ethnic groups and their economic progress","work":null,"url":null},{"title":"A Conflict of Visions","year":"1987","note":"Contrasts the constrained and unconstrained visions of human nature behind political disputes","work":null,"url":null},{"title":"The Vision of the Anointed","year":"1995","note":"Critique of elite policymaking","work":null,"url":null},{"title":"Basic Economics","year":"2000","note":null,"work":"sowell-basic-economics","url":"/works/sowell-basic-economics/"},{"title":"Intellectuals and Society","year":"2009","note":"On the influence of intellectuals on public policy","work":null,"url":null},{"title":"Wealth, Poverty and Politics","year":"2015","note":"On the geographic, cultural, and political causes of wealth and poverty","work":null,"url":null}],"funFacts":[{"text":"Photography became his favourite hobby.","source":{"title":"Thomas Sowell (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Sowell"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Sowell","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"elizabeth-george-speare","name":"Elizabeth George Speare","url":"/great-lives/elizabeth-george-speare/","dates":"1908–1994","born":1908,"died":1994,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American author of children's historical fiction, twice winner of the Newbery Medal, for The Witch of Blackbird Pond and The Bronze Bow.","bio":"Elizabeth George was born in 1908 in Melrose, Massachusetts, near Boston, and spent most of her life in New England, the setting of many of her books. She began writing stories in high school, studied at Smith College and earned a master's degree at Boston University, and then taught high school English in Massachusetts. In 1936 she married Alden Speare and moved to Connecticut, where she raised two children and began writing magazine articles and then historical fiction for young readers. The Witch of Blackbird Pond (1958), about a girl from Barbados who comes to live among Puritans in Connecticut and is accused of witchcraft, won the Newbery Medal, and The Bronze Bow (1961), about a young man in Galilee in the time of Jesus, won it again. The Sign of the Beaver (1983), about a boy alone in the Maine wilderness who is befriended by a Penobscot boy, was a Newbery Honor Book. In 1989 she received the award now called the Children's Literature Legacy Award, and she died in 1994.","keyDates":[{"date":"1908","event":"Born in Melrose, Massachusetts"},{"date":"1936","event":"Marries Alden Speare"},{"date":"1959","event":"Newbery Medal for The Witch of Blackbird Pond"},{"date":"1962","event":"Newbery Medal for The Bronze Bow"},{"date":"1983","event":"The Sign of the Beaver published"},{"date":"1989","event":"Receives the award now called the Children's Literature Legacy Award"},{"date":"1994","event":"Dies"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Elizabeth George Speare","relatedWorks":["the-witch-of-blackbird-pond","the-sign-of-the-beaver","the-bronze-bow"],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"library","work":"the-sign-of-the-beaver","url":"/works/the-sign-of-the-beaver/"},{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-witch-of-blackbird-pond","url":"/works/the-witch-of-blackbird-pond/"},{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-bronze-bow","url":"/works/the-bronze-bow/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_George_Speare","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"lewis-spence","name":"Lewis Spence","url":"/great-lives/lewis-spence/","dates":"1874–1955","born":1874,"died":1955,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Scottish journalist, poet and folklorist who popularized Maya and Celtic mythology.","bio":"Lewis Spence was born in 1874 in Monifieth, Angus, Scotland. After studying at Edinburgh University he became a journalist, working as an editor at The Scotsman from 1899 to 1906, then at The Edinburgh Magazine and The British Weekly. During these years he grew interested in the myths and folklore of Mexico and Central America, and in 1908 he published a popular English version of the Popol Vuh, the sacred book of the K'iche' Maya. He went on to compile A Dictionary of Mythology and an encyclopedia of occultism and wrote many books on the myths of different peoples, including the Celts of Britain and Scotland. He was a Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute. In the 1920s he wrote several books about the legend of Atlantis, which he treated as a real lost civilization; mainstream scholars rejected his conclusions. A Scottish nationalist, he founded the Scottish National Movement and stood unsuccessfully for Parliament in 1929. He also wrote poetry, collected in 1953. He died in 1955.","keyDates":[{"date":"1874","event":"Born in Monifieth, Angus"},{"date":"1899–1906","event":"Editor at The Scotsman"},{"date":"1908","event":"The Popol Vuh published"},{"date":"1924","event":"The Problem of Atlantis published"},{"date":"1929","event":"Stands for Parliament"},{"date":"1955","event":"Dies"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Anonymous (K'iche' Maya); Lewis Spence","relatedWorks":["popol-vuh"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"popol-vuh","url":"/works/popol-vuh/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Spence","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"edmund-spenser","name":"Edmund Spenser","url":"/great-lives/edmund-spenser/","dates":"c. 1552–1599","born":1552,"died":1599,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"English poet of the Elizabethan age, author of The Faerie Queene and The Shepheardes Calender.","bio":"Edmund Spenser was born in London around 1552 and was educated at the Merchant Taylors' School and Pembroke College, Cambridge. His first major work, The Shepheardes Calender (1579), a series of twelve pastoral poems, one for each month, established him as a leading new poet. In 1580 he went to Ireland as secretary to Lord Grey, the lord deputy, and he spent most of the rest of his life there as an official and landholder, eventually at Kilcolman Castle in County Cork. There he befriended Sir Walter Raleigh, who encouraged him to publish The Faerie Queene. The first three books appeared in 1590 and three more in 1596. The poem, written in a nine-line stanza he invented, now called the Spenserian stanza, is an allegory in which knights such as the Redcrosse Knight represent virtues like holiness and justice, and it praises Queen Elizabeth I as Gloriana. In 1598 his estate was burned during an Irish rebellion. He died in London in 1599 and was buried in Westminster Abbey.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 1552","event":"Born in London"},{"date":"1579","event":"The Shepheardes Calender published"},{"date":"1580","event":"Goes to Ireland"},{"date":"1590","event":"First three books of The Faerie Queene"},{"date":"1596","event":"Books four to six published"},{"date":"1599","event":"Dies in London"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Edmund Spenser","relatedWorks":["the-faerie-queene"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-faerie-queene","url":"/works/the-faerie-queene/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[{"text":"His poem The Faerie Queene is one of the longest poems in the English language.","source":{"title":"Edmund Spenser (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Spenser"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"An Anglican and devoted Protestant who opposed the Catholic Church.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Spenser","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"baruch-spinoza","name":"Baruch Spinoza","url":"/great-lives/baruch-spinoza/","dates":"1632–1677","born":1632,"died":1677,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["philosophers"],"knownFor":"Dutch philosopher of Portuguese Jewish descent, author of the Ethics and the Theological-Political Treatise.","bio":"Baruch Spinoza was born in Amsterdam in 1632 into a family of Portuguese Jewish merchants who had fled persecution in Portugal. He was educated in the Jewish community's schools and worked in the family business after his father's death. In 1656 the leaders of the Amsterdam synagogue issued a writ of herem, expelling him from the community, apparently because of his opinions. He later took the Latin name Benedictus. Spinoza supported himself in part by grinding optical lenses and lived modestly in Rijnsburg, Voorburg and The Hague, corresponding with scientists and philosophers. His Theological-Political Treatise (1670), published anonymously, argued for reading the Bible historically and for freedom of thought, and it caused a scandal. He declined a professorship at Heidelberg in order to keep his independence. His Ethics, set out in the style of geometry with definitions and proofs, describes God or Nature as a single substance. It was published after his death from lung disease in The Hague in 1677.","keyDates":[{"date":"1632","event":"Born in Amsterdam"},{"date":"1656","event":"Expelled from the Jewish community"},{"date":"1670","event":"Theological-Political Treatise published anonymously"},{"date":"1673","event":"Declines a chair at Heidelberg"},{"date":"1677","event":"Dies in The Hague; Ethics published posthumously"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Baruch Spinoza","relatedWorks":["ethics","spinoza-theologico-political-treatise"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"ethics","url":"/works/ethics/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"spinoza-theologico-political-treatise","url":"/works/spinoza-theologico-political-treatise/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Raised in Amsterdam's Portuguese-Jewish community, which issued a writ of excommunication (herem) against him in 1656.","source":"https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/spinoza/","sourceName":"Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy","documented":true},"furtherReading":[{"series":"Very Short Introductions","title":"Spinoza: A Very Short Introduction","author":"Roger Scruton","publisher":"Oxford University Press","year":2002,"isbn13":"9780192803160","url":"https://bookshop.org/a/130650/9780192803160"}],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"lysander-spooner","name":"Lysander Spooner","url":"/great-lives/lysander-spooner/","dates":"1808–1887","born":1808,"died":1887,"era":"19th-century","categories":["legal-scholars-lawgivers","philosophers"],"knownFor":"American lawyer, abolitionist and political philosopher, author of No Treason.","bio":"Lysander Spooner was born in 1808 on a farm in Athol, Massachusetts. He studied law in the offices of local lawyers, but Massachusetts required non-college graduates to study for five years before practicing, while college graduates needed only three. Spooner opened a practice anyway and wrote a successful protest, and the legislature dropped the rule in 1836. In 1844 he started the American Letter Mail Company to compete with the United States Post Office, charging lower rates; the government forced it out of business with lawsuits. An opponent of slavery, he wrote The Unconstitutionality of Slavery (1845), arguing that the Constitution did not legally permit slavery. After the Civil War he wrote No Treason (1867–1870), a series of essays arguing that the Constitution has no authority over people who never agreed to it, and opposing treason charges against the defeated secessionists. His writings later influenced libertarian and anarchist thinkers. He died in Boston in 1887.","keyDates":[{"date":"1808","event":"Born in Athol, Massachusetts"},{"date":"1836","event":"Massachusetts drops its rule on law study"},{"date":"1844","event":"Founds the American Letter Mail Company"},{"date":"1845","event":"The Unconstitutionality of Slavery published"},{"date":"1867–1870","event":"No Treason published"},{"date":"1887","event":"Dies in Boston"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Lysander Spooner","relatedWorks":["no-treason"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"no-treason","url":"/works/no-treason/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Son of a deist father; his own beliefs are not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysander_Spooner","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"charles-spurgeon","name":"Charles Spurgeon","url":"/great-lives/charles-spurgeon/","dates":"1834–1892","born":1834,"died":1892,"era":"19th-century","categories":["theologians-church-fathers"],"knownFor":"English Baptist preacher of Victorian London, known as the Prince of Preachers.","bio":"Charles Haddon Spurgeon was born in 1834 in Kelvedon, Essex, and spent much of his childhood with his grandfather, a Congregational minister. He was converted at the age of fifteen in a Primitive Methodist chapel during a snowstorm, when a lay preacher urged the congregation to 'look unto me, and be ye saved'. He became a Baptist and began preaching as a teenager. In 1854, at nineteen, he became pastor of New Park Street Chapel in London, and his preaching drew such crowds that the congregation built the Metropolitan Tabernacle, which opened in 1861 and seated about five thousand people. His sermons were printed every week and sold widely around the world. In 1856 a false fire alarm during a service in a crowded music hall caused a stampede in which several people died, an event that troubled him for years. He founded a college for training pastors and an orphanage. In later years he suffered from gout and often spent winters in Menton, France, where he died in 1892.","keyDates":[{"date":"1834","event":"Born in Kelvedon, Essex"},{"date":"1850","event":"Conversion"},{"date":"1854","event":"Pastor of New Park Street Chapel, London"},{"date":"1861","event":"Metropolitan Tabernacle opens"},{"date":"1867","event":"Founds the Stockwell Orphanage"},{"date":"1892","event":"Dies in Menton, France"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Charles Spurgeon","relatedWorks":["spurgeon-selected-sermons"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"spurgeon-selected-sermons","url":"/works/spurgeon-selected-sermons/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"His church, the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London, seated 5,000 people with standing room for 1,000 more.","source":{"title":"Charles Spurgeon (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Spurgeon"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"English Baptist preacher and pastor.","source":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dictionary_of_National_Biography%2C_1885-1900/Spurgeon%2C_Charles_Haddon","sourceName":"Dictionary of National Biography (1885–1900) (via Wikisource)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"johanna-spyri","name":"Johanna Spyri","url":"/great-lives/johanna-spyri/","dates":"1827–1901","born":1827,"died":1901,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Swiss author of Heidi, the story of an orphan girl who lives with her grandfather in the Alps.","bio":"Johanna Heusser was born in 1827 in Hirzel, a village in the hills above Lake Zurich, Switzerland. Her father was a doctor who treated patients in the family home, and her mother wrote religious poems and hymns. In 1852 she married Johann Bernhard Spyri, a lawyer and editor who later became town clerk of Zurich, and they had one son. She began writing in her forties, at first stories for adults, and then books for children. Heidi was published in two parts in 1880 and 1881. It tells of an orphaned girl who is taken to live with her gruff grandfather in a hut high in the Alps, where she befriends the goatherd Peter and his blind grandmother; when she is sent to Frankfurt as a companion to a wealthy invalid girl, Clara, she becomes homesick for the mountains. Heidi became one of the best-known Swiss books in the world. In 1884 both her husband and son died. She wrote many more stories and died in Zurich in 1901.","keyDates":[{"date":"1827","event":"Born in Hirzel, Switzerland"},{"date":"1852","event":"Marries Johann Bernhard Spyri"},{"date":"1880–1881","event":"Heidi published"},{"date":"1884","event":"Death of her husband and son"},{"date":"1901","event":"Dies in Zurich"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Johanna Spyri","relatedWorks":["heidi"],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"library","work":"heidi","url":"/works/heidi/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"As a child she spent several summers near Chur in the Swiss mountains, the setting she later used in her novels, including Heidi.","source":{"title":"Johanna Spyri (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johanna_Spyri"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johanna_Spyri","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"john-steinbeck","name":"John Steinbeck","url":"/great-lives/john-steinbeck/","dates":"1902–1968","born":1902,"died":1968,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American novelist of California, author of The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men, and Nobel laureate.","bio":"John Steinbeck was born in 1902 in Salinas, California, in a farming valley that became the setting of much of his fiction. He attended Stanford University on and off without taking a degree, working at times as a farm laborer and on ranches. After several unsuccessful books, he had his first success with Tortilla Flat (1935), about friends living in Monterey. Of Mice and Men (1937) tells of two migrant ranch workers, George and Lennie, who dream of owning a small farm. The Grapes of Wrath (1939), about the Joad family, who leave the Oklahoma Dust Bowl for California during the Great Depression, won the Pulitzer Prize and caused great controversy. Steinbeck was close friends with the marine biologist Ed Ricketts, with whom he collected sea life in the Gulf of California; Ricketts inspired the character Doc in Cannery Row (1945). East of Eden (1952) retells the story of Cain and Abel in the Salinas Valley. Steinbeck also worked as a war correspondent. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1962 and died in New York City in 1968.","keyDates":[{"date":"1902","event":"Born in Salinas, California"},{"date":"1935","event":"Tortilla Flat published"},{"date":"1937","event":"Of Mice and Men published"},{"date":"1939","event":"The Grapes of Wrath published"},{"date":"1952","event":"East of Eden published"},{"date":"1962","event":"Nobel Prize in Literature"},{"date":"1968","event":"Dies in New York City"}],"quotes":[],"author":"John Steinbeck","relatedWorks":["east-of-eden","cannery-row","of-mice-and-men","the-pearl","steinbeck-the-grapes-of-wrath"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-pearl","url":"/works/the-pearl/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"east-of-eden","url":"/works/east-of-eden/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"cannery-row","url":"/works/cannery-row/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"of-mice-and-men","url":"/works/of-mice-and-men/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"steinbeck-the-grapes-of-wrath","url":"/works/steinbeck-the-grapes-of-wrath/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"His first novel, Cup of Gold, was about the pirate Henry Morgan, whose adventures had captured his imagination as a child.","source":{"title":"John Steinbeck (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Steinbeck"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[{"name":"National Steinbeck Center","note":"The National Steinbeck Center in Salinas, California is a museum about the writer, not his house. Its exhibits explore his life and books, with visits for schools, youth groups, and homeschoolers.","url":"https://steinbeck.org/visit/","urlLabel":"National Steinbeck Center — museum and school visits"}],"faith":{"note":"Raised in the Episcopal Church; he later became an agnostic.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Steinbeck","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"stendhal","name":"Stendhal","url":"/great-lives/stendhal/","dates":"1783–1842","born":1783,"died":1842,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"French novelist (Marie-Henri Beyle), author of The Red and the Black and The Charterhouse of Parma.","bio":"Stendhal was the pen name of Marie-Henri Beyle, born in Grenoble in 1783. His mother died when he was seven, and he grew up disliking his father and the conservative provincial society of Grenoble. In 1799 he went to Paris, and through his cousins, the Daru family, he obtained posts in Napoleon's administration; he followed the army to Italy, Germany and Russia, and witnessed the retreat from Moscow in 1812. After Napoleon's fall he lived in Milan, which he loved, and wrote on music, painting and travel, as well as the essay On Love. Returning to Paris in 1821, he published The Red and the Black in 1830. After the July Revolution he was appointed French consul at Civitavecchia in the Papal States, where he spent most of his remaining years and wrote The Charterhouse of Parma (1839), praised by Balzac. He died in Paris in 1842 after a stroke. Little read in his lifetime, he predicted that he would be understood later, and he is now considered a founder of the realist novel.","keyDates":[{"date":"1783","event":"Born in Grenoble"},{"date":"1812","event":"Takes part in the Russian campaign"},{"date":"1830","event":"The Red and the Black published"},{"date":"1839","event":"The Charterhouse of Parma"},{"date":"1842","event":"Dies in Paris"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Stendhal","relatedWorks":["stendhal-the-red-and-the-black"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"stendhal-the-red-and-the-black","url":"/works/stendhal-the-red-and-the-black/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stendhal","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"laurence-sterne","name":"Laurence Sterne","url":"/great-lives/laurence-sterne/","dates":"1713–1768","born":1713,"died":1768,"era":"18th-century","categories":["writers-poets","theologians-church-fathers"],"knownFor":"Anglo-Irish novelist and clergyman, author of Tristram Shandy and A Sentimental Journey.","bio":"Laurence Sterne was born in 1713 in Clonmel, Ireland, the son of an English army officer, and spent his early childhood moving between army barracks in Ireland and England. He was sent to school in Yorkshire and studied at Jesus College, Cambridge. He became a clergyman of the Church of England and for many years was the vicar of Sutton-on-the-Forest, near York. In 1741 he married Elizabeth Lumley. In 1759 he began publishing The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, which appeared in nine volumes between 1759 and 1767. The narrator tries to tell the story of his life but keeps wandering off into digressions, so that he is not even born until the third volume; the book also plays with the printed page itself, including a black page and a marbled page. It made Sterne famous in London. He suffered from tuberculosis and traveled to France and Italy for his health, which inspired A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy (1768). He died in London that year.","keyDates":[{"date":"1713","event":"Born in Clonmel, Ireland"},{"date":"1741","event":"Marries Elizabeth Lumley"},{"date":"1759","event":"First volumes of Tristram Shandy"},{"date":"1767","event":"Last volume of Tristram Shandy"},{"date":"1768","event":"A Sentimental Journey published"},{"date":"1768","event":"Dies in London"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Laurence Sterne","relatedWorks":["sterne-tristram-shandy"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"sterne-tristram-shandy","url":"/works/sterne-tristram-shandy/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"His favourite author by far was the French writer Rabelais, whom he saw as his model in comic writing.","source":{"title":"Laurence Sterne (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurence_Sterne"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Anglo-Irish Anglican clergyman, described as holding the moderate (latitudinarian) Anglicanism of his time.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurence_Sterne","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"robert-louis-stevenson","name":"Robert Louis Stevenson","url":"/great-lives/robert-louis-stevenson/","dates":"1850–1894","born":1850,"died":1894,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Scottish novelist and poet, author of Treasure Island, Kidnapped and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.","bio":"Robert Louis Stevenson was born in Edinburgh in 1850, the only child of Thomas Stevenson, an engineer from a famous family of lighthouse builders. He was often ill as a child and was cared for by his devoted nurse, Alison Cunningham, whose stories fed his imagination. He studied engineering and then law at the University of Edinburgh and qualified as a lawyer, but he wanted to write. He traveled for his health and wrote about a canoe trip and a walking tour with a donkey in France. In France he met Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne, an American, and in 1880, after traveling to California, he married her. Treasure Island (1883), written as a story for boys, made him famous, and it was followed by A Child's Garden of Verses (1885), Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) and Kidnapped (1886). In 1888 he sailed with his family to the South Pacific, and in 1890 he settled on the island of Upolu, in Samoa, where he took the Samoan name Tusitala, 'teller of tales'. He died there in 1894, aged 44.","keyDates":[{"date":"1850","event":"Born in Edinburgh"},{"date":"1880","event":"Marries Fanny Osbourne"},{"date":"1883","event":"Treasure Island published"},{"date":"1886","event":"Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Kidnapped"},{"date":"1888","event":"Sails for the South Pacific"},{"date":"1890","event":"Settles in Samoa"},{"date":"1894","event":"Dies in Samoa"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Robert Louis Stevenson","relatedWorks":["treasure-island","the-strange-case-of-dr-jekyll-and-mr-hyde","the-black-arrow","a-childs-garden-of-verses","kidnapped"],"reading":[{"band":"K-2","kind":"library","work":"a-childs-garden-of-verses","url":"/works/a-childs-garden-of-verses/"},{"band":"3-5","kind":"library","work":"treasure-island","url":"/works/treasure-island/"},{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-black-arrow","url":"/works/the-black-arrow/"},{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"kidnapped","url":"/works/kidnapped/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-strange-case-of-dr-jekyll-and-mr-hyde","url":"/works/the-strange-case-of-dr-jekyll-and-mr-hyde/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"In 2013 a statue of him as a child with his dog was unveiled outside Colinton Parish Church in Edinburgh.","source":{"title":"Robert Louis Stevenson (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Louis_Stevenson"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"His reading shook his belief in Christian dogma; he found harsher Scottish Calvinism repugnant.","source":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dictionary_of_National_Biography%2C_1885-1900/Stevenson%2C_Robert_Louis","sourceName":"Dictionary of National Biography (1885–1900) (via Wikisource)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"richard-stockton","name":"Richard Stockton","url":"/great-lives/richard-stockton/","dates":"1730–1781","born":1730,"died":1781,"era":"18th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"New Jersey lawyer who signed the Declaration, was captured by Loyalists, and died in broken health in 1781.","bio":"Richard Stockton was born in 1730 near Princeton, New Jersey, graduated from the College of New Jersey, and became one of the colony's leading lawyers. He served as a trustee of the college and helped bring John Witherspoon from Scotland to be its president. In 1776 he was elected to the Continental Congress and signed the Declaration of Independence. That winter, after the British drove Washington through New Jersey, Loyalists captured Stockton. He was imprisoned, including time in harsh conditions in New York, and was at last released on parole. He did not return to Congress. The episode left his health ruined and his reputation under a cloud, because a parole required a promise not to resume the fight; later claims that he formally recanted independence have not been firmly proved. His house, Morven, was looted. Stockton died at home in 1781, before the war was over.","keyDates":[{"date":"1730","event":"Born near Princeton, New Jersey"},{"date":"1776","event":"Signs the Declaration of Independence"},{"date":"1776–1777","event":"Captured by Loyalists and imprisoned; released on parole"},{"date":"1781","event":"Dies at Morven, his home in Princeton"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["the-founding-documents"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-founding-documents","url":"/works/the-founding-documents/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":null,"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"bram-stoker","name":"Bram Stoker","url":"/great-lives/bram-stoker/","dates":"1847–1912","born":1847,"died":1912,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Irish novelist and theater manager, author of Dracula.","bio":"Abraham 'Bram' Stoker was born in 1847 in Clontarf, near Dublin. He was so sickly as a small child that he could hardly walk until he was about seven, but he recovered and became a champion athlete at Trinity College Dublin. He worked as a civil servant at Dublin Castle and wrote theater reviews in his spare time. A review of the actor Henry Irving's Hamlet led to a friendship, and in 1878 Stoker moved to London to become business manager of Irving's Lyceum Theatre, a post he held for about twenty-seven years. That same year he married Florence Balcombe. Alongside his theater work he wrote novels and stories. Dracula (1897), told through letters, diaries and newspaper clippings, follows a Transylvanian count who travels to England and the group who hunt him; it drew on Stoker's research into eastern European folklore and history. The novel was only moderately successful in his lifetime but later became famous through stage and film versions. He died in London in 1912.","keyDates":[{"date":"1847","event":"Born in Clontarf, near Dublin"},{"date":"1878","event":"Becomes manager of the Lyceum Theatre in London"},{"date":"1897","event":"Dracula published"},{"date":"1912","event":"Dies in London"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Bram Stoker","relatedWorks":["dracula"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"dracula","url":"/works/dracula/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Born to a family of Irish Protestant descent.","source":"https://www.britannica.com/biography/Bram-Stoker","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"thomas-stone","name":"Thomas Stone","url":"/great-lives/thomas-stone/","dates":"c. 1743–1787","born":1743,"died":1787,"era":"18th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"Moderate Maryland lawyer who signed the Declaration, helped frame the Articles of Confederation, and died in 1787.","bio":"Thomas Stone was born about 1743 in Charles County, Maryland, studied law, and practiced in Annapolis and at his plantation, Haberdeventure. He was a moderate who hoped, longer than some of his colleagues, that the quarrel with Britain might be settled short of a final break. In the Continental Congress he nevertheless voted for independence and signed the Declaration, and he worked on the committee that drafted the Articles of Confederation. He later served in the Maryland Senate. When his wife, Margaret, fell gravely ill, he declined to attend the Constitutional Convention of 1787; she died, and Stone himself died a few months later, in October 1787, at the age of about forty-four. He was a planter who held people in slavery. His short public life is that of a cautious man who, when the choice came, put his name on the document and then went home to duties he would not lay aside.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 1743","event":"Born in Charles County, Maryland"},{"date":"1776","event":"Signs the Declaration of Independence"},{"date":"1777","event":"Helps frame the Articles of Confederation"},{"date":"1787","event":"Dies in Maryland, months after the death of his wife"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["the-founding-documents"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-founding-documents","url":"/works/the-founding-documents/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":null,"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"joseph-story","name":"Joseph Story","url":"/great-lives/joseph-story/","dates":"1779–1845","born":1779,"died":1845,"era":"19th-century","categories":["legal-scholars-lawgivers"],"knownFor":"Supreme Court justice and Harvard professor whose Commentaries on the Constitution shaped American law.","bio":"Joseph Story was born in Marblehead, Massachusetts, the son of a doctor who had taken part in the Boston Tea Party. He graduated from Harvard, became a lawyer, and served in the Massachusetts legislature and briefly in Congress. In 1811 President James Madison appointed him to the Supreme Court; at thirty-two he remains the youngest justice ever appointed. He served for thirty-four years and became John Marshall's closest ally on the Court. In Martin v. Hunter's Lessee in 1816 he upheld the Supreme Court's power to review state court decisions on federal questions. In the Amistad case of 1841 he wrote the opinion freeing Africans who had seized the slave ship carrying them, holding that they had been illegally kidnapped. In Prigg v. Pennsylvania in 1842, however, he upheld the federal fugitive slave law over a state law. While still on the Court he became the first Dane Professor of Law at Harvard and wrote a series of influential Commentaries, including the three-volume Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States. He died in 1845.","keyDates":[{"date":"1811","event":"Appointed to the Supreme Court at 32"},{"date":"1816","event":"Martin v. Hunter's Lessee"},{"date":"1829","event":"Dane Professor of Law at Harvard"},{"date":"1833","event":"Commentaries on the Constitution"},{"date":"1841","event":"The Amistad decision"},{"date":"1845","event":"Dies in Cambridge"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["dartmouth-college-v-woodward","united-states-v-the-amistad"],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[{"text":"Nominated at 32, he is still the youngest person ever nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court.","source":{"title":"Joseph Story (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Story"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Story","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"harriet-beecher-stowe","name":"Harriet Beecher Stowe","url":"/great-lives/harriet-beecher-stowe/","dates":"1811–1896","born":1811,"died":1896,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets","saints-reformers"],"knownFor":"American author and abolitionist whose novel Uncle Tom's Cabin turned many readers against slavery.","bio":"Harriet Beecher was born in 1811 in Litchfield, Connecticut, one of the many children of Lyman Beecher, a famous Congregationalist minister; several of her brothers became preachers, including Henry Ward Beecher, and her sister Catharine was a pioneer in women's education. Harriet studied and then taught at Catharine's school in Hartford. In 1832 the family moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, across the river from the slave state of Kentucky, where she met people who had escaped slavery. She married Calvin Stowe, a professor of theology, in 1836, and they had seven children; the death of her infant son Samuel in 1849 helped her understand the grief of enslaved mothers separated from their children. After the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, she wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin, which appeared as a serial and then as a book in 1852. It became the best-selling novel of the nineteenth century and increased opposition to slavery in the North. She wrote many other books and lived in Hartford, near Mark Twain, where she died in 1896.","keyDates":[{"date":"1811","event":"Born in Litchfield, Connecticut"},{"date":"1832","event":"Moves to Cincinnati"},{"date":"1836","event":"Marries Calvin Stowe"},{"date":"1850","event":"Fugitive Slave Act passed"},{"date":"1852","event":"Uncle Tom's Cabin published as a book"},{"date":"1896","event":"Dies in Hartford"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Harriet Beecher Stowe","relatedWorks":["uncle-toms-cabin"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"uncle-toms-cabin","url":"/works/uncle-toms-cabin/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[{"name":"Stowe Center for Literary Activism","note":"Harriet Beecher Stowe lived at this Forest Street house in Hartford, Connecticut from 1873 until her death in 1896, long after writing Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The museum offers school-group tours about her life, writing, and abolition.","url":"https://stowecenter.org/visit/group/","urlLabel":"Stowe Center for Literary Activism — school and group visits"}],"faith":{"note":"Daughter of the Calvinist preacher Lyman Beecher and a deeply religious mother.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harriet_Beecher_Stowe","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"snorri-sturluson","name":"Snorri Sturluson","url":"/great-lives/snorri-sturluson/","dates":"1179–1241","born":1179,"died":1241,"era":"medieval","categories":["writers-poets","statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"Icelandic historian, poet and chieftain, author of the Prose Edda and Heimskringla.","bio":"Snorri Sturluson was born in 1179 in Hvammur, in western Iceland, into a powerful chieftain family. From the age of three or four he was raised at Oddi by Jón Loftsson, a powerful chieftain, a fosterage that shaped his education. In 1199 he married Herdís, from whose father he inherited an estate and a chieftainship. He later lived at Reykholt, where his outdoor bath fed by hot springs, Snorralaug, survives. He served twice as lawspeaker of the Althing, Iceland's assembly. In 1218 he sailed to Norway at royal invitation and became well acquainted with the young King Hákon and Jarl Skúli. Snorri wrote the Prose Edda, a handbook for poets that also retells many myths of the Norse gods, such as Odin and Thor. He is also credited with Heimskringla, a history of the kings of Norway, and possibly with Egil's Saga. He became caught up in Iceland's bitter power struggles and in quarrels with the Norwegian king. In 1241 he was killed at Reykholt by men claiming to act for the King of Norway.","keyDates":[{"date":"1179","event":"Born in Hvammur, Iceland"},{"date":"1215","event":"First term as lawspeaker"},{"date":"1218","event":"Travels to Norway"},{"date":"c. 1220","event":"Prose Edda written"},{"date":"1241","event":"Killed at Reykholt"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Snorri Sturluson","relatedWorks":["prose-edda"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"prose-edda","url":"/works/prose-edda/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snorri_Sturluson","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"suetonius","name":"Suetonius","url":"/great-lives/suetonius/","dates":"c. 69–after 122","born":70,"died":126,"era":"ancient","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Roman writer of The Twelve Caesars, biographies of Julius Caesar and the first eleven emperors.","bio":"Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, known as Suetonius, was a Roman writer born around AD 69, probably in North Africa, into a family of the equestrian class; his father was a military officer. He was educated at a time when schools of rhetoric flourished in Rome. He was a friend of the writer and senator Pliny the Younger, who described him as quiet, studious and dedicated to writing. Under the emperors Trajan and Hadrian he held important posts at the imperial court in Rome: he directed the imperial archives and, under Hadrian, became the emperor's secretary. A later, often unreliable source says he was dismissed around 122. His best-known work, The Lives of the Twelve Caesars, tells the lives of Julius Caesar and the first eleven emperors, from Augustus to Domitian. It mixes public deeds with personal details, habits and gossip, which have made it lively reading and a much-used, if not always reliable, source. He also wrote many other works, including lives of famous writers, of which only parts survive. He died sometime after 122.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 69","event":"Born"},{"date":"c. 119","event":"Serves at the imperial court"},{"date":"c. 121","event":"The Twelve Caesars"},{"date":"c. 122","event":"Dismissed under Hadrian"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Suetonius","relatedWorks":["the-twelve-caesars"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-twelve-caesars","url":"/works/the-twelve-caesars/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suetonius","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"suleiman-the-magnificent","name":"Suleiman the Magnificent","url":"/great-lives/suleiman-the-magnificent/","dates":"1494–1566","born":1494,"died":1566,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["kings-queens-emperors","legal-scholars-lawgivers"],"knownFor":"Ottoman sultan at the height of the empire's power, known to Turks as the Lawgiver.","bio":"Suleiman I became sultan of the Ottoman Empire in 1520 and reigned for forty-six years, the longest of any sultan. In the West he was called the Magnificent; in Turkey he is called Kanuni, the Lawgiver, for his work bringing the empire's laws into order. Early in his reign he took Belgrade and the island of Rhodes, and in 1526 he crushed the Hungarian army at the battle of Mohács. In 1529 he besieged Vienna but had to withdraw. His fleets, led by Hayreddin Barbarossa, controlled much of the Mediterranean, and his armies took Baghdad. He supported poets and wrote poetry himself, and his chief architect, Mimar Sinan, built the great Süleymaniye Mosque in Istanbul. He married Hürrem, also known as Roxelana, who had come to his palace as a captive; she became highly influential. Rivalries over the succession led him to order the deaths of two of his own sons. He died in 1566 during a siege in Hungary.","keyDates":[{"date":"1520","event":"Becomes sultan"},{"date":"1526","event":"Victory at Mohács"},{"date":"1529","event":"Siege of Vienna"},{"date":"1557","event":"Süleymaniye Mosque completed"},{"date":"1566","event":"Dies at the siege of Szigetvár"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["runciman-the-fall-of-constantinople-1453"],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[{"text":"His reign was the longest of any Ottoman sultan.","source":{"title":"Suleiman the Magnificent (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suleiman_the_Magnificent"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A Sunni Muslim sultan of the Ottoman Empire.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suleiman_the_Magnificent","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"rosemary-sutcliff","name":"Rosemary Sutcliff","url":"/great-lives/rosemary-sutcliff/","dates":"1920–1992","born":1920,"died":1992,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"English author of historical novels for young readers, including The Eagle of the Ninth and Black Ships Before Troy.","bio":"Rosemary Sutcliff was born in 1920 in East Clandon, Surrey, England, and spent her childhood in Malta and at naval bases where her father, a Royal Navy officer, was stationed. When she was very young she developed Still's disease, a form of arthritis, and she used a wheelchair for most of her life. Because of her illness she spent much of her time with her mother, who told her many Celtic and Saxon legends. She did not learn to read until she was nine. At fourteen she entered the Bideford Art School, and she then worked as a painter of miniatures. Inspired by the historical novels of Geoffrey Trease, she began writing for children; her first book, The Chronicles of Robin Hood, appeared in 1950. The Eagle of the Ninth (1954), about a young Roman officer who travels beyond Hadrian's Wall to recover the lost standard of his father's legion, began a series about Roman Britain and after, linked by a family's emerald ring. The Lantern Bearers won the Carnegie Medal in 1959. She also retold the Iliad in Black Ships Before Troy. She died in 1992.","keyDates":[{"date":"1920","event":"Born in East Clandon, Surrey"},{"date":"1950","event":"The Chronicles of Robin Hood published"},{"date":"1954","event":"The Eagle of the Ninth published"},{"date":"1959","event":"Carnegie Medal for The Lantern Bearers"},{"date":"1974","event":"Runner-up for the Hans Christian Andersen Medal"},{"date":"1992","event":"Dies"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Rosemary Sutcliff","relatedWorks":["the-eagle-of-the-ninth","black-ships-before-troy"],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"library","work":"black-ships-before-troy","url":"/works/black-ships-before-troy/"},{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-eagle-of-the-ninth","url":"/works/the-eagle-of-the-ninth/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosemary_Sutcliff","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"jonathan-swift","name":"Jonathan Swift","url":"/great-lives/jonathan-swift/","dates":"1667–1745","born":1667,"died":1745,"era":"18th-century","categories":["writers-poets","theologians-church-fathers"],"knownFor":"Anglo-Irish satirist and clergyman, author of Gulliver's Travels and A Modest Proposal.","bio":"Jonathan Swift was born in Dublin in 1667, several months after the death of his father. He was educated at Kilkenny College and Trinity College Dublin. He then worked in England as secretary to the statesman Sir William Temple, whose household included a young girl, Esther Johnson, later Swift's close friend 'Stella'. He was ordained in the Church of Ireland and wrote A Tale of a Tub, a satire on religious quarrels. In London he became a leading political writer for the Tory government of Queen Anne. In 1713 he was made Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin, a post he held for the rest of his life. He wrote many pamphlets defending Irish interests, including the Drapier's Letters. Gulliver's Travels (1726) sends its hero to a land of tiny people, a land of giants, a flying island and a country ruled by wise horses, satirizing human nature and politics. A Modest Proposal (1729) ironically suggests that the poor of Ireland sell their children as food. In his last years he lost his mental faculties. He died in Dublin in 1745.","keyDates":[{"date":"1667","event":"Born in Dublin"},{"date":"1704","event":"A Tale of a Tub published"},{"date":"1713","event":"Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral"},{"date":"1726","event":"Gulliver's Travels published"},{"date":"1729","event":"A Modest Proposal published"},{"date":"1745","event":"Dies in Dublin"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Jonathan Swift","relatedWorks":["a-modest-proposal","gullivers-travels"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"a-modest-proposal","url":"/works/a-modest-proposal/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"gullivers-travels","url":"/works/gullivers-travels/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"Many streets, monuments and festivals in Ireland are named after him.","source":{"title":"Jonathan Swift (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Swift"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"An Anglican clergyman who accepted the doctrines of the Church of England.","source":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Swift%2C_Jonathan","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica (1911) (via Wikisource)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"thomas-sydenham","name":"Thomas Sydenham","url":"/great-lives/thomas-sydenham/","dates":"1624–1689","born":1624,"died":1689,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["physicians-medicine"],"knownFor":"English physician called \"the English Hippocrates\" for describing diseases from careful bedside observation.","bio":"Thomas Sydenham was born in 1624 at Wynford Eagle in Dorset, England, into a Puritan gentry family. His studies at Oxford were interrupted by the English Civil War, in which he and his brothers fought for Parliament. After the war he returned to Oxford, took a degree in medicine and settled in practice in London. Sydenham rejected elaborate theories about hidden causes of disease. Instead, following the example of Hippocrates, he taught that a physician should observe patients closely and describe each disease as a naturalist describes a plant, noting its regular course and symptoms. His Observationes Medicae (1676) described London's epidemics year by year. He gave classic accounts of gout, from which he suffered himself, of measles and scarlet fever, and of the childhood movement disorder still called Sydenham's chorea. He promoted Peruvian bark (cinchona, the source of quinine) for intermittent fevers and used a preparation of opium that became known as Sydenham's laudanum. His friend John Locke assisted him for a time. He died in London on 29 December 1689.","keyDates":[{"date":"1624","event":"Born at Wynford Eagle, Dorset"},{"date":"1642–1646","event":"Fights for Parliament in the English Civil War"},{"date":"1676","event":"Publishes Observationes Medicae"},{"date":"1686","event":"Describes the chorea later named after him"},{"date":"1689","event":"Dies in London on 29 December"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"hippocratic-writings","url":"/works/hippocratic-writings/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Thought deeply about theology and left a manuscript fragment titled 'Theologia Rationalis'.","source":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dictionary_of_National_Biography%2C_1885-1900/Sydenham%2C_Thomas","sourceName":"Dictionary of National Biography (1885–1900) (via Wikisource)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["The chorea description appeared in Schedula Monitoria (1686)."]},{"slug":"tacitus","name":"Tacitus","url":"/great-lives/tacitus/","dates":"c. 56–120","born":56,"died":120,"era":"ancient","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Roman historian and senator, author of the Annals, the Histories, Agricola and Germania.","bio":"Publius Cornelius Tacitus was a Roman historian and senator born around AD 56, probably in Gaul or northern Italy, into a family of the equestrian class. He studied rhetoric in Rome and became a well-known orator. In 77 or 78 he married Julia, daughter of Gnaeus Julius Agricola, the general responsible for much of the Roman conquest of Britain. He rose through the offices of state and became consul in 97, the first of his family to do so. Later, around 112, he served as governor of the province of Asia. His first works, written around 98, were Agricola, a life of his father-in-law that also describes Britain and its people, and Germania, an account of the Germanic peoples. His two great histories, the Histories and the Annals, together covered the Roman Empire from the death of Augustus in AD 14 to the death of Domitian in 96, though large parts are lost. Writing in a brief, sharp style, he described the cruelty and flattery of court life under the emperors and the loss of the old Roman freedoms. He died around 120.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 56","event":"Born"},{"date":"c. 77","event":"Marries the daughter of Agricola"},{"date":"97","event":"Consul"},{"date":"98","event":"Agricola and Germania written"},{"date":"c. 112","event":"Governor of Asia"},{"date":"c. 120","event":"Dies"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Tacitus","relatedWorks":["the-agricola-and-the-germania","the-annals-of-imperial-rome","tacitus-the-histories"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-agricola-and-the-germania","url":"/works/the-agricola-and-the-germania/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-annals-of-imperial-rome","url":"/works/the-annals-of-imperial-rome/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"tacitus-the-histories","url":"/works/tacitus-the-histories/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacitus","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"rabindranath-tagore","name":"Rabindranath Tagore","url":"/great-lives/rabindranath-tagore/","dates":"1861–1941","born":1861,"died":1941,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets","artists-composers-architects"],"knownFor":"Bengali poet, composer and educator; author of Gitanjali and the first non-European Nobel laureate in literature (1913).","bio":"Rabindranath Tagore was born in Calcutta in 1861, the youngest son of Debendranath Tagore, a leader of the reforming Brahmo Samaj. Educated mostly at home, he began writing poetry as a boy and briefly studied law in England. He managed his family's estates in rural Bengal, an experience reflected in his short stories. In 1901 he founded a school at Santiniketan, which later grew into Visva-Bharati University. He wrote poems, songs, plays, novels and essays, and composed more than two thousand songs, including those that became the national anthems of India and Bangladesh. His own English prose versions of his poems, Gitanjali (1912), introduced by W. B. Yeats, won him the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913. He was knighted in 1915 but renounced the honor in 1919 after the Amritsar massacre. He travelled widely, lecturing on education and on the dangers of aggressive nationalism, and he took up painting late in life. He died in Calcutta in 1941.","keyDates":[{"date":"1861","event":"Born in Calcutta"},{"date":"1901","event":"Founds school at Santiniketan"},{"date":"1913","event":"Nobel Prize in Literature"},{"date":"1919","event":"Renounces knighthood after Amritsar"},{"date":"1941","event":"Dies in Calcutta"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Rabindranath Tagore","relatedWorks":["tagore-gitanjali"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"tagore-gitanjali","url":"/works/tagore-gitanjali/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Son of the religious reformer Debendranath Tagore; his Gitanjali (Song Offerings) gathered his own English translations of his religious poems.","source":"https://www.britannica.com/biography/Rabindranath-Tagore","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"r-h-tawney","name":"R. H. Tawney","url":"/great-lives/r-h-tawney/","dates":"1880–1962","born":1880,"died":1962,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets","saints-reformers"],"knownFor":"English economic historian and social critic, author of Religion and the Rise of Capitalism.","bio":"Richard Henry Tawney was born in 1880 in Calcutta, India, the son of the Sanskrit scholar Charles Henry Tawney. He was educated at Rugby School and Balliol College, Oxford. After university he lived at Toynbee Hall, a settlement house in a poor area of London, and he became a tutor for the Workers' Educational Association, teaching evening classes to working people in towns such as Rochdale. He served in the First World War and was wounded twice on the first day of the Battle of the Somme in 1916. He later taught at the London School of Economics for many years and became professor of economic history. A Christian socialist and member of the Labour Party, he argued in The Acquisitive Society (1920) and Equality (1931) that society should value service and fellowship above the pursuit of wealth. In Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (1926), he traced how religious thought in England moved from condemning greed to accepting the pursuit of profit, building on the ideas of Max Weber. He died in London in 1962.","keyDates":[{"date":"1880","event":"Born in Calcutta"},{"date":"1916","event":"Wounded at the Battle of the Somme"},{"date":"1920","event":"The Acquisitive Society published"},{"date":"1926","event":"Religion and the Rise of Capitalism published"},{"date":"1931","event":"Equality published"},{"date":"1962","event":"Dies in London"}],"quotes":[],"author":"R. H. Tawney","relatedWorks":["tawney-religion-and-the-rise-of-capitalism","tawney-the-acquisitive-society"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"tawney-religion-and-the-rise-of-capitalism","url":"/works/tawney-religion-and-the-rise-of-capitalism/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"tawney-the-acquisitive-society","url":"/works/tawney-the-acquisitive-society/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A Christian socialist and regular churchgoer whose faith was a personal matter.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._H._Tawney","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"george-taylor","name":"George Taylor","url":"/great-lives/george-taylor/","dates":"c. 1716–1781","born":1716,"died":1781,"era":"18th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"Irish-born Pennsylvania ironmaster, once an indentured servant, who was appointed to Congress in 1776 and signed the Declaration.","bio":"George Taylor was born in Ireland about 1716 and came to Pennsylvania as a young man, traditionally as an indentured servant at an ironworks. He rose to become an ironmaster in the Lehigh Valley, operating furnaces that later supplied shot and shell to the Continental Army. He sat in the colonial assembly and in 1776 was appointed to the Continental Congress as Pennsylvania reorganized its delegation. He had not been a member on 4 July, but he signed the engrossed Declaration. Ill health limited his later service in Congress. Taylor's ironworks depended in part on bound and enslaved labor, a fact that belongs in any honest account of his rise. He died in 1781. His path from indentured laborer to signer is one of the most striking among the fifty-six, and it does not cancel the harder parts of the record.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 1716","event":"Born in Ireland"},{"date":"1776","event":"Appointed to Congress and signs the Declaration"},{"date":"1781","event":"Dies in Easton, Pennsylvania"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["the-founding-documents"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-founding-documents","url":"/works/the-founding-documents/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":null,"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"pyotr-ilyich-tchaikovsky","name":"Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky","url":"/great-lives/pyotr-ilyich-tchaikovsky/","dates":"1840–1893","born":1840,"died":1893,"era":"19th-century","categories":["artists-composers-architects"],"knownFor":"Russian composer of The Nutcracker, Swan Lake and the 1812 Overture.","bio":"Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was born in Votkinsk, Russia, the son of a mining engineer. He showed musical talent early but was sent to a school of jurisprudence and worked as a government clerk. In 1862 he enrolled at the new St. Petersburg Conservatory, and in 1866 he became a teacher of harmony at the Moscow Conservatory. His music joined Russian melodies and feeling with the forms of Western European music. A wealthy widow, Nadezhda von Meck, supported him with a yearly allowance for thirteen years, allowing him to compose full time, though by agreement they never met. He wrote six symphonies, concertos for piano and violin, the operas Eugene Onegin and The Queen of Spades, and the 1812 Overture, which celebrates Russia's defeat of Napoleon with cannon fire. His three ballets, Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker, are among the most performed ballets in the world. In 1891 he conducted at the opening of Carnegie Hall in New York. He conducted the premiere of his Sixth Symphony, the Pathétique, in October 1893 and died nine days later in St. Petersburg, officially of cholera.","keyDates":[{"date":"1862","event":"Enters the St. Petersburg Conservatory"},{"date":"1877","event":"Swan Lake premieres"},{"date":"1880","event":"Writes the 1812 Overture"},{"date":"1892","event":"The Nutcracker premieres"},{"date":"1893","event":"Dies in St. Petersburg"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"He began piano lessons at the age of five.","source":{"title":"Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyotr_Ilyich_Tchaikovsky"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyotr_Ilyich_Tchaikovsky","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["The cause of his death has been debated; cholera is the official cause."]},{"slug":"tecumseh","name":"Tecumseh","url":"/great-lives/tecumseh/","dates":"1768–1813","born":1768,"died":1813,"era":"19th-century","categories":["military-leaders","statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"Shawnee leader who tried to unite the tribes against American expansion.","bio":"Tecumseh was born in the Ohio country into the Shawnee nation. His father was killed fighting the Virginia militia in 1774, and he grew up during years of warfare with American settlers moving into Shawnee lands. As a young man he became a respected warrior and fought at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794, after which many tribes signed the Treaty of Greenville, giving up most of Ohio. Tecumseh refused to sign. With his brother Tenskwatawa, a religious leader called the Prophet, he founded the village of Prophetstown in Indiana. Tecumseh argued that the land belonged to all the tribes in common, so no single tribe could sell it, and he traveled from the Great Lakes to the Gulf South to build an alliance. In 1811, while he was away, Governor William Henry Harrison attacked and burned Prophetstown at the Battle of Tippecanoe. In the War of 1812 Tecumseh allied with the British and helped capture Detroit. When the British retreated into Canada, he was killed at the Battle of the Thames in October 1813, and his alliance broke apart.","keyDates":[{"date":"1794","event":"Fights at Fallen Timbers"},{"date":"1808","event":"Founds Prophetstown with his brother"},{"date":"1811","event":"Battle of Tippecanoe"},{"date":"1812","event":"Helps capture Detroit"},{"date":"1813","event":"Killed at the Battle of the Thames"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"In 2024 the asteroid 47069 Tecumseh was named in his honour.","source":{"title":"Tecumseh (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tecumseh"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented; his brother Tenskwatawa founded a Native religious movement that Tecumseh's alliance drew on.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tecumseh","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"corrie-ten-boom","name":"Corrie ten Boom","url":"/great-lives/corrie-ten-boom/","dates":"1892–1983","born":1892,"died":1983,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["saints-reformers"],"knownFor":"Dutch watchmaker whose family hid Jews from the Nazis; author of The Hiding Place.","bio":"Cornelia ten Boom was born in Haarlem, the Netherlands, into a devout Christian family. Her father, Casper, was a watchmaker, and in 1922 Corrie became the first woman licensed as a watchmaker in the country. After Germany occupied the Netherlands in 1940, the ten Booms joined the Dutch resistance. They built a small secret room behind a false wall in Corrie's bedroom, and hid Jews and resistance workers there; the family helped many people escape. In February 1944 an informer betrayed them, and the Gestapo arrested the family, though the people hiding in the secret room were not found. Her father died within days in prison. Corrie and her sister Betsie were sent to the Ravensbrück concentration camp in Germany, where they held secret Bible readings. Betsie died there in December 1944, and Corrie was released shortly afterward because of a clerical error. After the war she opened a home for people recovering from the war and traveled to more than sixty countries speaking about forgiveness. Her book The Hiding Place appeared in 1971. She died in California on her ninety-first birthday in 1983.","keyDates":[{"date":"1922","event":"First licensed woman watchmaker in the Netherlands"},{"date":"1942","event":"Family begins hiding refugees"},{"date":"1944","event":"Arrested; sent to Ravensbrück"},{"date":"1971","event":"The Hiding Place published"},{"date":"1983","event":"Dies in California"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Corrie ten Boom","relatedWorks":["the-hiding-place"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-hiding-place","url":"/works/the-hiding-place/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[{"text":"In 1922 she became the first woman licensed as a watchmaker in the Netherlands.","source":{"title":"Corrie ten Boom (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrie_ten_Boom"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Raised a Calvinist Christian in the Dutch Reformed Church; her family's faith led them to shelter people in danger during the Second World War.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrie_ten_Boom","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"alfred-lord-tennyson","name":"Alfred, Lord Tennyson","url":"/great-lives/alfred-lord-tennyson/","dates":"1809–1892","born":1809,"died":1892,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"English poet, Poet Laureate for over forty years, author of In Memoriam, Ulysses and The Charge of the Light Brigade.","bio":"Alfred Tennyson was born in 1809 in Somersby, Lincolnshire, the son of a clergyman. He began writing poetry as a boy and at Trinity College, Cambridge, joined a group of friends called the Apostles, including Arthur Hallam, who became his closest friend. Hallam's sudden death in 1833 affected Tennyson deeply, and over many years he wrote the long elegy In Memoriam A.H.H., published in 1850. In that year he also married Emily Sellwood and succeeded William Wordsworth as Poet Laureate, a post he held until his death. His poems include The Lady of Shalott, Ulysses, Break, Break, Break, Crossing the Bar and The Charge of the Light Brigade, written after a disastrous cavalry charge in the Crimean War. Idylls of the King retells the legends of King Arthur in a series of poems. Queen Victoria made him a baron in 1884. He died in 1892 and was buried in Westminster Abbey.","keyDates":[{"date":"1809","event":"Born in Somersby, Lincolnshire"},{"date":"1833","event":"Death of his friend Arthur Hallam"},{"date":"1850","event":"In Memoriam published; becomes Poet Laureate"},{"date":"1854","event":"The Charge of the Light Brigade"},{"date":"1884","event":"Made a baron"},{"date":"1892","event":"Dies; buried in Westminster Abbey"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Alfred, Lord Tennyson","relatedWorks":["tennyson-ulysses"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"tennyson-ulysses","url":"/works/tennyson-ulysses/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[{"text":"He was Poet Laureate from 1850 until his death in 1892, the longest time anyone has held the post.","source":{"title":"Alfred, Lord Tennyson (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred,_Lord_Tennyson"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Son of an Anglican clergyman.","source":"https://www.britannica.com/biography/Alfred-Lord-Tennyson","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"teresa-of-avila","name":"Teresa of Ávila","url":"/great-lives/teresa-of-avila/","dates":"1515–1582","born":1515,"died":1582,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["saints-reformers","theologians-church-fathers"],"knownFor":"Spanish Carmelite nun, reformer and writer on prayer.","bio":"Teresa de Cepeda y Ahumada was born in Ávila, Spain. As a girl she loved tales of knights and saints, and at seven she ran away with her brother hoping to be martyred, but an uncle brought them back. At twenty she entered the Carmelite convent of the Incarnation in Ávila, where life was comfortable and full of visitors. She suffered severe illness, and for years she struggled in prayer, until around 1554, before an image of the wounded Christ, she experienced a deep conversion. She then reported visions and mystical experiences, which some of her confessors doubted. In 1562 she founded a small, strict convent, St. Joseph's, where nuns lived in poverty, enclosure and prayer, wearing sandals; they became known as the Discalced, or barefoot, Carmelites. Despite illness and opposition she traveled across Spain by mule cart, founding seventeen convents, and with John of the Cross she reformed the Carmelite friars. Her books, including her Life, The Way of Perfection and The Interior Castle, are classics of Spanish prose. She died in 1582 and was the first woman named a Doctor of the Church.","keyDates":[{"date":"1535","event":"Enters the Carmelite convent"},{"date":"c. 1554","event":"Conversion before an image of Christ"},{"date":"1562","event":"Founds St. Joseph's, Ávila"},{"date":"1577","event":"The Interior Castle"},{"date":"1582","event":"Dies at Alba de Tormes"},{"date":"1970","event":"Named a Doctor of the Church"}],"quotes":[{"text":"mental prayer is nothing else, in my opinion, but being on terms of friendship with God","work":"life-of-st-teresa-of-jesus","location":"Chapter VIII, § 7","verified":true}],"author":"Teresa of Avila","relatedWorks":["life-of-st-teresa-of-jesus"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"life-of-st-teresa-of-jesus","url":"/works/life-of-st-teresa-of-jesus/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Spanish Carmelite nun who founded the convents of the Discalced Carmelites; a Catholic saint.","source":"https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14515b.htm","sourceName":"Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"nikola-tesla","name":"Nikola Tesla","url":"/great-lives/nikola-tesla/","dates":"1856–1943","born":1856,"died":1943,"era":"19th-century","categories":["inventors"],"knownFor":"Serbian-American inventor of the alternating-current motor and power system.","bio":"Nikola Tesla was born in Smiljan, in what is now Croatia, the son of a Serbian Orthodox priest. He studied engineering in Graz and worked for telephone and electric companies in Budapest and Paris. In 1884 he arrived in New York and worked briefly for Thomas Edison but soon left after a dispute. In 1887 and 1888 he patented an induction motor and a system for generating and sending alternating current, which could carry electricity over long distances more efficiently than Edison's direct current. George Westinghouse bought his patents, and after a bitter rivalry, the so-called war of the currents, alternating current won; it lit the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 and powered the first great hydroelectric plant at Niagara Falls in 1896. Tesla also invented the Tesla coil and worked on radio, remote control and wireless power, building a tall tower on Long Island for wireless transmission that he never finished. He had a remarkable memory and odd habits. He spent his last years alone in New York hotels and died poor in 1943.","keyDates":[{"date":"1856","event":"Born in Smiljan"},{"date":"1884","event":"Arrives in New York"},{"date":"1888","event":"Alternating-current motor patents"},{"date":"1893","event":"AC lights the Chicago World's Fair"},{"date":"1896","event":"Niagara Falls power plant"},{"date":"1943","event":"Dies in New York"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"book","title":"Who Was Nikola Tesla?","author":"Jim Gigliotti","isbn13":"9780448488592","publisher":"Paperback","year":2018,"format":"paperback"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Son of a Serbian Orthodox priest and raised in the Eastern Orthodox Church.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"theophrastus","name":"Theophrastus","url":"/great-lives/theophrastus/","dates":"c. 371–287 BC","born":-371,"died":-287,"era":"ancient","categories":["philosophers","scientists-mathematicians"],"knownFor":"Greek philosopher who succeeded Aristotle as head of the Lyceum, often called the father of botany.","bio":"Theophrastus was born around 371 BC in Eresos, on the Greek island of Lesbos. His given name was Tyrtamus; the nickname Theophrastus, meaning 'divine speaker', is said to have been given to him by Aristotle because of the grace of his conversation. After studying philosophy on Lesbos, he moved to Athens, where he may have studied under Plato, and became Aristotle's close colleague. When Aristotle left Athens, Theophrastus took over as head of the Lyceum, the school Aristotle had founded, and led it for about thirty-five years. According to the ancient biographer Diogenes Laërtius, the school flourished and at one time had more than 2,000 students. Theophrastus wrote on almost every area of philosophy and science. His Enquiry into Plants and On the Causes of Plants laid the foundations of botanical science and earned him the title 'father of botany'. His Characters is a set of short sketches of human types. He also wrote on stones, the senses, logic and ethics. He died around 287 BC, and the Athenians honoured him with a public funeral.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 371 BC","event":"Born in Eresos, Lesbos"},{"date":"c. 322 BC","event":"Becomes head of the Lyceum"},{"date":"c. 287 BC","event":"Dies in Athens"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Theophrastus","relatedWorks":["characters"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"characters","url":"/works/characters/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"His real name was Tyrtamus; 'Theophrastus', meaning 'divine speaker', is said to have been a nickname given to him by Aristotle for his graceful way of talking.","source":{"title":"Theophrastus (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theophrastus"}}],"records":[{"text":"His Characters is the first recorded attempt at systematic character writing.","source":{"title":"Theophrastus (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theophrastus"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theophrastus","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"therese-of-lisieux","name":"Thérèse of Lisieux","url":"/great-lives/therese-of-lisieux/","dates":"1873–1897","born":1873,"died":1897,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["saints-reformers"],"knownFor":"French Carmelite nun, author of the autobiography Story of a Soul, canonized as a saint in 1925.","bio":"Thérèse Martin was born in 1873 in Alençon, Normandy, France, the youngest of five surviving daughters of Louis Martin, a watchmaker, and Zélie Martin, a lacemaker. Her mother died when she was four, and the family moved to Lisieux. As a girl she wanted to join two of her older sisters in the town's enclosed Carmelite convent. Because she was so young, on a pilgrimage to Rome in 1887 she asked Pope Leo XIII himself for permission. She entered the Lisieux Carmel at fifteen in 1888, taking the name Sister Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face. She described her 'little way', which taught that holiness could be found in ordinary everyday acts done with love. At the request of her superiors she wrote memoirs of her life. She died of tuberculosis in 1897, aged 24. Her writings were published the next year as Story of a Soul, which became widely read around the world. She was canonized by Pope Pius XI in 1925, and in 1997 Pope John Paul II declared her a Doctor of the Church.","keyDates":[{"date":"1873","event":"Born in Alençon, France"},{"date":"1888","event":"Enters the Carmelite convent at Lisieux"},{"date":"1897","event":"Dies at Lisieux, aged 24"},{"date":"1898","event":"Story of a Soul published"},{"date":"1925","event":"Canonized"},{"date":"1997","event":"Declared a Doctor of the Church"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Therese of Lisieux","relatedWorks":["story-of-a-soul"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"story-of-a-soul","url":"/works/story-of-a-soul/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"French Carmelite nun of Lisieux, known as the Little Flower of Jesus; a Catholic saint.","source":"https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/17721a.htm","sourceName":"Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"thomas-a-kempis","name":"Thomas à Kempis","url":"/great-lives/thomas-a-kempis/","dates":"c. 1380–1471","born":1380,"died":1471,"era":"medieval","categories":["theologians-church-fathers","writers-poets"],"knownFor":"German-born canon of the Devotio Moderna, traditionally credited with The Imitation of Christ, the most widely read Christian devotional book.","bio":"Thomas Hemerken was born around 1380 in Kempen, near Düsseldorf, from which he takes his name. As a boy he went to school at Deventer in the Netherlands, where he came under the influence of the Brethren of the Common Life, followers of Geert Groote's movement of practical lay piety known as the Devotio Moderna. In 1399 he entered the house of Augustinian canons at Mount Saint Agnes near Zwolle, where his brother was prior. He was ordained a priest in 1413 or 1414 and spent the rest of his long life there, copying manuscripts, including a complete Bible, instructing novices and writing sermons, biographies and devotional works. He is traditionally credited with The Imitation of Christ, a four-book guide to the inner life written in the 1420s, which has been printed in more editions and languages than almost any book except the Bible. Scholars have debated its authorship, but most accept his. He died at Mount Saint Agnes in 1471. Christians still read it as a guide to prayer and humility.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 1380","event":"Born at Kempen"},{"date":"1399","event":"Enters Mount Saint Agnes"},{"date":"c. 1414","event":"Ordained priest"},{"date":"c. 1418–1427","event":"Imitation of Christ written"},{"date":"1471","event":"Dies at Mount Saint Agnes"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Thomas à Kempis","relatedWorks":["imitation-of-christ"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"imitation-of-christ","url":"/works/imitation-of-christ/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Canon regular of the Brothers of the Common Life and author of The Imitation of Christ.","source":"https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14661a.htm","sourceName":"Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"dylan-thomas","name":"Dylan Thomas","url":"/great-lives/dylan-thomas/","dates":"1914–1953","born":1914,"died":1953,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Welsh lyric poet of Fern Hill and Do not go gentle; famous public reader.","bio":"Dylan Marlais Thomas (1914–1953) was a Welsh poet whose thick musical lyrics and public readings made him one of the most famous mid-century voices in English. Born in Swansea, he published early volumes in the 1930s and later wrote Fern Hill, Poem in October, and the villanelle Do not go gentle into that good night. He also wrote the radio play Under Milk Wood, a comic-serious portrait of a Welsh village day. Alcohol, money trouble, and an early death in New York shaped a romantic myth that teachers should separate from careful reading of the poems themselves. His collected poems remain copyrighted in the United States, so this library offers an abstract-only guide rather than hosting poem texts. Classical Christian classrooms can still use a few lyrics for rhetoric, memory, and conversations about grief.","keyDates":[{"year":1914,"event":"Born in Swansea, Wales."},{"year":1934,"event":"18 Poems published."},{"year":1952,"event":"Collected Poems 1934–1952 published."},{"year":1953,"event":"Dies in New York."}],"quotes":[],"author":"dylan-thomas","relatedWorks":["dylan-thomas-collected-poems"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"dylan-thomas-collected-poems","url":"/works/dylan-thomas-collected-poems/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":null,"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"henry-david-thoreau","name":"Henry David Thoreau","url":"/great-lives/henry-david-thoreau/","dates":"1817–1862","born":1817,"died":1862,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets","philosophers"],"knownFor":"American essayist and naturalist, author of Walden and Civil Disobedience.","bio":"Henry David Thoreau was born in 1817 in Concord, Massachusetts, where his family made pencils. He graduated from Harvard College in 1837 and taught school with his brother John, then worked in the family pencil business, as a surveyor and handyman. He became a friend of the writer Ralph Waldo Emerson, who encouraged his writing and introduced him to the Transcendentalists. In 1845 Thoreau built a small cabin on land Emerson owned by Walden Pond, near Concord, and lived there for two years and two months, growing beans, reading, writing and observing nature, to see what life was like when reduced to its essentials. His book Walden (1854) describes the experiment. In 1846 he spent a night in jail for refusing to pay a poll tax, in protest against slavery and the Mexican–American War; his essay later known as Civil Disobedience explained his reasons and influenced later figures such as Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. He opposed slavery and kept detailed journals of nature. He died of tuberculosis in Concord in 1862.","keyDates":[{"date":"1817","event":"Born in Concord, Massachusetts"},{"date":"1837","event":"Graduates from Harvard"},{"date":"1845","event":"Moves to the cabin at Walden Pond"},{"date":"1846","event":"Jailed for refusing to pay a tax"},{"date":"1849","event":"Civil Disobedience published"},{"date":"1854","event":"Walden published"},{"date":"1862","event":"Dies in Concord"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Henry David Thoreau","relatedWorks":["walden"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"walden","url":"/works/walden/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"He admired squirrels for burying seeds, which can sprout into new trees, and said they did a 'great service ... in the economy of the universe'.","source":{"title":"Henry David Thoreau (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_David_Thoreau"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[{"name":"Thoreau Farm","note":"Thoreau Farm in Concord, Massachusetts preserves Henry David Thoreau’s birthplace, not his later Walden cabin. Its official site explains seasonal house tours and ways to explore the grounds.","url":"https://thoreaufarm.org/","urlLabel":"Thoreau Farm — birthplace"}],"faith":{"note":"A Transcendentalist who drew on many religious traditions; he did not enter the church as a profession.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_David_Thoreau","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[{"series":"Very Short Introductions","title":"Henry David Thoreau: A Very Short Introduction","author":"Lawrence Buell","publisher":"Oxford University Press","year":2025,"isbn13":"9780197548189","url":"https://bookshop.org/a/130650/9780197548189"}],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"matthew-thornton","name":"Matthew Thornton","url":"/great-lives/matthew-thornton/","dates":"c. 1714–1803","born":1714,"died":1803,"era":"18th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders","physicians-medicine"],"knownFor":"Irish-born New Hampshire physician who took his seat in Congress late in 1776 and still signed the Declaration.","bio":"Matthew Thornton was born in Ireland around 1714 and came to America as a child. He became a physician in Londonderry, New Hampshire, served as a surgeon in the expedition against Louisbourg in 1745, and later presided over the New Hampshire Provincial Congress. He was not seated in the Continental Congress until November 1776, months after the Declaration had been adopted. Congress still allowed new delegates to sign the engrossed parchment, and Thornton did so, placing his name at the lower left when no room remained beside the other New Hampshire signatures. He later served as a state judge and spent his last years in Merrimack, New Hampshire. He died in 1803, one of the longest-lived of the signers.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 1714","event":"Born in Ireland"},{"date":"1745","event":"Serves as a surgeon in the Louisbourg expedition"},{"date":"1775","event":"President of the New Hampshire Provincial Congress"},{"date":"1776","event":"Takes his seat in Congress in November and signs the Declaration"},{"date":"1803","event":"Dies in New Hampshire"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["the-founding-documents"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-founding-documents","url":"/works/the-founding-documents/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":null,"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"bertel-thorvaldsen","name":"Bertel Thorvaldsen","url":"/great-lives/bertel-thorvaldsen/","dates":"1770–1844","born":1770,"died":1844,"era":"19th-century","categories":["artists-composers-architects"],"knownFor":"Danish neoclassical sculptor, long based in Rome, who designed the Lion of Lucerne.","bio":"Bertel Thorvaldsen was born in Copenhagen on 19 November 1770, the son of a wood-carver from Iceland. He studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and in 1796 won a stipend that took him to Rome, where he spent most of the next forty years. In Rome he became one of the leading neoclassical sculptors of his age, carving calm marble figures of gods, heroes, and Christian subjects for patrons across Europe. Among his works is the design for the Lion of Lucerne, a memorial to the Swiss Guards killed in Paris in 1792, which the stonemason Lukas Ahorn carved into the living rock and which was dedicated in 1821. Thorvaldsen returned to Copenhagen in 1838 as a national figure. He died there on 24 March 1844. His tomb and a large collection of his works are in Thorvaldsens Museum, built beside the palaces of Copenhagen for that purpose.","keyDates":[{"date":"1770","event":"Born in Copenhagen, 19 November"},{"date":"1797","event":"Settles in Rome"},{"date":"1821","event":"Lion of Lucerne, from his design, is dedicated"},{"date":"1838","event":"Returns to Copenhagen"},{"date":"1844","event":"Dies in Copenhagen, 24 March"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["a-tramp-abroad"],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":null,"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"thucydides","name":"Thucydides","url":"/great-lives/thucydides/","dates":"c. 460–395 BC","born":-460,"died":-395,"era":"ancient","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Athenian general and historian, author of the History of the Peloponnesian War.","bio":"Thucydides was an Athenian historian and general born around 460 BC. His father was named Olorus, and his family owned gold mines in Thrace, in northern Greece. When war broke out between Athens and Sparta in 431 BC, he began writing its history, believing that it would be the greatest war yet fought. He survived the great plague that struck Athens early in the war and described its symptoms in detail. In 424 BC he was sent as a general to the island of Thasos, but he failed to prevent the Spartan general Brasidas from capturing the important city of Amphipolis. As a result he was exiled from Athens for twenty years, which he said gave him time to study the war from both sides. His History of the Peloponnesian War, which breaks off in 411 BC, tries to explain events through evidence and human motives rather than the will of the gods, and is often seen as one of the first works of scientific history. It contains famous speeches, including the funeral oration of Pericles. Thucydides died around 400 BC.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 460 BC","event":"Born in Athens"},{"date":"431 BC","event":"Peloponnesian War begins; starts his history"},{"date":"424 BC","event":"Elected general; exiled after the loss of Amphipolis"},{"date":"c. 400 BC","event":"Dies"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Thucydides","relatedWorks":["the-history-of-the-peloponnesian-war"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-history-of-the-peloponnesian-war","url":"/works/the-history-of-the-peloponnesian-war/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thucydides","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[{"series":"Very Short Introductions","title":"Thucydides: A Very Short Introduction","author":"Jennifer T. Roberts","publisher":"Oxford University Press","year":2024,"isbn13":"9780192855824","url":"https://bookshop.org/a/130650/9780192855824"}],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"tisquantum","name":"Tisquantum (Squanto)","url":"/great-lives/tisquantum/","dates":"d. 1622","died":1622,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"Patuxet interpreter and guide who had been taken to Spain in 1614 and later lived among the Plymouth colonists until 1622.","bio":"Tisquantum, whom the English at Plymouth called Squanto, was a Native man of Patuxet, the village on whose site the Mayflower passengers settled. His birth year is not known. In 1614 the English captain Thomas Hunt seized him and other men and took them to Málaga, Spain, to be sold. Tisquantum reached England, learned the language, and returned to New England in 1619, only to find that disease had already destroyed his community. In the spring of 1621 he came to Plymouth, served as interpreter in the peace with Massasoit, and, as William Bradford later wrote, taught the colonists where to set corn and take fish and guided them to unknown places. Winslow’s Good Newes also records a later rupture: Massasoit demanded him back under the treaty, and Winslow judged that Tisquantum had raised a false alarm against the sachem. In November 1622, while guiding Governor Bradford around Cape Cod, Tisquantum died of a fever at what is now Chatham, Massachusetts.","keyDates":[{"date":"1614","event":"Seized by Thomas Hunt and taken to Málaga, Spain, to be sold"},{"date":"1619","event":"Returns to New England and finds Patuxet destroyed by disease"},{"date":"1621","event":"Comes to Plymouth as interpreter and helps make the peace with Massasoit"},{"date":"1622","event":"Dies of a fever in November at Chatham Harbor, on Cape Cod"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["of-plymouth-plantation","mourts-relation","good-newes-from-new-england"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"of-plymouth-plantation","url":"/works/of-plymouth-plantation/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"good-newes-from-new-england","url":"/works/good-newes-from-new-england/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"mourts-relation","url":"/works/mourts-relation/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"After being taken to Spain in 1614 he reached England, learned English, and returned in 1619 to find that disease had already destroyed his community at Patuxet.","source":{"title":"Squanto (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squanto"}},{"text":"Winslow records that Massasoit later demanded him back as a subject under the 1621 peace, and that the governor judged he had raised a false alarm against the sachem.","source":{"title":"Good Newes from New England, Young 1841 (Project Gutenberg #66332)","url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/66332"}}],"records":[{"text":"In 1614 the English captain Thomas Hunt kidnapped him and sold him in Málaga, Spain; he returned to New England in 1619 to find that disease had already destroyed the Patuxet community.","source":{"title":"Squanto (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squanto"}},{"text":"He died of a fever in November 1622 at Chatham Harbor on Cape Cod, while guiding Governor Bradford.","source":{"title":"Squanto (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squanto"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":null,"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"alexis-de-tocqueville","name":"Alexis de Tocqueville","url":"/great-lives/alexis-de-tocqueville/","dates":"1805–1859","born":1805,"died":1859,"era":"19th-century","categories":["philosophers","statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"French political thinker and statesman, author of Democracy in America and The Old Regime and the Revolution.","bio":"Alexis de Tocqueville was born in Paris in 1805 to an aristocratic Norman family; several relatives had been executed during the Terror of the French Revolution, and his parents were imprisoned. He studied law and became a junior magistrate. In 1831 he and his friend Gustave de Beaumont traveled to the United States, officially to study American prisons, and spent about nine months touring the country. From this journey came Democracy in America, published in two volumes in 1835 and 1840, which examines how equality of conditions shapes American laws, customs, associations and religion, and what dangers democracies face. It made him famous in Europe. Tocqueville served in the French Chamber of Deputies and, after the revolution of 1848, helped draft a new constitution and was briefly foreign minister in 1849. After Louis-Napoleon's coup he withdrew from politics and wrote The Old Regime and the Revolution (1856). He died of tuberculosis in Cannes in 1859.","keyDates":[{"date":"1805","event":"Born in Paris"},{"date":"1831","event":"Travels in the United States"},{"date":"1835","event":"Democracy in America, volume 1"},{"date":"1840","event":"Democracy in America, volume 2"},{"date":"1849","event":"French foreign minister"},{"date":"1856","event":"The Old Regime and the Revolution published"},{"date":"1859","event":"Dies in Cannes"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Alexis de Tocqueville","relatedWorks":["democracy-in-america","tocqueville-old-regime"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"democracy-in-america","url":"/works/democracy-in-america/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"tocqueville-old-regime","url":"/works/tocqueville-old-regime/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Roman Catholicism was his professed religion.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexis_de_Tocqueville","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[{"series":"Very Short Introductions","title":"Tocqueville: A Very Short Introduction","author":"Harvey Mansfield","publisher":"Oxford University Press","year":2010,"isbn13":"9780195175394","url":"https://bookshop.org/a/130650/9780195175394"}],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"j-r-r-tolkien","name":"J. R. R. Tolkien","url":"/great-lives/j-r-r-tolkien/","dates":"1892–1973","born":1892,"died":1973,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"English writer and Oxford professor of Old English, author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.","bio":"John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born in 1892 in Bloemfontein, in southern Africa, where his father was a bank manager. After his father's death, his mother brought him to England, near Birmingham; she became a Catholic and died when he was twelve, and he and his brother were raised under the guardianship of a Catholic priest, Father Francis Morgan. He loved languages and invented his own. He studied at Exeter College, Oxford, and served as a signals officer at the Battle of the Somme in 1916, where most of his close school friends were killed. He married Edith Bratt that year. He became a professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford in 1925, and his lecture on Beowulf changed how the poem was studied. He was a member of the Inklings, a group of writers that included C. S. Lewis. The Hobbit (1937), first told to his children, was followed by The Lord of the Rings (1954–1955), set in the imagined world of Middle-earth, which became one of the best-selling books ever written. He died in Bournemouth in 1973.","keyDates":[{"date":"1892","event":"Born in Bloemfontein"},{"date":"1916","event":"Serves at the Battle of the Somme"},{"date":"1925","event":"Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford"},{"date":"1936","event":"Beowulf lecture"},{"date":"1937","event":"The Hobbit published"},{"date":"1954–1955","event":"The Lord of the Rings published"},{"date":"1973","event":"Dies in Bournemouth"}],"quotes":[],"author":"J. R. R. Tolkien","relatedWorks":["the-hobbit","the-lord-of-the-rings","on-fairy-stories"],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"library","work":"the-hobbit","url":"/works/the-hobbit/"},{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-lord-of-the-rings","url":"/works/the-lord-of-the-rings/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"on-fairy-stories","url":"/works/on-fairy-stories/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"He could read by the age of four, and his mother taught him the beginnings of Latin very early.","source":{"title":"J. R. R. Tolkien (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._R._R._Tolkien"}},{"text":"As a child in South Africa he was bitten by a large baboon spider in the garden.","source":{"title":"J. R. R. Tolkien (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._R._R._Tolkien"}}],"records":[{"text":"In 1920 he became the youngest member of the academic staff at the University of Leeds.","source":{"title":"J. R. R. Tolkien (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._R._R._Tolkien"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A devout Roman Catholic throughout his life; his mother had become a Catholic in 1900.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._R._R._Tolkien","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[{"series":"Very Short Introductions","title":"J. R. R. Tolkien: A Very Short Introduction","author":"Matthew Townend","publisher":"Oxford University Press","year":2024,"isbn13":"9780192882042","url":"https://bookshop.org/a/130650/9780192882042"}],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"leo-tolstoy","name":"Leo Tolstoy","url":"/great-lives/leo-tolstoy/","dates":"1828–1910","born":1828,"died":1910,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets","philosophers"],"knownFor":"Russian novelist, author of War and Peace and Anna Karenina, and later a religious and moral thinker.","bio":"Leo Tolstoy was born in 1828 at Yasnaya Polyana, his family's estate south of Moscow. Both his parents died when he was a child, and he was raised by relatives. He studied at Kazan University but left without a degree. In 1851 he joined the army in the Caucasus and later served in the Crimean War during the siege of Sevastopol, experiences he described in his early stories. Back at Yasnaya Polyana, he founded schools for peasant children. In 1862 he married Sophia Behrs, and they had thirteen children. His novel War and Peace (1869) follows several aristocratic families through the Napoleonic invasion of Russia, and Anna Karenina (1878) tells of a woman's tragic love affair alongside the story of a landowner's search for meaning. After a spiritual crisis he developed his own form of Christianity based on the Sermon on the Mount, rejecting violence and private property and was excommunicated by the Russian Orthodox Church in 1901. His later works include The Death of Ivan Ilyich (1886). In 1910, at 82, he left home secretly and died at the railway station of Astapovo.","keyDates":[{"date":"1828","event":"Born at Yasnaya Polyana"},{"date":"1854–1855","event":"Serves at Sevastopol"},{"date":"1862","event":"Marries Sophia Behrs"},{"date":"1869","event":"War and Peace completed"},{"date":"1878","event":"Anna Karenina published"},{"date":"1886","event":"The Death of Ivan Ilyich"},{"date":"1910","event":"Dies at Astapovo"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Leo Tolstoy","relatedWorks":["tolstoy-war-and-peace","the-death-of-ivan-ilyich","anna-karenina","tolstoy-a-confession","tolstoy-resurrection"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"tolstoy-war-and-peace","url":"/works/tolstoy-war-and-peace/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-death-of-ivan-ilyich","url":"/works/the-death-of-ivan-ilyich/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"anna-karenina","url":"/works/anna-karenina/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"tolstoy-a-confession","url":"/works/tolstoy-a-confession/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"tolstoy-resurrection","url":"/works/tolstoy-resurrection/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Renounced the Orthodox faith and attacked the Orthodox Church, which formally excommunicated him in 1901.","source":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Tolstoy%2C_Leo","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica (1911) (via Wikisource)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[{"series":"Very Short Introductions","title":"Leo Tolstoy: A Very Short Introduction","author":"Liza Knapp","publisher":"Oxford University Press","year":2019,"isbn13":null,"url":null}],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"jean-toomer","name":"Jean Toomer","url":"/great-lives/jean-toomer/","dates":"1894–1967","born":1894,"died":1967,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Poet and writer whose Cane (1923), a blend of poems, sketches and drama, is a landmark of the Harlem Renaissance.","bio":"Nathan Pinchback Toomer was born in Washington, D.C., in 1894 and raised largely in the home of his grandfather, P. B. S. Pinchback, who during Reconstruction had briefly served as governor of Louisiana. Of mixed ancestry, he lived at different times in white and black neighborhoods and later resisted being classified by race at all, calling himself simply an American. He attended several colleges without taking a degree and tried many jobs while reading widely and beginning to write. In 1921 he spent two months as a substitute principal at a school in Sparta, Georgia, where the folk songs and spirituals of the rural black South moved him deeply. Out of this experience came Cane (1923), a book of poems, sketches and drama that writers of the Harlem Renaissance hailed as a breakthrough. Toomer then turned to the spiritual teachings of George Gurdjieff and later to the Quakers, writing essays and poems that found few readers. He never published another major work of fiction. He died in Pennsylvania in 1967, shortly before Cane was rediscovered.","keyDates":[{"date":"1894","event":"Born in Washington, D.C."},{"date":"1921","event":"Teaches in Sparta, Georgia"},{"date":"1923","event":"Cane published"},{"date":"1967","event":"Dies in Doylestown, Pennsylvania"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Jean Toomer","relatedWorks":["toomer-cane"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"toomer-cane","url":"/works/toomer-cane/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"For more than a decade a follower of the spiritual teacher G. I. Gurdjieff; he later joined the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers).","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Toomer","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"anthony-trollope","name":"Anthony Trollope","url":"/great-lives/anthony-trollope/","dates":"1815–1882","born":1815,"died":1882,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"English Victorian novelist, author of the Barsetshire novels and The Way We Live Now, who worked for decades in the Post Office.","bio":"Anthony Trollope was born in London in 1815. His father's money troubles made his schooling at Harrow and Winchester unhappy, and the family fled to Belgium to escape debts. His mother, Frances Trollope, began writing in middle age and supported the family with her books. In 1834 Anthony became a junior clerk in the General Post Office, and in 1841 he was sent to Ireland, where his career improved and he began writing novels. He is credited with introducing the pillar box, the red street mailbox, to Britain. The Warden (1855) and Barchester Towers (1857) began his six Chronicles of Barsetshire, set in an imaginary cathedral county, and the Palliser novels followed politics in London. Trollope wrote each morning before work to a set number of words and produced 47 novels as well as travel books. He left the Post Office in 1867 and ran unsuccessfully for Parliament. His Autobiography appeared after his death in London in 1882.","keyDates":[{"date":"1815","event":"Born in London"},{"date":"1834","event":"Joins the General Post Office"},{"date":"1855","event":"The Warden published"},{"date":"1857","event":"Barchester Towers published"},{"date":"1875","event":"The Way We Live Now published"},{"date":"1882","event":"Dies in London"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Anthony Trollope","relatedWorks":["the-warden","trollope-can-you-forgive-her","trollope-the-prime-minister","barchester-towers"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-warden","url":"/works/the-warden/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"trollope-can-you-forgive-her","url":"/works/trollope-can-you-forgive-her/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"trollope-the-prime-minister","url":"/works/trollope-the-prime-minister/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"barchester-towers","url":"/works/barchester-towers/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Trollope","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[{"series":"Very Short Introductions","title":"Anthony Trollope: A Very Short Introduction","author":"Dinah Birch","publisher":"Oxford University Press","year":2025,"isbn13":"9780192845627","url":"https://bookshop.org/a/130650/9780192845627"}],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"sojourner-truth","name":"Sojourner Truth","url":"/great-lives/sojourner-truth/","dates":"c. 1797–1883","born":1797,"died":1883,"era":"19th-century","categories":["saints-reformers"],"knownFor":"Formerly enslaved preacher who spoke for the abolition of slavery and for women's rights, best remembered for her 1851 speech at Akron.","bio":"Sojourner Truth was born Isabella Bomefree about 1797 on an estate in Ulster County, New York, where she grew up enslaved and speaking Dutch. At about nine she was sold away from her parents, and she was sold again several times. Late in 1826 she walked away to freedom with her baby daughter, Sophia. When her young son Peter was illegally sold to Alabama, she went to court and in 1828 won him back, becoming one of the first Black women to win such a case against a white man. She became a Christian in 1827. On Pentecost Sunday 1843 she took the name Sojourner Truth, believing God had called her to travel and preach. Though she never learned to read, she became a famous speaker against slavery and for women's rights, and in 1851 she gave her best-known speech at a women's convention in Akron, Ohio. During the Civil War she helped recruit Black soldiers, and in 1864 she met President Lincoln. She died in Battle Creek, Michigan, in 1883.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 1797","event":"Born enslaved in Ulster County, New York"},{"date":"1826","event":"Walks away to freedom with her infant daughter"},{"date":"1828","event":"Wins a court case to recover her son Peter"},{"date":"1843","event":"Takes the name Sojourner Truth"},{"date":"1850","event":"Narrative of Sojourner Truth published"},{"date":"1851","event":"Speaks at the women's rights convention in Akron, Ohio"},{"date":"1864","event":"Meets President Lincoln at the White House"},{"date":"1883","event":"Dies in Battle Creek, Michigan"}],"quotes":[{"text":"Well, if woman upset the world, do give her a chance to set it right side up again.","work":"sojourner-truth-aint-i-a-woman","location":"The speech","verified":true}],"author":"Sojourner Truth","relatedWorks":["sojourner-truth-aint-i-a-woman"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"sojourner-truth-aint-i-a-woman","url":"/works/sojourner-truth-aint-i-a-woman/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"Her first language was Dutch, and she spoke English with a Dutch accent for the rest of her life.","source":{"title":"Sojourner Truth (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sojourner_Truth"}},{"text":"She helped pay off her house by selling small photograph cards of herself captioned \"I sell the shadow to support the substance.\"","source":{"title":"Sojourner Truth (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sojourner_Truth"}}],"records":[{"text":"In 1828 she became one of the first Black women to go to court against a white man and win, recovering her son Peter.","source":{"title":"Sojourner Truth (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sojourner_Truth"}},{"text":"A bust unveiled in Emancipation Hall in 2009 made her the first African American woman honored with a statue in the U.S. Capitol.","source":{"title":"Sojourner Truth (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sojourner_Truth"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Became a Christian in 1827 and helped found a Methodist church in Kingston, New York.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sojourner_Truth","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"harriet-tubman","name":"Harriet Tubman","url":"/great-lives/harriet-tubman/","dates":"c. 1822–1913","born":1822,"died":1913,"era":"19th-century","categories":["saints-reformers","statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"Escaped slavery and led others to freedom on the Underground Railroad; Union scout and spy.","bio":"Harriet Tubman was born Araminta Ross into slavery in Dorchester County, Maryland. As a girl she was hired out to harsh masters, and she suffered a severe head injury when an overseer threw a heavy weight at someone else; for the rest of her life she had sudden sleeping spells and vivid dreams, which she understood as messages from God. In 1849 she escaped alone to Philadelphia. Instead of staying safe, she returned to Maryland about thirteen times over the next decade and led around seventy people, including family members, to freedom along the Underground Railroad, a secret network of routes and safe houses. She never lost a passenger. Abolitionists called her Moses. During the Civil War she worked for the Union army as a nurse, scout and spy, and in 1863 she helped guide a raid on the Combahee River in South Carolina that freed more than seven hundred people. After the war she lived in Auburn, New York, cared for the poor and elderly, and supported votes for women. She died in 1913.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 1822","event":"Born enslaved in Maryland"},{"date":"1849","event":"Escapes to Philadelphia"},{"date":"1850s","event":"Leads about seventy people to freedom"},{"date":"1863","event":"Helps lead the Combahee River Raid"},{"date":"1913","event":"Dies in Auburn, New York"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["narrative-and-fourth-of-july"],"reading":[{"band":"K-2","kind":"book","title":"I am Harriet Tubman","author":"Brad Meltzer","isbn13":"9780593619179","publisher":"Paperback","year":2023,"format":""},{"band":"K-2","kind":"book","title":"A Picture Book of Harriet Tubman","author":"David A. Adler","isbn13":"9780823410651","publisher":"Holiday House","year":1992,"format":""},{"band":"3-5","kind":"book","title":"Who Was Harriet Tubman?","author":"Yona Zeldis McDonough","isbn13":"9780593097229","publisher":"Paperback","year":2019,"format":""}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"As a child she looked after her younger brother and a baby while her mother worked in the big house.","source":{"title":"Harriet Tubman (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harriet_Tubman"}}],"records":[{"text":"For guiding the raid at Combahee Ferry during the Civil War, which freed more than 700 enslaved people, she is widely credited as the first woman to lead an armed military operation in the United States.","source":{"title":"Harriet Tubman (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harriet_Tubman"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Raised Methodist and devoutly religious; in later life she was active in the AME Zion Church in Auburn, New York.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harriet_Tubman","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["Birth year is uncertain (about 1820–1822)."]},{"slug":"samuel-tuke","name":"Samuel Tuke","url":"/great-lives/samuel-tuke/","dates":"1784–1857","born":1784,"died":1857,"era":"19th-century","categories":["physicians-medicine"],"knownFor":"English Quaker reformer who made known the humane \"moral treatment\" of mental illness practised at the York Retreat.","bio":"Samuel Tuke was born in York, England, in 1784, into a Quaker family. His grandfather, William Tuke, had founded the York Retreat, a Quaker hospital for people with mental illness. Samuel devoted much of his life to the Retreat and to improving the care of people with mental illness. His book Description of the Retreat near York made its methods of treatment widely known. He called them 'moral treatment', borrowing a French phrase used for the work of Philippe Pinel and Jean-Baptiste Pussin in France; it referred to care for patients' feelings and self-esteem rather than to right and wrong. In 1815 he also published practical advice on how public asylums should be built and run. He married Priscilla Hack, and several of their children, including Daniel Hack Tuke, also worked for humanitarian causes. Samuel Tuke died in 1857 and is buried in the Quaker burial ground in the grounds of the Retreat, which still provides mental health care in York. In 2017 he was honoured with a blue plaque.","keyDates":[{"date":"1784","event":"Born in York"},{"date":"1815","event":"Practical Hints on asylums published"},{"date":"1857","event":"Dies in York"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Samuel Tuke","relatedWorks":["description-of-the-retreat"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"description-of-the-retreat","url":"/works/description-of-the-retreat/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A Quaker minister and reformer of the treatment of the mentally ill.","source":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dictionary_of_National_Biography%2C_1885-1900/Tuke%2C_Samuel_%281784-1857%29","sourceName":"Dictionary of National Biography (1885–1900) (via Wikisource)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"ivan-turgenev","name":"Ivan Turgenev","url":"/great-lives/ivan-turgenev/","dates":"1818–1883","born":1818,"died":1883,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Russian novelist and story writer, author of A Sportsman's Sketches and Fathers and Sons.","bio":"Ivan Turgenev was born in 1818 in Oryol, Russia, into a wealthy landowning family. His mother, who owned thousands of serfs, ruled the estate of Spasskoye harshly, and her treatment of the serfs troubled him. He studied in Moscow, Saint Petersburg and Berlin, where he absorbed German philosophy and became a lifelong admirer of Western Europe. He worked briefly in the civil service and then turned to writing. A Sportsman's Sketches (1852), stories of rural life told by a hunter, portrayed serfs as individual human beings and is said to have influenced Tsar Alexander II, who freed the serfs in 1861. Turgenev was arrested and confined to his estate for an obituary praising the writer Nikolai Gogol. His novels include Rudin, A Nest of Gentlefolk, On the Eve and Fathers and Sons (1862), whose young character Bazarov, a 'nihilist' who rejects all authority, caused heated debate. Devoted for decades to the singer Pauline Viardot, he spent much of his life in Germany and France, where he befriended Flaubert and Henry James. He died near Paris in 1883.","keyDates":[{"date":"1818","event":"Born in Oryol"},{"date":"1852","event":"A Sportsman's Sketches published; confined to his estate"},{"date":"1859","event":"A Nest of Gentlefolk"},{"date":"1862","event":"Fathers and Sons published"},{"date":"1883","event":"Dies near Paris"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Ivan Turgenev","relatedWorks":["fathers-and-sons","turgenev-the-torrents-of-spring"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"fathers-and-sons","url":"/works/fathers-and-sons/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"turgenev-the-torrents-of-spring","url":"/works/turgenev-the-torrents-of-spring/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[{"text":"His brain was found to be one of the largest on record, weighing 2,012 grams (4 lb 7 oz).","source":{"title":"Ivan Turgenev (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Turgenev"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Considered an agnostic.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Turgenev","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"alan-turing","name":"Alan Turing","url":"/great-lives/alan-turing/","dates":"1912–1954","born":1912,"died":1954,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["scientists-mathematicians"],"knownFor":"English mathematician who founded computer science and helped break German codes in WWII.","bio":"Alan Turing was born in London; his father worked in the Indian Civil Service, and he was raised largely by a foster family in England. At school he loved science and mathematics more than the classics his teachers preferred. At King's College, Cambridge, he proved important results in probability, and in 1936 he published On Computable Numbers, describing an imaginary machine, now called a Turing machine, that could carry out any calculation that can be written as a set of steps. This idea became a foundation of computer science. During the Second World War he worked at Bletchley Park, Britain's secret code-breaking center, where he led work on breaking messages sent with the German Enigma machine, especially naval codes, and designed the electromechanical Bombe used to find the daily settings. This work helped the Allies in the Battle of the Atlantic. After the war he designed an early stored-program computer and in 1950 proposed a test of whether machines can think. In 1952 he was prosecuted for homosexual acts, then a crime in Britain. He died in 1954 of cyanide poisoning.","keyDates":[{"date":"1936","event":"On Computable Numbers"},{"date":"1939","event":"Joins Bletchley Park"},{"date":"1940","event":"First Bombe in operation"},{"date":"1950","event":"Computing Machinery and Intelligence"},{"date":"1952","event":"Prosecuted"},{"date":"1954","event":"Dies at Wilmslow"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Alan Turing","relatedWorks":["computable-numbers-and-computing-machinery"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"computable-numbers-and-computing-machinery","url":"/works/computable-numbers-and-computing-machinery/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"book","title":"Alan Turing: The Enigma","author":"Andrew Hodges","isbn13":"9781400865123","publisher":"Princeton University Press","year":2014,"format":""}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"At Christmas 1934, as a college graduate, he asked his mother for a teddy bear because he had never had one as a child. He named it Porgy.","source":{"title":"Alan Turing (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing"}},{"text":"He invented 'round-the-house chess': one player makes a move and then runs around the house, and the other must make a move before the runner gets back.","source":{"title":"Alan Turing (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Became an atheist as a young man; biographers have linked this to the death of his close friend Christopher Morcom.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"mark-twain","name":"Mark Twain","url":"/great-lives/mark-twain/","dates":"1835–1910","born":1835,"died":1910,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American humorist and novelist, author of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.","bio":"Mark Twain was the pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, born in 1835 in Florida, Missouri. When he was four his family moved to Hannibal, a town on the Mississippi River that later became the model for St. Petersburg in his novels. His father died when he was eleven, and he left school to work as a printer's apprentice. In 1857 he began training as a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi, a job he loved until the Civil War stopped river traffic. He went west to Nevada and California, where he worked as a miner and a newspaper reporter and first used the name Mark Twain, a riverboat term for water two fathoms deep. His story 'The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County' (1865) made him famous, and The Innocents Abroad (1869) described a trip to Europe and the Holy Land. In 1870 he married Olivia Langdon. His books include The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), The Prince and the Pauper (1881), Life on the Mississippi (1883) and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884). He died in Redding, Connecticut, in 1910.","keyDates":[{"date":"1835","event":"Born in Florida, Missouri"},{"date":"1859","event":"Licensed as a steamboat pilot"},{"date":"1865","event":"The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County"},{"date":"1870","event":"Marries Olivia Langdon"},{"date":"1876","event":"The Adventures of Tom Sawyer published"},{"date":"1884","event":"Adventures of Huckleberry Finn published"},{"date":"1910","event":"Dies in Redding, Connecticut"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Mark Twain","relatedWorks":["life-on-the-mississippi","a-tramp-abroad","the-prince-and-the-pauper","the-adventures-of-tom-sawyer","adventures-of-huckleberry-finn","twain-a-connecticut-yankee","twain-warner-the-gilded-age"],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"library","work":"the-adventures-of-tom-sawyer","url":"/works/the-adventures-of-tom-sawyer/"},{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-prince-and-the-pauper","url":"/works/the-prince-and-the-pauper/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"life-on-the-mississippi","url":"/works/life-on-the-mississippi/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"a-tramp-abroad","url":"/works/a-tramp-abroad/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"adventures-of-huckleberry-finn","url":"/works/adventures-of-huckleberry-finn/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"twain-a-connecticut-yankee","url":"/works/twain-a-connecticut-yankee/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"twain-warner-the-gilded-age","url":"/works/twain-warner-the-gilded-age/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"His pen name came from his days as a Mississippi riverboat pilot: 'mark twain' was the call for water two fathoms (12 feet) deep, safe for a steamboat.","source":{"title":"Mark Twain (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Twain"}},{"text":"Tom Sawyer was modelled on Twain himself as a boy.","source":{"title":"Mark Twain (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Twain"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[{"name":"Mark Twain House & Museum","note":"Mark Twain built his Hartford, Connecticut house in the 1870s and wrote major works there, including The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The Mark Twain House & Museum offers education programs for students and teachers. (His childhood home was in Missouri.)","url":"https://marktwainhouse.org/edu/","urlLabel":"Mark Twain House & Museum — education"}],"faith":{"note":"A Presbyterian.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Twain","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"william-tyndale","name":"William Tyndale","url":"/great-lives/william-tyndale/","dates":"c. 1494–1536","born":1494,"died":1536,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["saints-reformers"],"knownFor":"English scholar who translated the Bible into English from Hebrew and Greek, and was executed for it.","bio":"William Tyndale was born in Gloucestershire, England, and studied at Oxford and Cambridge, becoming a gifted linguist. Working as a tutor, he grew frustrated with clergy who knew little of the Bible and reportedly told one that, if God spared his life, he would cause a boy who drives the plough to know more of the Scripture than he did. English translations of the Bible were then forbidden without a bishop's approval, and when the bishop of London refused to support him, he left England in 1524. In Germany he translated the New Testament from Erasmus's Greek text, and it was printed at Worms in 1526 and smuggled into England in bales of cloth; the authorities bought and burned many copies. Moving between hiding places in the Low Countries, he translated the first books of the Old Testament from Hebrew and wrote books defending Reformation teaching, which brought him into dispute with Thomas More. In 1535 he was betrayed by a man he had befriended and arrested near Antwerp. He was strangled and burned at Vilvoorde in 1536.","keyDates":[{"date":"1524","event":"Leaves England"},{"date":"1526","event":"English New Testament printed at Worms"},{"date":"1530","event":"Translation of the Pentateuch"},{"date":"1535","event":"Arrested near Antwerp"},{"date":"1536","event":"Executed at Vilvoorde"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["erasmus-on-free-will"],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Translator of the Bible into English who wanted even 'a boy that driveth the plough' to know the Scriptures.","source":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dictionary_of_National_Biography%2C_1885-1900/Tyndale%2C_William","sourceName":"Dictionary of National Biography (1885–1900) (via Wikisource)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"sun-tzu","name":"Sun Tzu","url":"/great-lives/sun-tzu/","dates":"traditionally 544–496 BC","born":-544,"died":-496,"era":"ancient","categories":["military-leaders","philosophers"],"knownFor":"Ancient Chinese general and strategist traditionally credited with The Art of War.","bio":"Sun Tzu, meaning 'Master Sun', is the honorific name of a Chinese general and strategist traditionally credited with writing The Art of War, a short classic on military strategy. Very little is known about him for certain. The earliest account of his life is a brief biography written around 97 BC by the Han dynasty historian Sima Qian, which says that his name was Sun Wu, that he was born in the state of Qi, in what is now Shandong, and that he served King Helü of Wu as a general. Traditional histories date his life to about 544–496 BC. According to the story, the king tested him by asking him to drill the palace women as soldiers. Many modern scholars consider this biography largely legendary, and the earliest parts of The Art of War probably date to at least a century after the time given for him. The book teaches that the best victory is won without fighting, and stresses planning, deception and knowing both oneself and one's enemy.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 544 BC","event":"Traditional date of birth"},{"date":"c. 496 BC","event":"Traditional date of death"},{"date":"c. 97 BC","event":"Sima Qian writes his biography"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Sun Tzu","relatedWorks":["the-art-of-war"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-art-of-war","url":"/works/the-art-of-war/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Tzu","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["Sun Tzu is known mainly from Sima Qian's brief and possibly legendary biography; the dates 544–496 BC are traditional, and scholars doubt that he wrote The Art of War in its present form."]},{"slug":"sigrid-undset","name":"Sigrid Undset","url":"/great-lives/sigrid-undset/","dates":"1882–1949","born":1882,"died":1949,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Norwegian novelist and Nobel laureate (1928), author of the medieval trilogy Kristin Lavransdatter.","bio":"Sigrid Undset was born in 1882 in Kalundborg, Denmark, the daughter of a Norwegian archaeologist and a Danish mother, and grew up in Christiania, now Oslo. Her father's study of the past gave her a lifelong love of the Middle Ages. After his early death she left school and worked for ten years as a secretary in an office to help support her family, writing in her spare time. Her first novels, including Jenny (1911), portrayed modern women in Oslo. She married the painter Anders Castus Svarstad and had three children. Her trilogy Kristin Lavransdatter (1920-1922), set in fourteenth-century Norway, made her famous, and in 1924 she was received into the Catholic Church, a choice that shaped her later work, including The Master of Hestviken. She received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1928. A strong opponent of Nazism, she fled Norway after the German invasion of 1940 and spent the war years in the United States; her son Anders was killed fighting the invaders. She returned in 1945 and died at Lillehammer in 1949.","keyDates":[{"date":"1882","event":"Born in Kalundborg, Denmark"},{"date":"1920","event":"The Bridal Wreath published"},{"date":"1924","event":"Becomes a Catholic"},{"date":"1928","event":"Nobel Prize in Literature"},{"date":"1949","event":"Dies at Lillehammer"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Sigrid Undset","relatedWorks":["undset-the-bridal-wreath"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"undset-the-bridal-wreath","url":"/works/undset-the-bridal-wreath/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Raised Lutheran by atheist parents; converted to Roman Catholicism in 1924 and became a lay Dominican four years later, and her faith shaped her later novels and essays on saints.","source":"https://www.britannica.com/biography/Sigrid-Undset","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"zacharias-ursinus","name":"Zacharias Ursinus","url":"/great-lives/zacharias-ursinus/","dates":"1534–1583","born":1534,"died":1583,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["theologians-church-fathers","saints-reformers"],"knownFor":"German Reformed theologian, a student of Melanchthon and the principal author of the Heidelberg Catechism (1563).","bio":"Zacharias Ursinus was born Zacharias Baer in 1534 in Breslau in Silesia, now Wrocław in Poland. At fifteen he went to the University of Wittenberg, where for seven years he lived in the home of Philip Melanchthon, Martin Luther's colleague. Like many scholars of his time he took a Latin name; Ursinus comes from ursus, the Latin word for 'bear', just as Baer means bear in German. He went on to study at Strasbourg, Basel, Lausanne and Geneva and learned Hebrew in France. When his writing on the sacraments angered Lutherans at home, he moved to Zurich and became a friend of Heinrich Bullinger and Peter Martyr Vermigli. In 1561 Frederick III, the Elector Palatine, made him a professor at Heidelberg, and there he wrote the main drafts of the Heidelberg Catechism, which was published in 1563 and is still used by Reformed churches around the world. When a Lutheran elector came to power in 1576, Ursinus lost his post. He taught at Neustadt an der Weinstraße until his death in 1583.","keyDates":[{"date":"1534","event":"Born in Breslau, Silesia"},{"date":"c. 1549","event":"Enters the University of Wittenberg"},{"date":"1561","event":"Professor at Heidelberg"},{"date":"1563","event":"Heidelberg Catechism published"},{"date":"1576","event":"Loses his post under a Lutheran elector"},{"date":"1578","event":"Teaches at Neustadt an der Weinstraße"},{"date":"1583","event":"Dies in Neustadt"}],"quotes":[{"text":"That I with body and soul, both in life and death, am not my own, but belong unto my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ","work":"heidelberg-catechism","location":"Lord's Day 1","verified":true}],"author":"Zacharias Ursinus and Caspar Olevianus","relatedWorks":["heidelberg-catechism"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"heidelberg-catechism","url":"/works/heidelberg-catechism/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"German theologian and one of the authors of the Heidelberg Catechism.","source":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Ursinus%2C_Zacharias","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica (1911) (via Wikisource)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"usama-ibn-munqidh","name":"Usama ibn Munqidh","url":"/great-lives/usama-ibn-munqidh/","dates":"1095–1188","born":1095,"died":1188,"era":"medieval","categories":["writers-poets","military-leaders"],"knownFor":"Syrian Arab poet, knight and diplomat of the Crusades era, author of the memoir Kitab al-I'tibar (Book of Contemplation).","bio":"Usama ibn Munqidh was born in 1095 at Shaizar, in northern Syria, into the Banu Munqidh family, which ruled the town; his uncle was its emir. His lifetime saw the arrival of the First Crusade and the founding of the crusader states. He spent much of his youth hunting and training for battle, and was considered a possible successor to his uncle, but in 1131 he was sent into exile, and he spent the rest of his long life serving other rulers. For almost fifty years he was a courtier, soldier and diplomat in Damascus, serving Zengi, Nur ad-Din and later Saladin, and he also served the Fatimid court in Cairo. He travelled widely and made the pilgrimage to Mecca. Most of his family was killed when an earthquake struck Shaizar in 1157. In his lifetime he was famous as a poet and man of letters. Today he is remembered for his memoir, the Kitab al-I'tibar, or Book of Contemplation, which gives vivid accounts of the crusaders, some of whom he considered friends. He died in Damascus in 1188, aged 93.","keyDates":[{"date":"1095","event":"Born at Shaizar, Syria"},{"date":"1131","event":"Exiled from Shaizar"},{"date":"1157","event":"Earthquake destroys Shaizar"},{"date":"1174","event":"Joins the court of Saladin"},{"date":"1188","event":"Dies in Damascus"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Usama ibn Munqidh","relatedWorks":["usama-ibn-munqidh-memoirs"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"usama-ibn-munqidh-memoirs","url":"/works/usama-ibn-munqidh-memoirs/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A Muslim; his precise religious affiliation remains a subject of academic debate.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usama_ibn_Munqidh","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"valmiki","name":"Valmiki","url":"/great-lives/valmiki/","dates":"date unknown (legendary)","born":null,"died":-400,"era":"ancient","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Legendary sage honored in India as the \"first poet,\" named by tradition as the author of the Sanskrit epic the Ramayana.","bio":"Valmiki is honored in India as the Adi Kavi, the \"first poet,\" and tradition names him as the author of the Ramayana, the great Sanskrit epic of Prince Rama. Nothing about his life is known for certain; what is told about him is traditional or legendary. The Ramayana itself names him as its poet and brings him into the story as a holy man living in a forest hermitage near the Tamasa River, who hears Rama's story from the wise Narada. According to the poem, when Valmiki saw a hunter shoot one of a pair of birds, his grief burst out in a new kind of verse, the shloka, which he then used to tell the whole tale. He teaches the poem to Rama's twin sons, Kusa and Lava. Later legends, not found in the poem, say he had been a robber before he turned to prayer. Scholars think the earliest parts of the Ramayana took shape between the 8th and 4th centuries BC, with additions over the following centuries.","keyDates":[{"date":"Traditional","event":"Hears the story of Rama from the sage Narada (according to the Ramayana)"},{"date":"Traditional","event":"Composes the first shloka after seeing a hunter kill a bird (according to the Ramayana)"},{"date":"8th–4th century BC","event":"Scholars' estimate for the earliest stage of the Ramayana"},{"date":"Up to 3rd century AD","event":"Later layers are added to the epic"}],"quotes":[{"text":"With equal lines of even feet, With rhythm and time and tone complete, The measured form of words I spoke In shock of grief be termed a śloke.","work":"ramayana","location":"Book I, Canto II (Brahmá's Visit)","verified":true}],"author":"Valmiki","relatedWorks":["ramayana"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"ramayana","url":"/works/ramayana/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"The name Valmiki is understood to mean \"from an anthill,\" and a later legend says an anthill grew up around him while he sat repeating a prayer.","source":{"title":"Valmiki (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valmiki"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A legendary Hindu sage, traditional author of the Ramayana.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valmiki","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["Valmiki is a legendary figure; his dates and life are unknown. The life events on this page come from the Ramayana itself and later legends, and are labeled as traditional. The died value -400 is a placeholder at the late end of scholars' estimate for the earliest Ramayana (8th-4th century BC), used only for ordering."]},{"slug":"cornelius-vanderbilt","name":"Cornelius Vanderbilt","url":"/great-lives/cornelius-vanderbilt/","dates":"1794–1877","born":1794,"died":1877,"era":"19th-century","categories":["titans-of-industry"],"knownFor":"Shipping and railroad magnate, the Commodore, who built the New York Central system.","bio":"Cornelius Vanderbilt was born on Staten Island, New York, to a family of farmers and boatmen. He left school at eleven, and at sixteen used a hundred dollars borrowed from his mother to buy a small sailing boat and ferry passengers and goods to Manhattan. He worked on steamboats for the businessman Thomas Gibbons, helping him challenge a steamboat monopoly that the Supreme Court struck down in Gibbons v. Ogden in 1824. He then built his own steamship lines, cutting fares to beat rivals, and earned the nickname the Commodore. During the California Gold Rush he ran a shipping route across Nicaragua to the Pacific. In his late sixties he turned to railroads, buying lines including the New York Central and building Grand Central Depot in New York City. His railroads were run efficiently and he became perhaps the richest man in America. He gave a million dollars to found Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. He died in 1877, leaving most of his fortune to his son William.","keyDates":[{"date":"1810","event":"Starts a ferry business"},{"date":"1824","event":"Gibbons v. Ogden opens steamboat competition"},{"date":"1850s","event":"Nicaragua route during the Gold Rush"},{"date":"1867","event":"Takes control of the New York Central"},{"date":"1873","event":"Endows Vanderbilt University"},{"date":"1877","event":"Dies in New York"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"book","title":"The First Tycoon","author":"T. J. Stiles","isbn13":"9781400031740","publisher":"Vintage","year":2010,"format":"paperback"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"He left school at 11 to work on his father's ferry in New York Harbor.","source":{"title":"Cornelius Vanderbilt (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornelius_Vanderbilt"}},{"text":"Other boat captains jokingly called him 'the Commodore', and the nickname stuck for the rest of his life.","source":{"title":"Cornelius Vanderbilt (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornelius_Vanderbilt"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Raised in a family converted to Moravian beliefs; he provided for building a Moravian church at New Dorp.","source":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Appletons%27_Cyclop%C3%A6dia_of_American_Biography/Vanderbilt%2C_Cornelius","sourceName":"Appletons' Cyclopaedia of American Biography (via Wikisource)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"giorgio-vasari","name":"Giorgio Vasari","url":"/great-lives/giorgio-vasari/","dates":"1511–1574","born":1511,"died":1574,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["artists-composers-architects","writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Italian painter and architect, author of the Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects, a founding work of art history.","bio":"Giorgio Vasari was born in 1511 in Arezzo, in Tuscany. As a boy he was sent to Florence, where he trained in the circle of Michelangelo and Andrea del Sarto and was supported by the Medici family. He became a successful painter, working in Florence, Rome and other cities, and an architect; he designed the Uffizi building in Florence, originally government offices, and the corridor connecting it to the Pitti Palace, now called the Vasari Corridor. He also painted the huge frescoes inside the dome of Florence Cathedral, completed by others after his death. His most lasting work is the Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects, first published in 1550 and expanded in 1568. It gathers biographies of Italian artists from Cimabue and Giotto to his own time, ending with Michelangelo, and describes art as reaching its height in the Renaissance. Although not always accurate, the Lives is a main source of information about many artists, and it is often considered the first work of art history. He died in Florence in 1574.","keyDates":[{"date":"1511","event":"Born in Arezzo"},{"date":"1550","event":"First edition of the Lives"},{"date":"1560","event":"Begins the Uffizi in Florence"},{"date":"1565","event":"Builds the Vasari Corridor"},{"date":"1568","event":"Expanded edition of the Lives"},{"date":"1574","event":"Dies in Florence"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Giorgio Vasari","relatedWorks":["vasari-lives-of-the-artists"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"vasari-lives-of-the-artists","url":"/works/vasari-lives-of-the-artists/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giorgio_Vasari","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"thorstein-veblen","name":"Thorstein Veblen","url":"/great-lives/thorstein-veblen/","dates":"1857–1929","born":1857,"died":1929,"era":"19th-century","categories":["philosophers","writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American economist and sociologist who coined the phrase \"conspicuous consumption\" in The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899).","bio":"Thorstein Veblen was born in 1857 in Cato, Wisconsin, to Norwegian immigrant parents, and grew up on a family farm in Rice County, Minnesota. He studied at Carleton College in Minnesota and then at Johns Hopkins and Yale universities, earning a doctorate in philosophy at Yale in 1884. Unable to find an academic post for seven years, he spent much of that time on his family's farm. He later studied economics at Cornell University and went on to teach at the University of Chicago, Stanford University, the University of Missouri and the New School for Social Research in New York. His most famous book, The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), argued that wealthy people often buy expensive goods and pursue costly pastimes mainly to display their status, a habit he called 'conspicuous consumption'. In other books, such as The Theory of Business Enterprise (1904), he contrasted the productive work of engineers and craftsmen with businesses focused on profit. He is regarded as a founder of the school of institutional economics, which studies how social habits and institutions shape economic life. He died in California in 1929.","keyDates":[{"date":"1857","event":"Born in Cato, Wisconsin"},{"date":"1884","event":"Doctorate from Yale University"},{"date":"1899","event":"The Theory of the Leisure Class published"},{"date":"1904","event":"The Theory of Business Enterprise published"},{"date":"1929","event":"Dies in California"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Thorstein Veblen","relatedWorks":["veblen-theory-of-the-leisure-class"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"veblen-theory-of-the-leisure-class","url":"/works/veblen-theory-of-the-leisure-class/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Raised Lutheran; he openly identified as an agnostic.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorstein_Veblen","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"johannes-vermeer","name":"Johannes Vermeer","url":"/great-lives/johannes-vermeer/","dates":"1632–1675","born":1632,"died":1675,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["artists-composers-architects"],"knownFor":"Dutch painter of quiet interior scenes filled with soft daylight, including Girl with a Pearl Earring.","bio":"Johannes Vermeer was born in Delft, in the Dutch Republic, where his father was a silk weaver, innkeeper and art dealer. Little is known of his training. In 1653 he married Catharina Bolnes and joined the Delft painters' guild, which he later led. He spent his whole life in Delft, and the couple had fifteen children, eleven of whom survived. Vermeer worked slowly, and only about thirty-five paintings are known to be his. Most show one or two people in a quiet room lit by a window on the left: a maid pouring milk, a woman reading a letter, a girl at a music lesson. He used costly pigments such as natural ultramarine made from lapis lazuli. He also painted the View of Delft, a cityscape. His best-known work, Girl with a Pearl Earring, is not a portrait but a study of a face. When war with France in 1672 ruined the Dutch art market, he fell deep into debt, and he died suddenly in 1675. He was nearly forgotten until critics rediscovered him in the nineteenth century.","keyDates":[{"date":"1653","event":"Joins the Delft painters' guild"},{"date":"c. 1660","event":"Paints View of Delft"},{"date":"c. 1665","event":"Paints Girl with a Pearl Earring"},{"date":"1675","event":"Dies in Delft"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Married a Catholic woman in 1653; his own religious affiliation is not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Vermeer","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"jules-verne","name":"Jules Verne","url":"/great-lives/jules-verne/","dates":"1828–1905","born":1828,"died":1905,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"French novelist whose adventure stories, including Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, helped found science fiction.","bio":"Jules Verne was born in 1828 in Nantes, a busy port in western France, the eldest son of a lawyer. Ships from all over the world filled the harbor, and he dreamed of travel. He went to Paris to study law, as his father wished, but became more interested in the theater, writing plays and working as secretary of a theater. He also went into business with a stockbroker. In 1862 he met the publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel, who published his novel Five Weeks in a Balloon in 1863 and signed him to write two books a year. These became the Voyages extraordinaires, a series of more than sixty novels combining adventure with geography and science. They include Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), From the Earth to the Moon (1865), Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870), with its submarine Nautilus and Captain Nemo, and Around the World in Eighty Days (1872), in which Phileas Fogg races to win a bet. Verne enjoyed sailing his own boats. He lived in Amiens, where he served on the city council, and died there in 1905.","keyDates":[{"date":"1828","event":"Born in Nantes"},{"date":"1863","event":"Five Weeks in a Balloon published"},{"date":"1864","event":"Journey to the Center of the Earth"},{"date":"1870","event":"Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea"},{"date":"1872","event":"Around the World in Eighty Days"},{"date":"1905","event":"Dies in Amiens"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Jules Verne","relatedWorks":["twenty-thousand-leagues-under-the-sea","around-the-world-in-eighty-days","journey-to-the-center-of-the-earth","in-search-of-the-castaways","the-mysterious-island","from-the-earth-to-the-moon","off-on-a-comet"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"twenty-thousand-leagues-under-the-sea","url":"/works/twenty-thousand-leagues-under-the-sea/"},{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"around-the-world-in-eighty-days","url":"/works/around-the-world-in-eighty-days/"},{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"journey-to-the-center-of-the-earth","url":"/works/journey-to-the-center-of-the-earth/"},{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"in-search-of-the-castaways","url":"/works/in-search-of-the-castaways/"},{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-mysterious-island","url":"/works/the-mysterious-island/"},{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"from-the-earth-to-the-moon","url":"/works/from-the-earth-to-the-moon/"},{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"off-on-a-comet","url":"/works/off-on-a-comet/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"His first published novel, Five Weeks in a Balloon, began as a story of travel across Africa.","source":{"title":"Jules Verne (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jules_Verne"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Raised Catholic; he later gravitated toward deism.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jules_Verne","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"andreas-vesalius","name":"Andreas Vesalius","url":"/great-lives/andreas-vesalius/","dates":"1514–1564","born":1514,"died":1564,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["physicians-medicine"],"knownFor":"Flemish anatomist whose Fabric of the Human Body founded modern anatomy.","bio":"Andreas Vesalius was born in Brussels into a family of physicians to the Holy Roman Emperors. He studied at Louvain and Paris, where he was so eager to study bones that he collected them from cemeteries and from the gallows outside the city. At twenty-three he became professor of surgery and anatomy at the University of Padua in Italy. Unlike most professors, who read aloud from Galen while an assistant cut, Vesalius dissected bodies himself in front of students. He found that Galen's anatomy, based on animals, was wrong in more than two hundred details; for example, the human jaw is a single bone, and the breastbone has three parts, not seven. In 1543, at twenty-eight, he published De humani corporis fabrica, On the Fabric of the Human Body, with magnificent detailed woodcut illustrations, probably made in the workshop of the painter Titian. It was published the same year as Copernicus's book on the heavens. He became physician to the emperor Charles V and his son Philip II of Spain. He died in 1564 on the island of Zakynthos, returning from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem.","keyDates":[{"date":"1514","event":"Born in Brussels"},{"date":"1537","event":"Professor at Padua"},{"date":"1543","event":"On the Fabric of the Human Body"},{"date":"1544","event":"Physician to Charles V"},{"date":"1564","event":"Dies on Zakynthos"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Andreas Vesalius","relatedWorks":["vesalius-on-the-fabric-of-the-human-body","galen-selected-works"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"vesalius-on-the-fabric-of-the-human-body","url":"/works/vesalius-on-the-fabric-of-the-human-body/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[{"text":"The skeleton he prepared in Basel, which still survives, is the world's oldest surviving anatomical preparation.","source":{"title":"Andreas Vesalius (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andreas_Vesalius"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 1564 and died on the return journey; his personal beliefs are not otherwise well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andreas_Vesalius","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"queen-victoria","name":"Queen Victoria","url":"/great-lives/queen-victoria/","dates":"1819–1901","born":1819,"died":1901,"era":"19th-century","categories":["kings-queens-emperors"],"knownFor":"Queen of the United Kingdom for nearly 64 years, giving her name to the Victorian age.","bio":"Victoria was the only child of the Duke of Kent, a son of King George III. Her father died when she was a baby, and she was raised strictly at Kensington Palace. She became queen in 1837 at eighteen. In 1840 she married her German cousin Prince Albert, who became her closest adviser; they had nine children, whose marriages linked her to most of the royal families of Europe, earning her the nickname grandmother of Europe. Albert helped organize the Great Exhibition of 1851, a showcase of industry and invention. When he died in 1861, Victoria was crushed and wore black for the rest of her life, withdrawing from public view for years. Her reign of almost sixty-four years saw railways, the telegraph, factories, growing cities, wider voting rights and the expansion of the British Empire, and in 1876 she was made Empress of India. Her golden and diamond jubilees in 1887 and 1897 were huge public celebrations. She died in 1901, then the longest-reigning British monarch.","keyDates":[{"date":"1837","event":"Becomes queen"},{"date":"1840","event":"Marries Prince Albert"},{"date":"1861","event":"Death of Albert"},{"date":"1897","event":"Diamond Jubilee"},{"date":"1901","event":"Dies at Osborne House"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"book","title":"Who Was Queen Victoria?","author":"Jim Gigliotti","isbn13":"9780448481821","publisher":"Paperback","year":2014,"format":""}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"Her family ties to the royal houses of Europe earned her the nickname 'the grandmother of Europe'.","source":{"title":"Queen Victoria (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_Victoria"}},{"text":"At her own request, her favourite pet Pomeranian, Turi, was laid on her bed as she was dying.","source":{"title":"Queen Victoria (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_Victoria"}}],"records":[{"text":"On 23 September 1896 she passed her grandfather George III to become the longest-reigning monarch in British history up to that time.","source":{"title":"Queen Victoria (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_Victoria"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A Protestant monarch of the United Kingdom who supported religious freedom in India.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_Victoria","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"geoffrey-de-villehardouin","name":"Geoffrey de Villehardouin","url":"/great-lives/geoffrey-de-villehardouin/","dates":"c. 1150–c. 1213","born":1150,"died":1213,"era":"medieval","categories":["writers-poets","military-leaders"],"knownFor":"French knight and marshal of Champagne who took part in and chronicled the Fourth Crusade and the conquest of Constantinople.","bio":"Geoffrey of Villehardouin was born around 1150 in Champagne, in northeastern France, into a family of the lesser nobility. A layman and a soldier, he became marshal of Champagne, a senior officer in the service of the count. He was among the leaders of the Fourth Crusade, which was called by Pope Innocent III in 1198, and in 1201 he was one of the envoys sent to Venice to arrange ships to carry the crusading army. Unable to pay the Venetians in full, the crusaders were diverted first to the city of Zara and then to Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire, which they captured and sacked in April 1204. Villehardouin took part in these events and in the founding of the Latin Empire of Constantinople, where he was made marshal of Romania. His account, On the Conquest of Constantinople, is an eyewitness history of the crusade, and it is the earliest surviving historical narrative in French prose. He spent his last years in the Latin Empire and died there around 1213.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 1150","event":"Born in Champagne"},{"date":"1201","event":"Envoy to Venice for the crusade"},{"date":"1204","event":"Crusaders capture Constantinople"},{"date":"c. 1213","event":"Dies in Greece"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Geoffrey de Villehardouin","relatedWorks":["villehardouin-conquest-of-constantinople"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"villehardouin-conquest-of-constantinople","url":"/works/villehardouin-conquest-of-constantinople/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A knight who took part in and chronicled the Fourth Crusade.","source":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Villehardouin%2C_Geoffroy_de","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica (1911) (via Wikisource)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["His dates are approximate."]},{"slug":"virgil","name":"Virgil","url":"/great-lives/virgil/","dates":"c. 70–19 BC","born":-70,"died":-19,"era":"ancient","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Roman poet, author of the Aeneid, the Eclogues and the Georgics.","bio":"Publius Vergilius Maro, known as Virgil, was born in 70 BC near Mantua, in northern Italy, where his family owned a farm. He was educated in Cremona, Milan and Rome, and is said to have begun writing poetry at the Epicurean school of Siro in Naples. He became one of the poets supported by Maecenas, adviser to Octavian, the future emperor Augustus. His first major work, the Eclogues, a collection of pastoral poems about shepherds,, appeared around 39–38 BC. The Georgics, completed around 29 BC, is a long poem about farming, trees, livestock and bee-keeping. He spent his last eleven years writing the Aeneid, an epic in twelve books about the Trojan hero Aeneas, who escapes the fall of Troy and, after many trials, travels to Italy, where his descendants will found Rome. In 19 BC he fell ill while travelling in Greece and died soon after reaching Italy, before he had finished revising the poem. He is said to have wanted it burned, but Augustus ordered it published. The Aeneid became a central text of Latin literature and education for centuries.","keyDates":[{"date":"70 BC","event":"Born near Mantua"},{"date":"c. 39 BC","event":"Eclogues published"},{"date":"29 BC","event":"Georgics completed"},{"date":"29 BC","event":"Begins the Aeneid"},{"date":"19 BC","event":"Dies in Apulia, Italy"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Virgil","relatedWorks":["the-aeneid","virgil-eclogues-and-georgics"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-aeneid","url":"/works/the-aeneid/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"virgil-eclogues-and-georgics","url":"/works/virgil-eclogues-and-georgics/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"His schoolmates found him shy and reserved and nicknamed him 'Parthenias'.","source":{"title":"Virgil (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgil"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented; Christians later read his fourth Eclogue as prophetic.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgil","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"francisco-de-vitoria","name":"Francisco de Vitoria","url":"/great-lives/francisco-de-vitoria/","dates":"c. 1483–1546","born":1483,"died":1546,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["theologians-church-fathers","legal-scholars-lawgivers","philosophers"],"knownFor":"Spanish Dominican theologian at Salamanca who argued that the peoples of the Americas had true rights, a founder of international law.","bio":"Francisco de Vitoria was born around 1483 (some scholars say 1492), probably in Burgos, Spain. A Dominican friar, he studied and taught at Paris, where he absorbed the theology of Thomas Aquinas. In 1526 he won the leading chair of theology at the University of Salamanca, where he taught for twenty years and trained a generation of scholars later known as the School of Salamanca. Each year he gave public lectures called relectiones on pressing questions. In his 1539 lectures On the American Indians and On the Law of War he asked by what right Spain ruled the newly conquered peoples of the Americas. He argued that the Indians truly owned their lands and ruled their own communities; that neither the pope nor the emperor was lord of the whole world; that unbelief was no reason to take their property; and that war could be just only for a real wrong done. His teaching on the law of nations made him, with Hugo Grotius, a founder of international law. He died in Salamanca on 12 August 1546.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 1483","event":"Born, probably in Burgos (some scholars: 1492)"},{"date":"1526","event":"Takes the prime chair of theology at Salamanca"},{"date":"1539","event":"Delivers the relectiones On the American Indians and On the Law of War"},{"date":"1546","event":"Dies in Salamanca on 12 August"},{"date":"1557","event":"Relectiones first printed at Lyon"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["vitoria-on-the-american-indians"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"vitoria-on-the-american-indians","url":"/works/vitoria-on-the-american-indians/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"grotius-rights-of-war-and-peace","url":"/works/grotius-rights-of-war-and-peace/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Spanish Dominican theologian who taught at the Dominican College of St Gregory in Valladolid.","source":"https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06232a.htm","sourceName":"Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["Birth year is disputed (c. 1483 or c. 1492)."]},{"slug":"vitruvius","name":"Vitruvius","url":"/great-lives/vitruvius/","dates":"active 1st century BC","born":-80,"died":-15,"era":"ancient","categories":["artists-composers-architects","scientists-mathematicians"],"knownFor":"Roman architect and engineer, author of De Architectura, the only complete architectural treatise surviving from antiquity.","bio":"Marcus Vitruvius Pollio was a Roman architect and military engineer of the first century BC. What little is known of him comes mostly from his own book. He served under Julius Caesar, apparently as an engineer in charge of artillery and siege machines, and later worked for Augustus, whose sister Octavia helped secure him a pension. He designed a basilica at Fano, which he describes, though it does not survive. In old age he wrote De Architectura, the Ten Books on Architecture, dedicated to Augustus and probably completed between about 30 and 15 BC. It covers the education of the architect, town planning, building materials, temples and the classical orders, public buildings, houses, decoration, water supply, astronomy and sundials, and machines. Vitruvius taught that good buildings must have durability, convenience and beauty, and that their proportions should reflect those of the human body. Copies of the book survived through the Middle Ages, and its rediscovery in the fifteenth century made it the guide of Renaissance architects; Leonardo da Vinci's drawing of Vitruvian Man illustrates his account of human proportion.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 46 BC","event":"Serves as a military engineer under Julius Caesar"},{"date":"c. 30-15 BC","event":"Writes De Architectura for Augustus"},{"date":"1414","event":"Manuscript rediscovered at St. Gall"},{"date":"c. 1490","event":"Leonardo draws Vitruvian Man"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Vitruvius","relatedWorks":["vitruvius-ten-books-on-architecture"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"vitruvius-ten-books-on-architecture","url":"/works/vitruvius-ten-books-on-architecture/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented; he wrote on the design of temples for the gods as part of Roman architecture.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitruvius","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"alessandro-volta","name":"Alessandro Volta","url":"/great-lives/alessandro-volta/","dates":"1745–1827","born":1745,"died":1827,"era":"18th-century","categories":["inventors","scientists-mathematicians"],"knownFor":"Italian physicist who invented the electric battery.","bio":"Alessandro Volta was born in Como, in northern Italy, to a noble family. He was slow to speak as a child but became a keen student of natural science. In 1775 he improved a device for producing static electricity, and in 1776 he discovered methane gas in the marshes of Lake Maggiore. He became professor of physics at the University of Pavia. In the 1780s his fellow scientist Luigi Galvani found that a dead frog's leg twitched when touched by two different metals, and believed the electricity came from the animal. Volta disagreed and argued that the electricity came from the contact of the two metals. To prove it, in 1799 and 1800 he built a stack of alternating zinc and copper discs separated by cloth soaked in salt water. This voltaic pile produced a steady electric current, the first electric battery, and made possible many new experiments with electricity. Napoleon made him a count. Volta was a devout Catholic. He died in Como in 1827. The unit of electric potential, the volt, is named for him.","keyDates":[{"date":"1776","event":"Discovers methane"},{"date":"1779","event":"Professor at Pavia"},{"date":"1800","event":"Announces the voltaic pile"},{"date":"1801","event":"Demonstrates it to Napoleon"},{"date":"1827","event":"Dies in Como"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Raised Catholic and remained a practicing Catholic throughout his life; he wrote a public declaration of his faith.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alessandro_Volta","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"voltaire","name":"Voltaire","url":"/great-lives/voltaire/","dates":"1694–1778","born":1694,"died":1778,"era":"18th-century","categories":["philosophers"],"knownFor":"French Enlightenment writer, historian and satirist, author of Candide and campaigner for religious toleration.","bio":"François-Marie Arouet was born in Paris in 1694, the son of a notary, and was educated by the Jesuits at the Collège Louis-le-Grand. Verses mocking the regent led to eleven months in the Bastille in 1717–1718, and soon afterward his tragedy Oedipus made him famous under the pen name Voltaire. After a quarrel with a nobleman he was imprisoned again and went to England from 1726 to 1728, where he admired Locke, Newton and English religious toleration; his Philosophical Letters on the English (1734) were condemned in France. He lived for years at Cirey with the scientist Émilie du Châtelet, spent 1750–1753 at the court of Frederick the Great in Prussia, and settled near Geneva and then at Ferney. His many works include histories such as The Age of Louis XIV, the satirical tale Candide (1759), the Treatise on Tolerance (1763), written after the execution of Jean Calas, and the Philosophical Dictionary (1764). He returned to Paris in triumph in 1778 and died there that May.","keyDates":[{"date":"1694","event":"Born in Paris"},{"date":"1717–1718","event":"Imprisoned in the Bastille"},{"date":"1718","event":"Oedipus staged; adopts the name Voltaire"},{"date":"1726–1728","event":"Lives in England"},{"date":"1734","event":"Philosophical Letters published and condemned"},{"date":"1750–1753","event":"At the court of Frederick the Great"},{"date":"1759","event":"Candide published; settles at Ferney"},{"date":"1763","event":"Treatise on Tolerance"},{"date":"1778","event":"Returns to Paris and dies"}],"quotes":[{"text":"we must cultivate our garden","work":"candide","location":"Chapter XXX, The Conclusion","verified":true},{"text":"Take away the arts and the progress of the mind, and you will find nothing","work":"durant-the-story-of-philosophy","location":"Chapter V, section V (Les Délices: The Essay on Morals), p. 242","verified":true}],"author":"Voltaire","relatedWorks":["candide","durant-the-story-of-philosophy","voltaire-zadig"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"candide","url":"/works/candide/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"durant-the-story-of-philosophy","url":"/works/durant-the-story-of-philosophy/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"book","title":"Voltaire Almighty","author":"Roger Pearson","isbn13":"9781596918771","publisher":"Bloomsbury Publishing USA","year":2008,"format":""},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"voltaire-zadig","url":"/works/voltaire-zadig/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"His family nicknamed him 'Zozo'.","source":{"title":"Voltaire (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voltaire"}},{"text":"A crater on Mars's moon Deimos and the asteroid 5676 Voltaire are named after him.","source":{"title":"Voltaire (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voltaire"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A champion of religious toleration who defended the persecuted Protestant Jean Calas.","source":"https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/voltaire/","sourceName":"Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy","documented":true},"furtherReading":[{"series":"Very Short Introductions","title":"Voltaire: A Very Short Introduction","author":"Nicholas Cronk","publisher":"Oxford University Press","year":2017,"isbn13":"9780199688357","url":"https://bookshop.org/a/130650/9780199688357"}],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"kurt-vonnegut","name":"Kurt Vonnegut","url":"/great-lives/kurt-vonnegut/","dates":"1922–2007","born":1922,"died":2007,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American novelist and satirist who survived the 1945 firebombing of Dresden as a prisoner of war and wrote about it in Slaughterhouse-Five.","bio":"Kurt Vonnegut Jr. was born in Indianapolis on November 11, 1922, the youngest child of the architect Kurt Vonnegut Sr. and Edith Lieber Vonnegut. He wrote for his high-school newspaper and then for the Cornell Daily Sun while studying biochemistry at Cornell, which he left in 1943 to enlist in the U.S. Army. Captured in the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944, he was held as a prisoner of war in Dresden. He survived the Allied firebombing of the city in February 1945 in an underground meat locker beneath a slaughterhouse, and afterward he and other prisoners were put to work recovering the dead. After the war he married Jane Cox, studied anthropology at the University of Chicago, and worked as a reporter and as a publicist for General Electric before writing full time. In 1958, after his sister Alice and her husband died, he and Jane took in three of their sons. His darkly comic, satirical novels include Player Piano (1952), Cat's Cradle (1963) and the antiwar Slaughterhouse-Five (1969). His outlook was largely fatalistic and humanist. He died in New York in 2007.","keyDates":[{"date":"1922","event":"Born in Indianapolis, Indiana"},{"date":"1943","event":"Leaves Cornell to enlist in the U.S. Army"},{"date":"1944","event":"Captured in the Battle of the Bulge"},{"date":"1945","event":"Survives the firebombing of Dresden as a prisoner of war"},{"date":"1952","event":"Player Piano, his first novel, published"},{"date":"1963","event":"Cat's Cradle published"},{"date":"1969","event":"Slaughterhouse-Five published"},{"date":"2007","event":"Dies in New York City"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Kurt Vonnegut","relatedWorks":["slaughterhouse-five"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"slaughterhouse-five","url":"/works/slaughterhouse-five/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"In 1963 the University of Chicago granted him a master's degree in anthropology after he submitted his novel Cat's Cradle as a thesis.","source":{"title":"Kurt Vonnegut (Britannica)","url":"https://www.britannica.com/biography/Kurt-Vonnegut"}},{"text":"After the war he was awarded a Purple Heart, for frostbite.","source":{"title":"Kurt Vonnegut (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Vonnegut"}},{"text":"In 2006 students at Xavier High School in New York City wrote to him as an English-class assignment, inviting him to visit. He did not come, but he answered them with a letter of advice and was the only author they wrote to who replied.","source":{"title":"Kurt Vonnegut's letter to Xavier High School (Reader's Digest, from Letters of Note)","url":"https://www.rd.com/article/letter-from-kurt-vonnegut/"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[{"name":"Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library","note":"The Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library in Indianapolis, his hometown, opened in 2010. It offers programs for students and an annual Teaching Vonnegut series for teachers.","url":"https://www.vonnegutlibrary.org/education/","urlLabel":"Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library — education"}],"faith":{"note":"A humanist rather than a religious believer, he was honorary president of the American Humanist Association from 1992, when he succeeded Isaac Asimov, until his death in 2007.","source":"https://americanhumanist.org/news/2009-04-gore-vidal-accepts-title-of-american-humanist-association-honorary-president/","sourceName":"American Humanist Association, April 20, 2009 announcement","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"jacobus-de-voragine","name":"Jacobus de Voragine","url":"/great-lives/jacobus-de-voragine/","dates":"c. 1230–1298","born":1230,"died":1298,"era":"medieval","categories":["saints-reformers","writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Italian Dominican friar and archbishop of Genoa who compiled the Golden Legend, the most popular collection of saints' lives of the Middle Ages.","bio":"Jacobus de Voragine was born about 1230, either in Varazze or in Genoa, Italy. In 1244 he joined the Dominicans, the Order of Preachers founded by Saint Dominic. He became a well-known preacher in many parts of Italy, taught in the schools of his order, and served as prior of Dominican houses at Como, Bologna and Asti. From 1267 to 1286 he led the Dominicans of the province of Lombardy. In 1292 he was made archbishop of Genoa, where he worked hard to make peace between the city's quarrelling factions, the Guelfs and Ghibellines. His great work was the Golden Legend, a collection of the lives of the saints arranged around the feasts of the church year. It gathered stories from many older writers and became one of the most widely read books of the Middle Ages; in 1483 William Caxton printed an English translation. He also wrote sermons and a chronicle of Genoa. He died in 1298 and was beatified in 1816.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 1230","event":"Born in Varazze or Genoa"},{"date":"1244","event":"Joins the Dominican order"},{"date":"1267","event":"Becomes provincial of Lombardy"},{"date":"1292","event":"Consecrated archbishop of Genoa"},{"date":"1298","event":"Dies in Genoa"},{"date":"1816","event":"Beatified by Pope Pius VII"}],"quotes":[{"text":"And when the holy man Nicholas knew hereof he had great horror of this villainy, and threw by night secretly into the house of the man a mass of gold wrapped in a cloth","work":"golden-legend-popular-saints","location":"Life of St. Nicholas","verified":true}],"author":"Jacobus de Voragine; William Caxton","relatedWorks":["golden-legend-popular-saints","sts-cosmas-and-damian","sts-roch-and-sebastian"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"golden-legend-popular-saints","url":"/works/golden-legend-popular-saints/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"sts-cosmas-and-damian","url":"/works/sts-cosmas-and-damian/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"sts-roch-and-sebastian","url":"/works/sts-roch-and-sebastian/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Archbishop of Genoa and medieval hagiographer who entered the Dominican order in 1244.","source":"https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08262b.htm","sourceName":"Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"madam-c-j-walker","name":"Madam C. J. Walker","url":"/great-lives/madam-c-j-walker/","dates":"1867–1919","born":1867,"died":1919,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["titans-of-industry"],"knownFor":"Entrepreneur born to formerly enslaved parents who built a hair-care company and became one of America's first self-made women millionaires.","bio":"Sarah Breedlove was born on a cotton plantation in Delta, Louisiana, the first child in her family born free after emancipation. She was orphaned at seven, married at fourteen, and widowed at twenty, with a young daughter, A'Lelia. She moved to St. Louis, where she worked as a washerwoman for little more than a dollar a day and sang in the church choir. Suffering from hair loss, she experimented with remedies and worked as a sales agent for another Black businesswoman, Annie Malone. In 1906, after marrying Charles Joseph Walker, she began selling her own hair-care products as Madam C. J. Walker. She traveled widely selling door to door, then built a factory and beauty school in Indianapolis and trained thousands of Black women as sales agents, giving them a way to earn a good living. She gave generously to the YMCA, schools and the NAACP and supported campaigns against lynching. She built a mansion on the Hudson River in New York. She died in 1919.","keyDates":[{"date":"1867","event":"Born in Delta, Louisiana"},{"date":"1888","event":"Moves to St. Louis"},{"date":"1906","event":"Starts her business as Madam C. J. Walker"},{"date":"1910","event":"Builds headquarters in Indianapolis"},{"date":"1919","event":"Dies at Irvington, New York"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["up-from-slavery"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"book","title":"On Her Own Ground","author":"A'Lelia Bundles","isbn13":"9780743431729","publisher":"Scribner","year":2002,"format":"paperback"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[{"text":"Guinness World Records lists her as the first woman in America to become a self-made millionaire, though other women may have been earlier with less documented wealth.","source":{"title":"Madam C. J. Walker (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madam_C._J._Walker"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A Christian and member of the African Methodist Episcopal Church; her faith shaped her philanthropy.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madam_C._J._Walker","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"horace-walpole","name":"Horace Walpole","url":"/great-lives/horace-walpole/","dates":"1717–1797","born":1717,"died":1797,"era":"18th-century","categories":["writers-poets","artists-composers-architects"],"knownFor":"English writer, collector and politician; author of The Castle of Otranto, the first Gothic novel, and builder of Strawberry Hill.","bio":"Horace Walpole was born in London in 1717, the youngest son of Sir Robert Walpole, usually regarded as Britain's first prime minister. Educated at Eton and King's College, Cambridge, he made the Grand Tour of France and Italy with the poet Thomas Gray. He sat in Parliament for many years but was more devoted to literature, art and antiquities than to politics. In 1747 he bought a small house at Twickenham and transformed it into Strawberry Hill, a fanciful Gothic villa filled with his collections, which helped launch the Gothic Revival in architecture. There he set up a private printing press. In 1764 he published The Castle of Otranto, presenting it at first as a translation of an old Italian manuscript; it is considered the first Gothic novel. He also wrote a tragedy, works on painters and royal authors, and memoirs of the reigns of George II and George III. His thousands of witty letters are a famous record of his age. In 1791 he became the fourth Earl of Orford. He never married and died in London in 1797.","keyDates":[{"date":"1717","event":"Born in London"},{"date":"1747","event":"Acquires Strawberry Hill"},{"date":"1764","event":"The Castle of Otranto published"},{"date":"1791","event":"Becomes Earl of Orford"},{"date":"1797","event":"Dies in London"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Horace Walpole","relatedWorks":["walpole-the-castle-of-otranto"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"walpole-the-castle-of-otranto","url":"/works/walpole-the-castle-of-otranto/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":null,"sourceName":null,"documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"george-walton","name":"George Walton","url":"/great-lives/george-walton/","dates":"c. 1741–1804","born":1741,"died":1804,"era":"18th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"Virginia-born Georgia lawyer who signed the Declaration, was wounded and captured at Savannah, and later served as governor and chief justice.","bio":"George Walton was born about 1741 in Cumberland County, Virginia, is said to have been apprenticed to a carpenter, and then studied law after moving to Georgia. He became a leading attorney in Savannah, sat in the provincial congress, and signed the Declaration of Independence. In December 1778, at the capture of Savannah, he was wounded and taken prisoner; he was later exchanged. After the war he served as governor of Georgia, as chief justice of the state, and briefly as a United States senator. He was a central figure in Georgia's fierce postwar factions, the same quarrels that had already cost Button Gwinnett his life, and his reputation among contemporaries was mixed. Walton died in 1804. His rise from modest beginnings, his wound at Savannah, and his long, contentious career in state office together make a full, unsentimental picture of a frontier signer.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 1741","event":"Born in Cumberland County, Virginia"},{"date":"1776","event":"Signs the Declaration of Independence"},{"date":"1778","event":"Is wounded and captured at the fall of Savannah"},{"date":"1789","event":"Serves as governor of Georgia"},{"date":"1804","event":"Dies in Georgia"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["the-founding-documents"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-founding-documents","url":"/works/the-founding-documents/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":null,"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"izaak-walton","name":"Izaak Walton","url":"/great-lives/izaak-walton/","dates":"c. 1593–1683","born":1593,"died":1683,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"English writer, author of The Compleat Angler and short lives of John Donne, George Herbert and other churchmen.","bio":"Izaak Walton was born in Stafford, England, around 1593. Little is known of his early life. He went to London and became an ironmonger, a member of the Ironmongers' Company, with a shop in Fleet Street. He was a parishioner and friend of the poet John Donne, then dean of St Paul's Cathedral, and wrote a life of Donne that was printed with Donne's sermons in 1640. He later wrote lives of the diplomat and poet Sir Henry Wotton, the theologian Richard Hooker, the poet George Herbert and Bishop Robert Sanderson, gathered as The Lives. A supporter of the royalist cause during the English Civil War, he retired from business and spent much time fishing in the rivers of England. In 1653 he published The Compleat Angler, a dialogue in which a fisherman teaches a hunter the art and pleasures of angling, mixed with songs, recipes and reflections on a quiet, contented life. It became one of the most reprinted books in English. In later years he lived with clergy friends and family, and he died in Winchester in 1683.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 1593","event":"Born in Stafford"},{"date":"1640","event":"Life of John Donne published"},{"date":"1653","event":"The Compleat Angler published"},{"date":"1670","event":"The Lives collected"},{"date":"1683","event":"Dies in Winchester"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Izaak Walton","relatedWorks":["walton-lives"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"walton-lives","url":"/works/walton-lives/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"He spent his last forty years visiting friends who enjoyed fishing and gathering material for his famous fishing book, The Compleat Angler.","source":{"title":"Izaak Walton (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Izaak_Walton"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Izaak_Walton","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"gertrude-chandler-warner","name":"Gertrude Chandler Warner","url":"/great-lives/gertrude-chandler-warner/","dates":"1890–1979","born":1890,"died":1979,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American teacher and author of The Boxcar Children, about four orphaned siblings who make a home in an old railroad boxcar.","bio":"Gertrude Chandler Warner was born in 1890 in Putnam, Connecticut, where her family's house on Main Street stood across from the railroad station; she enjoyed watching the trains and imagined what it would be like to live in a caboose. Her father was a lawyer. She wanted to be an author from the age of five and made small handmade books as presents for her grandfather. Because of poor health she left high school, but she later took classes at Yale and taught first grade at a school in Putnam for many years, beginning during the First World War when teachers were scarce. She wrote The Boxcar Children, first published in 1924 and revised in 1942 as a book that beginning readers could manage, about four orphaned brothers and sisters, Henry, Jessie, Violet and Benny Alden, who live on their own in an abandoned boxcar before being found by their kind grandfather. She wrote the first nineteen books of the series, which other authors continued after her death. She died in Putnam in 1979.","keyDates":[{"date":"1890","event":"Born in Putnam, Connecticut"},{"date":"1918","event":"Begins teaching first grade in Putnam"},{"date":"1924","event":"The Boxcar Children first published"},{"date":"1942","event":"Revised edition for beginning readers"},{"date":"1979","event":"Dies in Putnam"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Gertrude Chandler Warner","relatedWorks":["the-boxcar-children"],"reading":[{"band":"K-2","kind":"library","work":"the-boxcar-children","url":"/works/the-boxcar-children/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"Growing up, she loved to read, and her favourite book was Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.","source":{"title":"Gertrude Chandler Warner (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gertrude_Chandler_Warner"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gertrude_Chandler_Warner","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"robert-penn-warren","name":"Robert Penn Warren","url":"/great-lives/robert-penn-warren/","dates":"1905–1989","born":1905,"died":1989,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American poet, novelist and critic, author of All the King's Men and co-author of Understanding Poetry; first US Poet Laureate.","bio":"Robert Penn Warren was born on 24 April 1905 in Guthrie, Kentucky. He entered Vanderbilt University at sixteen, joined the circle of poets known as the Fugitives, and graduated in 1925. After graduate study he went to New College, Oxford, as a Rhodes Scholar. While teaching at Louisiana State University from 1933 to 1942 he founded The Southern Review with Cleanth Brooks in 1935, and the two wrote Understanding Poetry (1938), an influential textbook of close reading. His novel All the King's Men (1946), whose politician Willie Stark resembles the Louisiana governor Huey Long, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1947. He later won Pulitzer Prizes for poetry in 1958 and 1979, the only person to win them for both fiction and poetry, and taught at Yale. In 1986 he was named the first Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. He died in Stratton, Vermont, in 1989.","keyDates":[{"date":"1905","event":"Born in Guthrie, Kentucky"},{"date":"1935","event":"Founds The Southern Review with Cleanth Brooks"},{"date":"1938","event":"Understanding Poetry published"},{"date":"1947","event":"Wins the Pulitzer Prize for All the King's Men"},{"date":"1986","event":"Named first US Poet Laureate"},{"date":"1989","event":"Dies in Stratton, Vermont"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Robert Penn Warren","relatedWorks":["brooks-warren-understanding-poetry"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"brooks-warren-understanding-poetry","url":"/works/brooks-warren-understanding-poetry/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://www.britannica.com/biography/Robert-Penn-Warren","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"booker-t-washington","name":"Booker T. Washington","url":"/great-lives/booker-t-washington/","dates":"1856–1915","born":1856,"died":1915,"era":"19th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders","saints-reformers"],"knownFor":"Educator born into slavery who built the Tuskegee Institute.","bio":"Booker Taliaferro Washington was born into slavery on a farm in Virginia. After emancipation, his family moved to West Virginia, where as a boy he worked in salt furnaces and coal mines and studied whenever he could. At sixteen he walked and worked his way to the Hampton Institute, where he paid for his schooling as a janitor. In 1881 he was chosen to lead a new school for Black students at Tuskegee, Alabama. Starting with a few students in a church building, he and his students built the campus with their own hands, making the bricks themselves, and Tuskegee became a leading college for teachers and skilled trades; George Washington Carver taught there. In his Atlanta Exposition Address of 1895 he urged Black Americans to build economic strength through education, work and property, while accepting segregation for the time. W. E. B. Du Bois and others criticized this approach and pressed for full civil and political rights. Washington's autobiography, Up from Slavery, became a bestseller. He died in 1915.","keyDates":[{"date":"1856","event":"Born enslaved in Virginia"},{"date":"1872","event":"Enters Hampton Institute"},{"date":"1881","event":"Founds Tuskegee Institute"},{"date":"1895","event":"Atlanta Exposition Address"},{"date":"1901","event":"Publishes Up from Slavery"},{"date":"1915","event":"Dies at Tuskegee"}],"quotes":[{"text":"success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed.","work":"up-from-slavery","location":"Chapter II","verified":true},{"text":"I would permit no man, no matter what his colour might be, to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him.","work":"up-from-slavery","location":"Chapter XI","verified":true}],"author":"Booker T. Washington","relatedWorks":["up-from-slavery","atlanta-exposition-address"],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"book","title":"Who Was Booker T. Washington?","author":"","isbn13":"9780448488516","publisher":"Paperback","year":2018,"format":""},{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"up-from-slavery","url":"/works/up-from-slavery/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"atlanta-exposition-address","url":"/works/atlanta-exposition-address/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[{"text":"He was the first African American shown on a United States postage stamp.","source":{"title":"Booker T. Washington (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booker_T._Washington"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented in detail; he worked closely with Black church leaders.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booker_T._Washington","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"george-washington","name":"George Washington","url":"/great-lives/george-washington/","dates":"1732–1799","born":1732,"died":1799,"era":"18th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders","military-leaders"],"knownFor":"Commander of the Continental Army and first President of the United States.","bio":"George Washington was born in Virginia to a family of planters. As a young man he worked as a surveyor and then served as an officer in the French and Indian War. He became a wealthy planter at Mount Vernon, where the work was done by enslaved people, and served in the Virginia legislature. In 1775 the Continental Congress chose him to command the new Continental Army. He lost more battles than he won, but he kept the army together through hard winters such as Valley Forge, surprised the enemy at Trenton after crossing the icy Delaware River, and with French help forced the British surrender at Yorktown in 1781. He then resigned his command and went home, which astonished the world. He presided over the Constitutional Convention in 1787 and was elected the first president, serving two terms from 1789 to 1797 and setting many lasting customs. His Farewell Address warned against political factions and foreign entanglements. In his will he provided for freeing the people he had enslaved.","keyDates":[{"date":"1732","event":"Born in Westmoreland County, Virginia"},{"date":"1775","event":"Named commander of the Continental Army"},{"date":"1781","event":"British surrender at Yorktown"},{"date":"1789","event":"Inaugurated first President"},{"date":"1796","event":"Farewell Address"},{"date":"1799","event":"Dies at Mount Vernon"}],"quotes":[{"text":"Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.","work":"washington-farewell-address-and-selected-letters","location":"","verified":true}],"author":"George Washington","relatedWorks":["washington-farewell-address-and-selected-letters","chernow-washington","newburgh-address","washington-first-inaugural-address","washington-second-inaugural-address","washington-thanksgiving-proclamation-1789","washington-letter-to-the-hebrew-congregation-at-newport"],"reading":[{"band":"K-2","kind":"book","title":"I am George Washington","author":"Brad Meltzer","isbn13":"9780525428480","publisher":"Dial Books","year":2016,"format":"hardcover"},{"band":"K-2","kind":"book","title":"A Picture Book of George Washington","author":"David A. Adler","isbn13":"9780823440597","publisher":"Holiday House, Incorporated","year":2018,"format":""},{"band":"3-5","kind":"book","title":"Who Was George Washington?","author":"Roberta Edwards","isbn13":"9780448448923","publisher":"Grosset & Dunlap","year":2009,"format":""},{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"newburgh-address","url":"/works/newburgh-address/"},{"band":"6-8","kind":"book","title":"Washington at Valley Forge","author":"Russell Freedman","isbn13":"9780823445080","publisher":"Holiday House, Incorporated","year":2020,"format":""},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"washington-farewell-address-and-selected-letters","url":"/works/washington-farewell-address-and-selected-letters/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"chernow-washington","url":"/works/chernow-washington/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"In one battle he had two horses shot out from under him, and bullets went through his hat and coat.","source":{"title":"George Washington (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington"}},{"text":"His two favourite horses were Blueskin and Nelson.","source":{"title":"George Washington (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Baptized as an infant and a devoted Anglican; as president he supported religious toleration.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"james-watt","name":"James Watt","url":"/great-lives/james-watt/","dates":"1736–1819","born":1736,"died":1819,"era":"18th-century","categories":["inventors"],"knownFor":"Scottish engineer whose improved steam engine powered the Industrial Revolution.","bio":"James Watt was born in Greenock, Scotland, the son of a shipwright and merchant. Often in poor health as a child, he was taught much at home and loved making models in his father's workshop. He trained as a maker of mathematical instruments in London and then worked at the University of Glasgow. In 1764 he was asked to repair a model of a Newcomen steam engine, the kind used to pump water from mines, and noticed how much fuel it wasted by heating and cooling the same cylinder. In 1765, on a Sunday walk, he hit on the idea of a separate condenser, which made the engine far more efficient. Developing it took years. In 1775 he went into partnership with the Birmingham manufacturer Matthew Boulton, and their firm built engines for mines, mills and factories. Watt added a way to turn the engine's motion into rotation, a governor to control its speed, and a gauge for measuring power, and coined the term horsepower. The unit of power, the watt, is named for him. He died in 1819.","keyDates":[{"date":"1736","event":"Born in Greenock"},{"date":"1765","event":"Conceives the separate condenser"},{"date":"1769","event":"Patents his improvement"},{"date":"1775","event":"Partnership with Matthew Boulton"},{"date":"1819","event":"Dies near Birmingham"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"The watt, the unit of power, is named after him.","source":{"title":"James Watt (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Watt"}}],"records":[{"text":"The Bank of England £50 note showing him and Matthew Boulton was the first Bank of England note to feature two portraits side by side.","source":{"title":"James Watt (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Watt"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Raised by Presbyterian Covenanter parents; he later became a deist.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Watt","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"isaac-watts","name":"Isaac Watts","url":"/great-lives/isaac-watts/","dates":"1674–1748","born":1674,"died":1748,"era":"18th-century","categories":["writers-poets","theologians-church-fathers"],"knownFor":"English Congregationalist minister and hymn writer, often called the father of English hymnody, author of Joy to the World.","bio":"Isaac Watts was born in Southampton in 1674, the eldest son of a Nonconformist schoolmaster who had been imprisoned for his beliefs. Because Dissenters were barred from Oxford and Cambridge, he studied at a Dissenting academy in Stoke Newington. Finding the metrical psalms sung in churches dull, he began writing new hymns, and in 1702 became pastor of the Independent congregation at Mark Lane in London. Poor health later limited his preaching, and he spent his last thirty-six years as a guest of Sir Thomas Abney and his family at Theobalds and Stoke Newington. His Hymns and Spiritual Songs (1707) and The Psalms of David Imitated in the Language of the New Testament (1719) changed congregational singing in English, and include When I Survey the Wondrous Cross, Our God, Our Help in Ages Past and Joy to the World. He also wrote Divine Songs for children, a widely used textbook on logic and works of theology. He died in 1748 and is buried at Bunhill Fields in London. Congregations around the world still sing his hymns in worship.","keyDates":[{"date":"1674","event":"Born in Southampton"},{"date":"1702","event":"Pastor at Mark Lane, London"},{"date":"1707","event":"Hymns and Spiritual Songs published"},{"date":"1715","event":"Divine Songs for children"},{"date":"1719","event":"The Psalms of David Imitated"},{"date":"1748","event":"Dies at Stoke Newington"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Isaac Watts","relatedWorks":["watts-hymns-and-spiritual-songs"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"watts-hymns-and-spiritual-songs","url":"/works/watts-hymns-and-spiritual-songs/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"English minister and pastor of an independent (Nonconformist) congregation; a hymn writer.","source":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dictionary_of_National_Biography%2C_1885-1900/Watts%2C_Isaac","sourceName":"Dictionary of National Biography (1885–1900) (via Wikisource)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"richard-m-weaver","name":"Richard M. Weaver","url":"/great-lives/richard-m-weaver/","dates":"1910–1963","born":1910,"died":1963,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["philosophers"],"knownFor":"American scholar of rhetoric and conservative thinker, author of Ideas Have Consequences.","bio":"Richard Malcolm Weaver was born in 1910 in Asheville, North Carolina, and grew up in Kentucky after his father's death. He studied at the University of Kentucky, where he joined the American Socialist Party for a time, and earned a master's degree at Vanderbilt University, where he studied under John Crowe Ransom and was influenced by the Southern Agrarians, writers who defended traditional rural life against industrialism. After teaching at Auburn and Texas A&M, he earned a doctorate at Louisiana State University with a dissertation on the culture of the American South. From 1944 until his death he taught English at the University of Chicago, where he was known as a demanding teacher of rhetoric and composition. In Ideas Have Consequences (1948) he argued that Western culture had declined since the late Middle Ages, when thinkers abandoned the belief in universal truths, and he called for a return to respect for truth, property and language. The book became an important early work of the postwar conservative movement. He also wrote The Ethics of Rhetoric (1953). He died in Chicago in 1963.","keyDates":[{"date":"1910","event":"Born in Asheville, North Carolina"},{"date":"1943","event":"Doctorate from Louisiana State University"},{"date":"1944","event":"Joins the University of Chicago"},{"date":"1948","event":"Ideas Have Consequences published"},{"date":"1953","event":"The Ethics of Rhetoric published"},{"date":"1963","event":"Dies in Chicago"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Richard M. Weaver","relatedWorks":["weaver-ideas-have-consequences"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"weaver-ideas-have-consequences","url":"/works/weaver-ideas-have-consequences/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A non-practicing Protestant who valued the South's 'older religiousness'.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_M._Weaver","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"max-weber","name":"Max Weber","url":"/great-lives/max-weber/","dates":"1864–1920","born":1864,"died":1920,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["philosophers"],"knownFor":"German sociologist and political economist, author of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.","bio":"Max Weber was born in 1864 in Erfurt, in Prussia, the eldest son of a lawyer and politician, and grew up in Berlin, where leading scholars and politicians visited his family's home. He studied law, history and economics at the universities of Heidelberg, Berlin and Göttingen and became a professor of economics at Freiburg and then Heidelberg. In 1893 he married Marianne Schnitger, who later became a scholar and campaigner for women's rights and wrote his biography. After his father's death in 1897 he suffered a severe breakdown and stopped teaching for several years. He returned to research, and in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904–1905) he argued that the religious ideas of Calvinism and other Protestant groups, which encouraged hard work and self-discipline, had helped the rise of modern capitalism. He also studied the religions of China and India, bureaucracy, law, and the nature of authority and the state. His large work Economy and Society was published after his death. He helped found the German Sociological Association. He died in Munich in 1920 during the influenza pandemic.","keyDates":[{"date":"1864","event":"Born in Erfurt"},{"date":"1893","event":"Marries Marianne Schnitger"},{"date":"1897","event":"Begins a long breakdown"},{"date":"1904–1905","event":"The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism"},{"date":"1919","event":"Politics as a Vocation lecture"},{"date":"1920","event":"Dies in Munich"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Max Weber","relatedWorks":["weber-the-protestant-ethic-and-the-spirit-of-capitalism"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"weber-the-protestant-ethic-and-the-spirit-of-capitalism","url":"/works/weber-the-protestant-ethic-and-the-spirit-of-capitalism/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented; he studied religion as a sociologist.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Weber","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"daniel-webster","name":"Daniel Webster","url":"/great-lives/daniel-webster/","dates":"1782–1852","born":1782,"died":1852,"era":"19th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"American lawyer, senator and secretary of state, one of the greatest orators in the United States Senate.","bio":"Daniel Webster was born in 1782 in Salisbury, New Hampshire, the son of a farmer who had fought in the Revolutionary War. He graduated from Dartmouth College and became a lawyer, practicing in Portsmouth and later in Boston. He served in the House of Representatives for New Hampshire and later for Massachusetts, and he argued many important cases before the Supreme Court, including Dartmouth College v. Woodward and McCulloch v. Maryland. As a senator from Massachusetts, he became famous for his speeches. In his Second Reply to Hayne (1830), answering Senator Robert Hayne of South Carolina, he defended the Union against the idea that states could nullify federal laws, ending with the words 'Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable!' He twice served as secretary of state, negotiating the Webster–Ashburton Treaty with Britain in 1842. In 1850 he supported the compromise measures meant to hold the Union together over slavery, a stand that divided his supporters. He died in Marshfield, Massachusetts, in 1852.","keyDates":[{"date":"1782","event":"Born in Salisbury, New Hampshire"},{"date":"1819","event":"Argues the Dartmouth College case"},{"date":"1830","event":"Second Reply to Hayne"},{"date":"1842","event":"Webster–Ashburton Treaty"},{"date":"1850","event":"Speaks for the Compromise of 1850"},{"date":"1852","event":"Dies in Marshfield, Massachusetts"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Daniel Webster","relatedWorks":["webster-second-reply-to-hayne","compromise-of-1850-speeches"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"webster-second-reply-to-hayne","url":"/works/webster-second-reply-to-hayne/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"compromise-of-1850-speeches","url":"/works/compromise-of-1850-speeches/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Accounts differ: one biography calls him an orthodox Trinitarian Congregationalist, while Unitarians have also claimed him.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Webster","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"josiah-wedgwood","name":"Josiah Wedgwood","url":"/great-lives/josiah-wedgwood/","dates":"1730–1795","born":1730,"died":1795,"era":"18th-century","categories":["titans-of-industry"],"knownFor":"English potter who industrialized pottery-making and campaigned against the slave trade.","bio":"Josiah Wedgwood was born in Burslem, Staffordshire, the youngest of twelve children in a family of potters. After his father died he left school at nine to work at the family pottery. Smallpox weakened his right leg, and years later it had to be amputated, but he became a master potter through constant experiment, recording thousands of tests in notebooks. He developed a durable cream-colored earthenware that Queen Charlotte admired, so he called it Queensware, and later Jasperware, a fine unglazed stoneware in blue and white. In 1769 he opened a large factory called Etruria, organized with a careful division of labor, and he promoted a canal to carry clay and finished pottery safely. He pioneered showrooms, catalogues and money-back guarantees. A member of the Lunar Society with scientists such as Erasmus Darwin, he invented a pyrometer to measure kiln heat. In 1787 he produced a medallion showing a kneeling enslaved man with the words Am I Not a Man and a Brother?, which became the emblem of the abolition movement. He died in 1795; Charles Darwin was his grandson.","keyDates":[{"date":"1759","event":"Opens his own pottery"},{"date":"1765","event":"Queen Charlotte's order leads to Queensware"},{"date":"1769","event":"Opens the Etruria works"},{"date":"1787","event":"Anti-slavery medallion"},{"date":"1795","event":"Dies at Etruria"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Attended an English Presbyterian chapel that later became Unitarian.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josiah_Wedgwood","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"duke-of-wellington","name":"Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington","url":"/great-lives/duke-of-wellington/","dates":"1769–1852","born":1769,"died":1852,"era":"19th-century","categories":["military-leaders","statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"British general who defeated Napoleon at Waterloo and later served as prime minister.","bio":"Arthur Wellesley was born in Dublin into an Anglo-Irish noble family. A poor student, he was sent to a French military academy and entered the army in 1787. He first made his name in India, where his brother was governor-general, winning the Battle of Assaye in 1803. In 1808 he was sent to Portugal to fight the French in the Peninsular War. Over six years, using careful supply lines, defensive positions such as the Lines of Torres Vedras, and the help of Spanish and Portuguese forces, he drove the French out of Portugal and Spain and invaded southern France. When Napoleon escaped from exile and returned to power in 1815, Wellington commanded an allied army in Belgium. On June 18, 1815, at Waterloo, his troops held their ridge through a day of French attacks until the Prussian army under Blücher arrived, and Napoleon was defeated for the last time. Wellington later entered politics and served as prime minister from 1828 to 1830, when he pushed through Catholic emancipation despite his own reluctance. He died in 1852 and received a state funeral.","keyDates":[{"date":"1803","event":"Victory at Assaye in India"},{"date":"1808–1814","event":"Peninsular War"},{"date":"1815","event":"Defeats Napoleon at Waterloo"},{"date":"1828–1830","event":"Prime Minister"},{"date":"1852","event":"Dies; state funeral"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"His style of white trousers, dark tunic, Hessian boots and black cocked hat became very popular and influenced fashion in Britain.","source":{"title":"Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Wellesley,_1st_Duke_of_Wellington"}}],"records":[{"text":"He fought in some 60 battles during his military career.","source":{"title":"Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Wellesley,_1st_Duke_of_Wellington"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A Protestant who told Parliament that England was 'a Christian country'.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Wellesley%2C_1st_Duke_of_Wellington","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"h-g-wells","name":"H. G. Wells","url":"/great-lives/h-g-wells/","dates":"1866–1946","born":1866,"died":1946,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"English writer of early science fiction, including The Time Machine, The Invisible Man and The War of the Worlds.","bio":"Herbert George Wells was born in 1866 in Bromley, Kent, where his parents kept a shop selling china and cricket equipment. When he was seven he broke his leg and spent months reading. His family's money troubles led to apprenticeships as a draper's assistant, which he disliked. He won a scholarship to study science in London, where he was taught by the biologist Thomas Henry Huxley, and he worked as a teacher and journalist. His first novel, The Time Machine (1895), about a traveler who journeys far into the future, was followed by The Island of Doctor Moreau, The Invisible Man (1897) and The War of the Worlds (1898), in which Martians invade England. These stories helped create modern science fiction and predicted ideas such as space travel, tanks and aerial warfare. He also wrote comic novels about ordinary lives, such as Kipps and The History of Mr Polly, a best-selling Outline of History, and many books on politics and the future. He supported socialism and world government. He died in London in 1946.","keyDates":[{"date":"1866","event":"Born in Bromley, Kent"},{"date":"1884","event":"Studies science under Thomas Henry Huxley"},{"date":"1895","event":"The Time Machine published"},{"date":"1897","event":"The Invisible Man published"},{"date":"1898","event":"The War of the Worlds published"},{"date":"1920","event":"The Outline of History"},{"date":"1946","event":"Dies in London"}],"quotes":[],"author":"H. G. Wells","relatedWorks":["the-invisible-man","the-war-of-the-worlds","the-time-machine","the-island-of-doctor-moreau","the-first-men-in-the-moon","when-the-sleeper-wakes"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-invisible-man","url":"/works/the-invisible-man/"},{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-war-of-the-worlds","url":"/works/the-war-of-the-worlds/"},{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-time-machine","url":"/works/the-time-machine/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-island-of-doctor-moreau","url":"/works/the-island-of-doctor-moreau/"},{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-first-men-in-the-moon","url":"/works/the-first-men-in-the-moon/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"when-the-sleeper-wakes","url":"/works/when-the-sleeper-wakes/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"He wrote rule books for playing battles with toy soldiers, Floor Games (1911) and Little Wars (1913).","source":{"title":"H. G. Wells (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._G._Wells"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"His mother was a Protestant and his father a freethinker; his views on God and religion changed over his lifetime.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._G._Wells","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"charles-wesley","name":"Charles Wesley","url":"/great-lives/charles-wesley/","dates":"1707–1788","born":1707,"died":1788,"era":"18th-century","categories":["writers-poets","saints-reformers"],"knownFor":"Anglican clergyman and co-founder of Methodism with his brother John; wrote some six thousand hymns, including Hark! the Herald Angels Sing.","bio":"Charles Wesley was born in 1707 at Epworth in Lincolnshire, the eighteenth child of the rector Samuel Wesley and his wife Susanna. At Christ Church, Oxford, he gathered a few students for prayer, study and visiting prisoners, a group mocked as the Holy Club and the Methodists, which his elder brother John soon led. Both brothers sailed to the colony of Georgia in 1735, an unhappy mission. In May 1738, days before John's experience at Aldersgate, Charles recorded an evangelical conversion, and he began writing hymns almost at once. For years he travelled as an open-air preacher; after marrying Sarah Gwynne in 1749 he settled in Bristol and later London. He wrote some six thousand hymns, among them And Can It Be, Love Divine, All Loves Excelling, O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing and Hark! the Herald Angels Sing. He remained loyal to the Church of England and opposed his brother's ordinations for America. He died in London in 1788. His hymns teach doctrine in song and are sung across denominations.","keyDates":[{"date":"1707","event":"Born at Epworth"},{"date":"1729","event":"Forms the Holy Club at Oxford"},{"date":"1735","event":"Mission to Georgia"},{"date":"1738","event":"Evangelical conversion"},{"date":"1739","event":"Hymns and Sacred Poems published with John Wesley"},{"date":"1788","event":"Dies in London"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["charles-wesley-hymns"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"charles-wesley-hymns","url":"/works/charles-wesley-hymns/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Anglican priest and leader, with his brother John, of the Methodist revival; he had an evangelical conversion in 1738 and wrote thousands of hymns.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Wesley","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"john-wesley","name":"John Wesley","url":"/great-lives/john-wesley/","dates":"1703–1791","born":1703,"died":1791,"era":"18th-century","categories":["theologians-church-fathers","saints-reformers"],"knownFor":"Anglican preacher who founded the Methodist movement.","bio":"John Wesley was the fifteenth child of Samuel Wesley, an Anglican rector in Epworth, Lincolnshire, and his wife Susanna, who taught her children at home. When he was five, the rectory burned and he was rescued from an upstairs window, and he later called himself a brand plucked from the burning. At Oxford, he and his brother Charles led a group of students, nicknamed Methodists for their methodical habits of prayer, study and visiting prisoners. After an unhappy mission to Georgia, on 24 May 1738, at a meeting in Aldersgate Street in London, he felt his heart strangely warmed and trusted in Christ alone for salvation. Encouraged by George Whitefield, he began preaching in the open air to miners and workers, often thousands at a time. Over fifty years he traveled about 250,000 miles on horseback and preached some 40,000 sermons, organizing converts into societies and classes led by lay preachers. He wrote on medicine, opened free clinics and schools, and his last letter encouraged William Wilberforce in the fight against slavery. He died in 1791.","keyDates":[{"date":"1709","event":"Rescued from the Epworth fire"},{"date":"1729","event":"Leads the Holy Club at Oxford"},{"date":"1738","event":"Aldersgate experience"},{"date":"1739","event":"Begins open-air preaching"},{"date":"1791","event":"Writes to Wilberforce; dies in London"}],"quotes":[],"author":"John Wesley","relatedWorks":["wesley-sermons-and-primitive-physick"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"wesley-sermons-and-primitive-physick","url":"/works/wesley-sermons-and-primitive-physick/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[{"text":"He may have been the first to use the phrase 'agree to disagree' in print.","source":{"title":"John Wesley (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wesley"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Anglican priest (ordained 1727) who led the Methodist movement.","source":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Appletons%27_Cyclop%C3%A6dia_of_American_Biography/Wesley%2C_John","sourceName":"Appletons' Cyclopaedia of American Biography (via Wikisource)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"edith-wharton","name":"Edith Wharton","url":"/great-lives/edith-wharton/","dates":"1862–1937","born":1862,"died":1937,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American novelist of New York society, author of Ethan Frome and The Age of Innocence, and the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.","bio":"Edith Jones was born in New York City in 1862 into a wealthy old family, and was educated by tutors at home and during long stays in Europe. In 1885 she married Edward Wharton, a Boston banker. She first wrote about architecture and interior design, coauthoring The Decoration of Houses in 1897, and designed her own house, The Mount, in Lenox, Massachusetts. Her novel The House of Mirth (1905), about a young woman in New York high society, was a bestseller. Ethan Frome (1911) is a short, stark tale of a poor farmer in a snowy New England village. She moved permanently to France, divorced in 1913, and during the First World War organized relief work for refugees in Paris, for which the French government made her a member of the Legion of Honor. The Age of Innocence (1920), set in the New York of her youth, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1921, the first awarded to a woman for fiction. She died in France in 1937.","keyDates":[{"date":"1862","event":"Born in New York City"},{"date":"1897","event":"The Decoration of Houses"},{"date":"1905","event":"The House of Mirth published"},{"date":"1911","event":"Ethan Frome published"},{"date":"1921","event":"Pulitzer Prize for The Age of Innocence"},{"date":"1937","event":"Dies in France"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Edith Wharton","relatedWorks":["ethan-frome","wharton-the-house-of-mirth","wharton-the-age-of-innocence"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"ethan-frome","url":"/works/ethan-frome/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"wharton-the-house-of-mirth","url":"/works/wharton-the-house-of-mirth/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"wharton-the-age-of-innocence","url":"/works/wharton-the-age-of-innocence/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[{"text":"In 1921 she became the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, for The Age of Innocence.","source":{"title":"Edith Wharton (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edith_Wharton"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Baptized in the Episcopal Church; her personal beliefs are not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edith_Wharton","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"william-whewell","name":"William Whewell","url":"/great-lives/william-whewell/","dates":"1794–1866","born":1794,"died":1866,"era":"19th-century","categories":["scientists-mathematicians","philosophers"],"knownFor":"English polymath and Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, who coined the word \"scientist\".","bio":"William Whewell was born in Lancaster, England, in 1794, the eldest of seven children of a master carpenter. His father wanted him to follow the trade, but William's talent for mathematics at grammar school won him a scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1812. There he won the Chancellor's Gold Medal for poetry and was Second Wrangler in mathematics. He became a fellow and tutor of the college, professor of mineralogy, and later Knightbridge Professor of Philosophy. In 1841 he married Cordelia Marshall and in the same year became Master of Trinity. He wrote on mechanics, physics, geology, astronomy, economics, theology, and the history and philosophy of science, and translated Goethe. He organised thousands of volunteers around the world to measure ocean tides, one of the first citizen science projects, and received the Royal Medal for this work in 1837. He was also a gifted maker of words. He coined 'scientist' and 'physicist', and suggested terms such as 'anode', 'cathode' and 'ion' to Michael Faraday. He died in Cambridge in 1866 after a fall from his horse.","keyDates":[{"date":"1794","event":"Born in Lancaster"},{"date":"1812","event":"Enters Trinity College, Cambridge"},{"date":"1837","event":"Royal Medal for his work on tides"},{"date":"1841","event":"Becomes Master of Trinity College"},{"date":"1866","event":"Dies in Cambridge"}],"quotes":[],"author":"William Whewell","relatedWorks":["whewell-novum-organon-renovatum"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"whewell-novum-organon-renovatum","url":"/works/whewell-novum-organon-renovatum/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"He coined the word 'scientist', and suggested to Michael Faraday the words electrode, ion, anode and cathode.","source":{"title":"William Whewell (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Whewell"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Whewell","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"william-whipple","name":"William Whipple","url":"/great-lives/william-whipple/","dates":"1730–1785","born":1730,"died":1785,"era":"18th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders","military-leaders"],"knownFor":"New Hampshire merchant and signer who later served as a brigadier general in the Saratoga campaign.","bio":"William Whipple was born in 1730 in Kittery, in what is now Maine, and went to sea as a young man, commanding ships in the Atlantic trade before settling as a merchant in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. He sat in the provincial congress and was sent to the Continental Congress, where he signed the Declaration of Independence. In 1777 he left Congress to serve as a brigadier general of New Hampshire militia in the campaign that ended with the British surrender at Saratoga, one of the turning points of the war. After the Revolution he became a judge of the state superior court. Like many merchants of his time, Whipple had been involved in the slave trade as a ship captain; later he freed an enslaved man in his household named Prince. He died in Portsmouth in 1785.","keyDates":[{"date":"1730","event":"Born in Kittery, in what is now Maine"},{"date":"1776","event":"Signs the Declaration of Independence"},{"date":"1777","event":"Commands New Hampshire militia in the Saratoga campaign"},{"date":"1785","event":"Dies in Portsmouth, New Hampshire"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["the-founding-documents"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-founding-documents","url":"/works/the-founding-documents/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":null,"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"e-b-white","name":"E. B. White","url":"/great-lives/e-b-white/","dates":"1899–1985","born":1899,"died":1985,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American essayist and New Yorker writer, author of Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little and coauthor of The Elements of Style.","bio":"Elwyn Brooks White was born in 1899 in Mount Vernon, New York, the youngest of six children. At Cornell University he edited the student newspaper and studied with Professor William Strunk Jr. After working as a reporter and in advertising, he joined the new New Yorker magazine in 1925, writing essays and editorial comments for decades. In 1929 he married Katharine Angell, the magazine's fiction editor. In 1938 they moved to a farm in North Brooklin, Maine, where White kept animals, and his essays about country life appeared in Harper's magazine. His first children's book, Stuart Little (1945), is about a mouse born to a human family. Charlotte's Web (1952), inspired by a spider in his barn, tells of a pig named Wilbur saved by a clever spider, and it became one of the best-loved American children's books. He also wrote The Trumpet of the Swan. He revised Strunk's guide to writing as The Elements of Style. He received a special Pulitzer citation in 1978 and died in Maine in 1985.","keyDates":[{"date":"1899","event":"Born in Mount Vernon, New York"},{"date":"1925","event":"Joins The New Yorker"},{"date":"1938","event":"Moves to a farm in Maine"},{"date":"1945","event":"Stuart Little published"},{"date":"1952","event":"Charlotte's Web published"},{"date":"1959","event":"The Elements of Style published"},{"date":"1985","event":"Dies in North Brooklin, Maine"}],"quotes":[],"author":"E. B. White","relatedWorks":["charlottes-web","stuart-little","the-trumpet-of-the-swan"],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"library","work":"charlottes-web","url":"/works/charlottes-web/"},{"band":"3-5","kind":"library","work":"stuart-little","url":"/works/stuart-little/"},{"band":"3-5","kind":"library","work":"the-trumpet-of-the-swan","url":"/works/the-trumpet-of-the-swan/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"At Cornell University he got the nickname 'Andy', which by tradition was given to any student named White, after the university's co-founder Andrew Dickson White.","source":{"title":"E. B. White (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._B._White"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._B._White","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"gilbert-white","name":"Gilbert White","url":"/great-lives/gilbert-white/","dates":"1720–1793","born":1720,"died":1793,"era":"18th-century","categories":["scientists-mathematicians","writers-poets"],"knownFor":"English clergyman and naturalist, author of The Natural History of Selborne.","bio":"Gilbert White was born in 1720 in the village of Selborne, Hampshire, in his grandfather's vicarage, and spent most of his life there. He studied at Oriel College, Oxford, where he became a fellow, and was ordained in the Church of England. He served as a curate in several parishes, including Selborne itself for many years, but never became its vicar. At his family home, The Wakes, he kept a garden and a careful diary of the weather, plants, birds and animals around him. For years he corresponded with two naturalists, Thomas Pennant and Daines Barrington, describing what he observed, and these letters became The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne (1789). The book records observations such as the habits of swifts, swallows and earthworms, and it distinguished three similar species of leaf warbler by their songs. Written in clear and charming prose, it has never been out of print and helped inspire generations of amateur naturalists. He also kept a pet tortoise named Timothy, whose habits he recorded. He died at Selborne in 1793.","keyDates":[{"date":"1720","event":"Born in Selborne, Hampshire"},{"date":"1744","event":"Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford"},{"date":"1789","event":"The Natural History of Selborne published"},{"date":"1793","event":"Dies at Selborne"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Gilbert White","relatedWorks":["the-natural-history-of-selborne"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-natural-history-of-selborne","url":"/works/the-natural-history-of-selborne/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"He often wrote about a tortoise he inherited from his aunt, and the tortoise, Timothy, later became the hero of a book of its own.","source":{"title":"Gilbert White (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilbert_White"}}],"records":[{"text":"He is credited with perhaps the earliest written record of the word 'golly', in a journal entry from 1775.","source":{"title":"Gilbert White (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilbert_White"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"An Anglican clergyman who served as curate of Selborne.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilbert_White","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"t-h-white","name":"T. H. White","url":"/great-lives/t-h-white/","dates":"1906–1964","born":1906,"died":1964,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"English author of The Sword in the Stone and The Once and Future King, retellings of the legend of King Arthur.","bio":"Terence Hanbury White, known as Tim, was born in 1906 in Bombay, India, where his father was a police superintendent. His family moved to England in 1911; his childhood was unhappy. He studied at Cheltenham College and at Queens' College, Cambridge, where he wrote a thesis on Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur and graduated with first-class honours in English in 1928. He taught at Stowe School for four years, then left to live in a cottage nearby, where he wrote and spent his time on falconry, hunting and fishing. The Sword in the Stone (1938) tells of the boyhood of King Arthur, called the Wart, and his education by the wizard Merlyn. In 1939 White moved to Ireland, where he spent the Second World War. He wrote more books about Arthur, later gathered as The Once and Future King (1958). He also wrote The Goshawk, about training a hawk, and the children's book Mistress Masham's Repose. From 1946 he lived on Alderney, in the Channel Islands. His Arthur books inspired the musical Camelot and a Disney film. He died in 1964.","keyDates":[{"date":"1906","event":"Born in Bombay, India"},{"date":"1928","event":"Graduates from Cambridge"},{"date":"1938","event":"The Sword in the Stone published"},{"date":"1946","event":"Settles on Alderney"},{"date":"1958","event":"The Once and Future King published"},{"date":"1964","event":"Dies"}],"quotes":[],"author":"T. H. White","relatedWorks":["the-sword-in-the-stone"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-sword-in-the-stone","url":"/works/the-sword-in-the-stone/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._H._White","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"george-whitefield","name":"George Whitefield","url":"/great-lives/george-whitefield/","dates":"1714–1770","born":1714,"died":1770,"era":"18th-century","categories":["theologians-church-fathers","saints-reformers"],"knownFor":"English evangelist whose open-air preaching in Britain and America helped spark the Great Awakening.","bio":"George Whitefield was born in 1714 in Gloucester, England, where his mother kept the Bell Inn. He entered Pembroke College, Oxford, in 1732 as a servitor, a poor student who worked for wealthier ones. There he joined the 'Holy Club' led by John and Charles Wesley, and after a long spiritual struggle he experienced a conversion. Ordained in the Church of England, he soon drew enormous crowds with his dramatic and powerful preaching. When many churches closed their pulpits to him, he began preaching in the open air, first to coal miners near Bristol in 1739. He made seven journeys to the American colonies, preaching from Georgia to New England and helping to spark the revival known as the Great Awakening; Benjamin Franklin, who printed his sermons, became his friend and once estimated that he could be heard by thirty thousand people outdoors. Unlike the Wesleys, Whitefield held Calvinist views, and he led the Calvinistic Methodists. He founded an orphanage in Georgia. He died in Newburyport, Massachusetts, in 1770.","keyDates":[{"date":"1714","event":"Born in Gloucester"},{"date":"1732","event":"Enters Pembroke College, Oxford"},{"date":"1739","event":"Begins open-air preaching near Bristol"},{"date":"1740","event":"Founds the Bethesda Orphanage in Georgia"},{"date":"1770","event":"Dies in Newburyport, Massachusetts"}],"quotes":[],"author":"George Whitefield","relatedWorks":["whitefield-selected-sermons"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"whitefield-selected-sermons","url":"/works/whitefield-selected-sermons/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[{"text":"His journey on horseback from New York City to Charleston, South Carolina, was then the longest ever documented in North America.","source":{"title":"George Whitefield (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Whitefield"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Anglican evangelist who presided at the first conference of the Calvinistic Methodists.","source":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dictionary_of_National_Biography%2C_1885-1900/Whitefield%2C_George","sourceName":"Dictionary of National Biography (1885–1900) (via Wikisource)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"alfred-north-whitehead","name":"Alfred North Whitehead","url":"/great-lives/alfred-north-whitehead/","dates":"1861–1947","born":1861,"died":1947,"era":"19th-century","categories":["philosophers","scientists-mathematicians"],"knownFor":"English mathematician and philosopher, coauthor with Bertrand Russell of Principia Mathematica and author of Science and the Modern World.","bio":"Alfred North Whitehead was born in 1861 in Ramsgate, Kent, the son of a clergyman and schoolmaster. He won a scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he studied and then taught mathematics for about thirty years. One of his students was Bertrand Russell, and together they wrote Principia Mathematica, published in three volumes between 1910 and 1913, an ambitious attempt to show that mathematics could be derived from logic. Whitehead later taught at University College London and at Imperial College. In 1924, at the age of 63, he accepted a post as professor of philosophy at Harvard University, where he turned to the philosophy of nature and of science. Science and the Modern World (1925) traces how modern scientific ideas developed, and Process and Reality (1929) set out his philosophy of reality as a process of events rather than fixed things. He also wrote The Aims of Education. He died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1947.","keyDates":[{"date":"1861","event":"Born in Ramsgate, England"},{"date":"1910–1913","event":"Principia Mathematica, with Bertrand Russell"},{"date":"1924","event":"Becomes professor of philosophy at Harvard"},{"date":"1925","event":"Science and the Modern World published"},{"date":"1929","event":"Process and Reality published"},{"date":"1947","event":"Dies in Cambridge, Massachusetts"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Alfred North Whitehead","relatedWorks":["whitehead-introduction-to-mathematics","whitehead-science-and-the-modern-world"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"whitehead-introduction-to-mathematics","url":"/works/whitehead-introduction-to-mathematics/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"whitehead-science-and-the-modern-world","url":"/works/whitehead-science-and-the-modern-world/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Son of an Anglican clergyman.","source":"https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/whitehead/","sourceName":"Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"walt-whitman","name":"Walt Whitman","url":"/great-lives/walt-whitman/","dates":"1819–1892","born":1819,"died":1892,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American poet, author of Leaves of Grass, often called the father of free verse.","bio":"Walt Whitman was born in 1819 in West Hills, on Long Island, New York, the second of nine children, and grew up mainly in Brooklyn. He left school at eleven and worked as an office boy, a printer's apprentice and a teacher before becoming a journalist. In 1855 he published, at his own expense, the first edition of Leaves of Grass, a book of poems written in long, unrhymed lines of free verse that celebrated democracy, nature, the human body and ordinary American life. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote to praise it, but many readers were shocked by its frankness. Whitman revised and expanded the book for the rest of his life, publishing many editions. During the Civil War he moved to Washington, D.C., where he worked as a government clerk and cared for wounded soldiers in the hospitals. After the death of Abraham Lincoln he wrote the elegies 'O Captain! My Captain!' and 'When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd'. In 1873 he suffered a stroke and moved to Camden, New Jersey, where he lived for the rest of his life. He died there in 1892.","keyDates":[{"date":"1819","event":"Born on Long Island, New York"},{"date":"1855","event":"First edition of Leaves of Grass"},{"date":"1862","event":"Begins visiting wounded soldiers in Washington"},{"date":"1865","event":"Writes elegies for Abraham Lincoln"},{"date":"1873","event":"Moves to Camden, New Jersey"},{"date":"1892","event":"Dies in Camden"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Walt Whitman","relatedWorks":["o-captain-my-captain","whitman-complete-poems","leaves-of-grass"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"o-captain-my-captain","url":"/works/o-captain-my-captain/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"whitman-complete-poems","url":"/works/whitman-complete-poems/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"He was nicknamed 'Walt' as soon as he was born, to tell him apart from his father, Walter.","source":{"title":"Walt Whitman (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walt_Whitman"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Deeply influenced by deism.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walt_Whitman","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"eli-whitney","name":"Eli Whitney","url":"/great-lives/eli-whitney/","dates":"1765–1825","born":1765,"died":1825,"era":"18th-century","categories":["inventors"],"knownFor":"American inventor of the cotton gin and a promoter of interchangeable parts.","bio":"Eli Whitney grew up on a farm in Massachusetts, where as a boy he made nails in his father's workshop to sell. He worked his way through Yale College and then went south to Georgia, planning to work as a tutor. Staying on the plantation of Catherine Greene, widow of the Revolutionary general Nathanael Greene, he learned how slow it was to pull the sticky seeds from short-staple cotton by hand. In 1793 he built the cotton gin, a machine using a cylinder of wire teeth to pull cotton fibers through a grate that the seeds could not pass. One worker with a gin could clean many times more cotton than by hand. The invention was easily copied, and Whitney spent years in lawsuits defending his patent and made little from it. The gin made cotton enormously profitable and greatly increased the demand for enslaved labor in the South. Whitney later made muskets for the U.S. government at a factory near New Haven, promoting the idea of standardized, interchangeable parts. He died in 1825.","keyDates":[{"date":"1792","event":"Graduates from Yale"},{"date":"1793","event":"Builds the cotton gin"},{"date":"1794","event":"Receives the patent"},{"date":"1798","event":"Contract to make muskets for the government"},{"date":"1825","event":"Dies in New Haven"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eli_Whitney","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"chris-wickham","name":"Chris Wickham","url":"/great-lives/chris-wickham/","dates":"1950–2026","born":1950,"died":2026,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"British historian of early medieval Europe and Chichele Professor of Medieval History at Oxford, author of The Inheritance of Rome.","bio":"Chris Wickham was a British historian of early medieval Europe and especially of Italy. He was born in Rossett, Wales, in 1950 and educated at Millfield School and Keble College, Oxford, where he completed a doctorate in 1975 on the economy and society of eighth-century northern Tuscany. He taught at the University of Birmingham for nearly thirty years, becoming professor of medieval history, and in 2005 he was appointed Chichele Professor of Medieval History at Oxford and a fellow of All Souls College, a post he held until 2016. His research compared societies across Europe and the Mediterranean in the centuries after the fall of the western Roman Empire. Framing the Early Middle Ages (2005) won several major prizes, and The Inheritance of Rome (2009), written for general readers, surveys Europe from 400 to 1000. Later books include Medieval Europe and The Donkey and the Boat, on the Mediterranean economy. He died in 2026.","keyDates":[{"date":"1950","event":"Born in Rossett, Wales"},{"date":"1977","event":"Begins teaching at the University of Birmingham"},{"date":"2005","event":"Chichele Professor at Oxford; Framing the Early Middle Ages"},{"date":"2009","event":"The Inheritance of Rome published"},{"date":"2026","event":"Dies"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Chris Wickham","relatedWorks":["wickham-the-inheritance-of-rome"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"wickham-the-inheritance-of-rome","url":"/works/wickham-the-inheritance-of-rome/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Wickham","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["Death date (9 October 2026) is recent; taken from Wikipedia and Wikidata."]},{"slug":"norbert-wiener","name":"Norbert Wiener","url":"/great-lives/norbert-wiener/","dates":"1894–1964","born":1894,"died":1964,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["scientists-mathematicians","inventors"],"knownFor":"American mathematician who founded cybernetics, the study of control and communication in machines and living things.","bio":"Norbert Wiener was born in 1894 in Columbia, Missouri, the son of Leo Wiener, a scholar of Slavic languages who taught at Harvard and educated his son at home with great intensity. A child prodigy, Norbert entered Tufts College at eleven, graduated in mathematics at fourteen, and received a doctorate from Harvard at eighteen with a thesis on mathematical logic. He then studied in Cambridge with Bertrand Russell and in Göttingen with David Hilbert. In 1919 he joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he taught for the rest of his career. He made important contributions to the mathematics of random motion, now called the Wiener process, and to signal processing. During the Second World War he worked on the automatic aiming of anti-aircraft guns, which led him to study how machines and living things use feedback to control themselves. In Cybernetics (1948) he named and founded this new field, which influenced computing, robotics, biology and the social sciences. He later warned about the social effects of automation in The Human Use of Human Beings. He died in Stockholm in 1964.","keyDates":[{"date":"1894","event":"Born in Columbia, Missouri"},{"date":"1906","event":"Graduates from Tufts College at fourteen"},{"date":"1913","event":"Harvard doctorate"},{"date":"1919","event":"Joins MIT"},{"date":"1948","event":"Cybernetics published"},{"date":"1964","event":"Dies in Stockholm"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Norbert Wiener","relatedWorks":["cybernetics"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"cybernetics","url":"/works/cybernetics/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"A crater on the far side of the Moon is named after him.","source":{"title":"Norbert Wiener (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norbert_Wiener"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Born into a Jewish family; his personal beliefs are not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norbert_Wiener","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"kate-douglas-wiggin","name":"Kate Douglas Wiggin","url":"/great-lives/kate-douglas-wiggin/","dates":"1856–1923","born":1856,"died":1923,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets","saints-reformers"],"knownFor":"American educator and author of Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, who opened one of the first free kindergartens in California.","bio":"Kate Douglas Smith was born in Philadelphia in 1856. After her father's death her mother moved the family to Maine, and later to California. There she trained as a kindergarten teacher, and in 1878 she opened the Silver Street Kindergarten in San Francisco, the first free kindergarten in California, for children from poor families. With her sister Nora she also started a training school for kindergarten teachers, and the two later wrote books about education together. She married Samuel Bradley Wiggin in 1881; he died suddenly in 1889, and in 1895 she married George Christopher Riggs. To raise money for the kindergarten she wrote The Story of Patsy and The Birds' Christmas Carol, which became popular. Her best-known novel, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1903), follows a lively, imaginative girl who is sent to live with two strict aunts in a small Maine town. It became a bestseller and was adapted for the stage and for several films. She also wrote an autobiography, My Garden of Memory. She died in 1923.","keyDates":[{"date":"1856","event":"Born in Philadelphia"},{"date":"1878","event":"Opens the Silver Street Kindergarten in San Francisco"},{"date":"1881","event":"Marries Samuel Bradley Wiggin"},{"date":"1903","event":"Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm published"},{"date":"1923","event":"Dies"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Kate Douglas Wiggin","relatedWorks":["rebecca-of-sunnybrook-farm"],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"library","work":"rebecca-of-sunnybrook-farm","url":"/works/rebecca-of-sunnybrook-farm/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kate_Douglas_Wiggin","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"samuel-wilberforce","name":"Samuel Wilberforce","url":"/great-lives/samuel-wilberforce/","dates":"1805–1873","born":1805,"died":1873,"era":"19th-century","categories":["theologians-church-fathers"],"knownFor":"English bishop of Oxford and Winchester, famous orator, remembered for his 1860 debate with Thomas Henry Huxley about evolution.","bio":"Samuel Wilberforce was born in 1805 at Clapham Common, London, the son of William Wilberforce, the leading campaigner against the slave trade. He studied at Oriel College, Oxford, where his friends included William Ewart Gladstone; he graduated in 1826 with first-class honours in mathematics. He married Emily Sargent in 1828 and was ordained in the Church of England. He became chaplain to Prince Albert in 1841, Dean of Westminster in 1845 and, later that year, Bishop of Oxford. His wife had died in 1841. As bishop he raised money to build and restore churches and opened a college to train clergy at Cuddesdon. He was one of the finest public speakers of his time. In 1860, at a meeting of the British Association in Oxford, he spoke against Charles Darwin's theory of evolution and famously asked Thomas Henry Huxley whether it was through his grandmother or grandfather that he claimed descent from a monkey. In 1869 he became Bishop of Winchester. He died after a riding accident in 1873.","keyDates":[{"date":"1805","event":"Born at Clapham Common, London"},{"date":"1826","event":"Graduates from Oxford"},{"date":"1845","event":"Becomes Bishop of Oxford"},{"date":"1860","event":"Oxford evolution debate"},{"date":"1869","event":"Becomes Bishop of Winchester"},{"date":"1873","event":"Dies after a riding accident"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Thomas Henry Huxley and Samuel Wilberforce","relatedWorks":["huxley-wilberforce-debate"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"huxley-wilberforce-debate","url":"/works/huxley-wilberforce-debate/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Church of England bishop, successively of Oxford and Winchester.","source":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dictionary_of_National_Biography%2C_1885-1900/Wilberforce%2C_Samuel","sourceName":"Dictionary of National Biography (1885–1900) (via Wikisource)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"william-wilberforce","name":"William Wilberforce","url":"/great-lives/william-wilberforce/","dates":"1759–1833","born":1759,"died":1833,"era":"19th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders","saints-reformers"],"knownFor":"British member of Parliament who led the campaign to abolish the slave trade.","bio":"William Wilberforce was the son of a wealthy merchant in Hull, England. He was elected to Parliament at twenty-one and became a close friend of William Pitt the Younger, who was soon prime minister. In 1785 he went through a deep religious conversion and considered leaving politics, but the former slave-ship captain and hymn writer John Newton encouraged him to stay. Persuaded by abolitionists such as Thomas Clarkson, Wilberforce made ending the British slave trade his life's work. Beginning in 1789, he brought bills before Parliament year after year and was defeated again and again, while the campaign gathered petitions, boycotts and evidence from witnesses. At last, in 1807, Parliament passed the act abolishing the slave trade in the British Empire. Wilberforce then worked for the end of slavery itself and for many other causes, including schools, help for the poor and the reform of manners. Ill health forced him to retire in 1825. He died in July 1833, days after hearing that the bill to abolish slavery in most of the British Empire would pass.","keyDates":[{"date":"1780","event":"Elected to Parliament"},{"date":"1785","event":"Religious conversion"},{"date":"1789","event":"First major speech against the slave trade"},{"date":"1807","event":"Slave Trade Act passes"},{"date":"1833","event":"Dies as the Slavery Abolition Act passes"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"book","title":"Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery","author":"Eric Metaxas","isbn13":"9780061173882","publisher":"HarperOne","year":2008,"format":"paperback"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"Wilberforce University in Ohio, founded in 1856, is named after him.","source":{"title":"William Wilberforce (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Wilberforce"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Leader of the evangelical party in the Church of England.","source":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dictionary_of_National_Biography%2C_1885-1900/Wilberforce%2C_William","sourceName":"Dictionary of National Biography (1885–1900) (via Wikisource)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"oscar-wilde","name":"Oscar Wilde","url":"/great-lives/oscar-wilde/","dates":"1854–1900","born":1854,"died":1900,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Irish playwright, poet and wit, author of The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Importance of Being Earnest.","bio":"Oscar Wilde was born in Dublin in 1854, the son of Sir William Wilde, an eye and ear surgeon, and Jane Wilde, a poet who wrote under the name Speranza. He studied classics at Trinity College Dublin and at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he won the Newdigate Prize for poetry in 1878. Moving to London, he became a leader of the Aesthetic movement, which held that art should be valued for its own sake, and in 1882 he gave a year-long lecture tour of the United States and Canada. In 1884 he married Constance Lloyd, and they had two sons, for whom he wrote fairy tales such as The Happy Prince. His only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890), tells of a young man who stays youthful while his portrait ages. His comedies, including Lady Windermere's Fan and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), were great successes. In 1895 he was convicted of 'gross indecency' under the laws of the time and sentenced to two years of hard labor. After his release he lived in France, and he died in Paris in 1900.","keyDates":[{"date":"1854","event":"Born in Dublin"},{"date":"1882","event":"Lecture tour of North America"},{"date":"1884","event":"Marries Constance Lloyd"},{"date":"1888","event":"The Happy Prince and Other Tales"},{"date":"1890","event":"The Picture of Dorian Gray"},{"date":"1895","event":"The Importance of Being Earnest; imprisoned"},{"date":"1900","event":"Dies in Paris"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Oscar Wilde","relatedWorks":["the-happy-prince-and-other-tales","the-picture-of-dorian-gray","the-importance-of-being-earnest"],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"library","work":"the-happy-prince-and-other-tales","url":"/works/the-happy-prince-and-other-tales/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-picture-of-dorian-gray","url":"/works/the-picture-of-dorian-gray/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-importance-of-being-earnest","url":"/works/the-importance-of-being-earnest/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"He claimed that as a student he could read two facing pages at once.","source":{"title":"Oscar Wilde (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Wilde"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Wrote for Catholic periodicals as a young man and received the last rites of the Roman Catholic Church.","source":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dictionary_of_National_Biography%2C_1901_supplement/Wilde%2C_Oscar_O%27Flahertie_Wills","sourceName":"Dictionary of National Biography (1885–1900) (via Wikisource)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"laura-ingalls-wilder","name":"Laura Ingalls Wilder","url":"/great-lives/laura-ingalls-wilder/","dates":"1867–1957","born":1867,"died":1957,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American author of the Little House books, based on her pioneer childhood.","bio":"Laura Ingalls was born in 1867 in a log cabin near Pepin, Wisconsin, the second daughter of Charles and Caroline Ingalls. As a child she traveled with her family by covered wagon to Kansas, Minnesota, Iowa and finally Dakota Territory, where they settled in De Smet in 1879. At fifteen Laura began teaching school. In 1885 she married Almanzo Wilder, a farmer, and their daughter Rose was born the next year. After years of drought, illness and a house fire, they moved in 1894 to Mansfield, Missouri, where they built up Rocky Ridge Farm. From 1911 she wrote a column for the Missouri Ruralist. Encouraged by Rose, who had become a writer, she began in her sixties to write about her childhood. Little House in the Big Woods appeared in 1932, followed by Farmer Boy, about Almanzo's boyhood in New York, Little House on the Prairie and five more books. They were later adapted as a television series. She died at Rocky Ridge in 1957.","keyDates":[{"date":"1867","event":"Born near Pepin, Wisconsin"},{"date":"1879","event":"Family settles in De Smet, Dakota Territory"},{"date":"1885","event":"Marries Almanzo Wilder"},{"date":"1894","event":"Moves to Mansfield, Missouri"},{"date":"1932","event":"Little House in the Big Woods published"},{"date":"1957","event":"Dies at Rocky Ridge Farm"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Laura Ingalls Wilder","relatedWorks":["little-house-in-the-big-woods","farmer-boy","little-house-on-the-prairie"],"reading":[{"band":"K-2","kind":"library","work":"little-house-in-the-big-woods","url":"/works/little-house-in-the-big-woods/"},{"band":"3-5","kind":"library","work":"farmer-boy","url":"/works/farmer-boy/"},{"band":"3-5","kind":"library","work":"little-house-on-the-prairie","url":"/works/little-house-on-the-prairie/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"A crater on the planet Venus is named after her.","source":{"title":"Laura Ingalls Wilder (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Ingalls_Wilder"}}],"records":[{"text":"The Hard Winter of 1880–81, one of the most severe on record in the Dakotas, became the subject of her novel The Long Winter.","source":{"title":"Laura Ingalls Wilder (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Ingalls_Wilder"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Ingalls_Wilder","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"thornton-wilder","name":"Thornton Wilder","url":"/great-lives/thornton-wilder/","dates":"1897–1975","born":1897,"died":1975,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American playwright and novelist, author of Our Town and The Bridge of San Luis Rey, and winner of three Pulitzer Prizes.","bio":"Thornton Wilder was born in 1897 in Madison, Wisconsin. His father was a newspaper editor who later became a U.S. diplomat, and the family spent part of Thornton's childhood in China, where his father was consul general in Hong Kong and Shanghai. During the First World War he served briefly in the army. He attended Oberlin College and graduated from Yale University in 1920, then spent several months at the American Academy in Rome before teaching French at the Lawrenceville School in New Jersey. His first novel, The Cabala, appeared in 1926. The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1927), about several people killed when a bridge in Peru collapses, brought him success and his first Pulitzer Prize. His play Our Town (1938), about the everyday lives of people in a small New Hampshire town, won a second Pulitzer, and The Skin of Our Teeth (1942) a third. His comedy The Matchmaker later became the musical Hello, Dolly! His novel The Eighth Day won the National Book Award. From 1930 his family home was in Hamden, Connecticut. He died in 1975.","keyDates":[{"date":"1897","event":"Born in Madison, Wisconsin"},{"date":"1920","event":"Graduates from Yale University"},{"date":"1927","event":"The Bridge of San Luis Rey published"},{"date":"1938","event":"Our Town wins the Pulitzer Prize"},{"date":"1943","event":"Pulitzer Prize for The Skin of Our Teeth"},{"date":"1975","event":"Dies"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Thornton Wilder","relatedWorks":["the-bridge-of-san-luis-rey","our-town"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-bridge-of-san-luis-rey","url":"/works/the-bridge-of-san-luis-rey/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"our-town","url":"/works/our-town/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[{"text":"In 1960 he received the first-ever Edward MacDowell Medal for outstanding contributions to American culture.","source":{"title":"Thornton Wilder (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thornton_Wilder"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented; religion is a recurring theme in his works.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thornton_Wilder","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"william-the-conqueror","name":"William the Conqueror","url":"/great-lives/william-the-conqueror/","dates":"c. 1028–1087","born":1028,"died":1087,"era":"medieval","categories":["kings-queens-emperors","military-leaders"],"knownFor":"Duke of Normandy who conquered England in 1066 and ordered the Domesday Book.","bio":"William was the son of Robert, Duke of Normandy, and became duke himself as a boy of about seven, surviving years of rebellion and plots. He grew into a hard and able ruler. When King Edward the Confessor of England died in January 1066, William claimed that Edward had promised him the throne, but the English nobles crowned Harold Godwinson. William gathered a fleet, crossed the Channel, and on 14 October 1066 defeated and killed Harold at the Battle of Hastings, a story told in the Bayeux Tapestry. He was crowned king in Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day. English revolts followed, and in the north he answered them with the Harrying of the North, a campaign of destruction that caused widespread famine. He built castles such as the Tower of London, gave English lands to Norman lords, and brought French words into the English language. In 1085 he ordered the great survey known as the Domesday Book. He died in 1087 after an injury while fighting in France.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 1035","event":"Becomes Duke of Normandy"},{"date":"1066","event":"Wins the Battle of Hastings; crowned king"},{"date":"1069–70","event":"Harrying of the North"},{"date":"1086","event":"Domesday survey completed"},{"date":"1087","event":"Dies at Rouen"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"book","title":"William the Conqueror","author":"David Bates","isbn13":"9780300234169","publisher":"Yale University Press","year":2018,"format":""}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A Catholic king who founded two abbeys at Caen and saw himself as a champion of the Church.","source":"https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15642c.htm","sourceName":"Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"margery-williams","name":"Margery Williams","url":"/great-lives/margery-williams/","dates":"1881–1944","born":1881,"died":1944,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"English-American author of The Velveteen Rabbit.","bio":"Margery Winifred Williams was born in London in 1881, the second daughter of Robert Williams, a barrister and classical scholar, who encouraged his daughters to read and use their imaginations. He died suddenly when she was seven, a loss that she later felt shaped all her writing. In 1890 the family moved to the United States, living in New York and then on a farm in Pennsylvania, and she attended a convent school in Sharon Hill. At nineteen she returned to London and submitted her first novel to a publisher; it appeared in 1902 but did not sell well. There she met Francesco Bianco, who managed a book department, and they married in 1904 and had a son, Cecco, and a daughter, Pamela, who became a celebrated child artist. After years in Paris and Italy, the family settled in New York. The Velveteen Rabbit (1922), about a toy rabbit who becomes real through the love of a boy, made her famous. Writing as Margery Williams Bianco, she won a Newbery Honor for Winterbound. She died in New York in 1944.","keyDates":[{"date":"1881","event":"Born in London"},{"date":"1890","event":"Family moves to the United States"},{"date":"1904","event":"Marries Francesco Bianco"},{"date":"1922","event":"The Velveteen Rabbit published"},{"date":"1937","event":"Newbery Honor for Winterbound"},{"date":"1944","event":"Dies in New York"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Margery Williams","relatedWorks":["the-velveteen-rabbit"],"reading":[{"band":"K-2","kind":"library","work":"the-velveteen-rabbit","url":"/works/the-velveteen-rabbit/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margery_Williams","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"william-williams","name":"William Williams","url":"/great-lives/william-williams/","dates":"1731–1811","born":1731,"died":1811,"era":"18th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"Connecticut merchant who signed the Declaration after taking his seat in Congress in the summer of 1776.","bio":"William Williams was born in 1731 in Lebanon, Connecticut, graduated from Harvard, and became a merchant in his hometown. He served for many years in the colonial and state assemblies and, through his marriage to a daughter of Governor Jonathan Trumbull, stood close to Connecticut's wartime leadership. He took his seat in the Continental Congress in July 1776, after the vote on independence, and signed the engrossed Declaration. During the war he worked at home to raise money, supplies, and recruits, sometimes contributing from his own means. After independence he remained in state office and sat in the Connecticut convention that ratified the Constitution. Williams was a devout Congregationalist and a deacon in the church at Lebanon. He died in 1811, on the thirty-fifth anniversary of the August signing.","keyDates":[{"date":"1731","event":"Born in Lebanon, Connecticut"},{"date":"1776","event":"Takes his seat in Congress and signs the Declaration"},{"date":"1787","event":"Sits in the Connecticut ratifying convention"},{"date":"1811","event":"Dies in Lebanon, Connecticut"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["the-founding-documents"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-founding-documents","url":"/works/the-founding-documents/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":null,"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"james-wilson","name":"James Wilson","url":"/great-lives/james-wilson/","dates":"1742–1798","born":1742,"died":1798,"era":"18th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders","legal-scholars-lawgivers"],"knownFor":"Scottish-born legal thinker who signed the Declaration and the Constitution and became a justice of the Supreme Court.","bio":"James Wilson was born in 1742 in Carskerdo, Scotland, studied at St Andrews and other Scottish universities, and emigrated to Pennsylvania, where he read law. In 1774 he published a pamphlet arguing that Parliament had no authority over the colonies. He sat in the Continental Congress, at first hoping for reconciliation, then voted for independence and signed the Declaration. At the Constitutional Convention of 1787 he was one of the most important legal minds in the room, defending a strong national government and popular election, and he signed the Constitution and helped win its ratification in Pennsylvania. President Washington named him to the first Supreme Court. In the 1790s Wilson speculated disastrously in land, was briefly imprisoned for debt, and fled from creditors. He died in 1798 at a friend's house in Edenton, North Carolina, his great public gifts shadowed by private ruin. Students can learn from both halves of that story.","keyDates":[{"date":"1742","event":"Born in Carskerdo, Scotland"},{"date":"1774","event":"Publishes his essay on the authority of Parliament"},{"date":"1776","event":"Votes for independence and signs the Declaration"},{"date":"1787","event":"Helps frame and signs the Constitution"},{"date":"1789","event":"Becomes a justice of the Supreme Court"},{"date":"1798","event":"Dies in Edenton, North Carolina"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["the-founding-documents"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-founding-documents","url":"/works/the-founding-documents/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":null,"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"edward-winslow","name":"Edward Winslow","url":"/great-lives/edward-winslow/","dates":"1595–1655","born":1595,"died":1655,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["statesmen-founders","writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Mayflower passenger, Plymouth governor and diplomat, and author of Good Newes from New England.","bio":"Edward Winslow was born on 18 October 1595 in Droitwich, Worcestershire. In 1617 he went to Leiden and joined John Robinson’s Separatist church there. In 1620 he sailed on the Mayflower with his first wife, Elizabeth Barker, who died soon after they reached Plymouth. In May 1621 he married Susanna White, widow of William White and mother of Peregrine White; that marriage is recorded as the first in the New England colonies. Winslow was the colony’s chief envoy to the Wampanoag and helped win the friendship of their sachem Massasoit. He later visited the sachem in illness and wrote of that visit, and of later strain and conflict, in Good Newes from New England (1624). He had already helped write the 1622 journal known as Mourt’s Relation. He served as an assistant almost yearly from 1624 to 1647 and was governor in 1633, 1636, and 1644. After 1646 he remained in England, held office under Oliver Cromwell, and in 1655 was a commissioner on Cromwell’s West Indies expedition. He died at sea near Jamaica on 8 May 1655.","keyDates":[{"date":"1595","event":"Born in Droitwich, Worcestershire, on 18 October"},{"date":"1617","event":"Joins John Robinson’s church at Leiden"},{"date":"1620","event":"Sails on the Mayflower"},{"date":"1622","event":"Mourt’s Relation printed in London"},{"date":"1624","event":"Good Newes from New England printed in London"},{"date":"1655","event":"Dies at sea near Jamaica on 8 May"}],"quotes":[{"text":"Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might, after a special manner, rejoice together after we had gathered the fruit of our labors.","work":"mourts-relation","location":"Letter of 11 December 1621","verified":true},{"text":"Never did I see a man so low brought, recover in that measure in so short a time.","work":"good-newes-from-new-england","location":"March 1623, after treatment and broth","verified":true}],"author":"Edward Winslow","relatedWorks":["mourts-relation","good-newes-from-new-england","of-plymouth-plantation","mayflower-compact"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"mourts-relation","url":"/works/mourts-relation/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"good-newes-from-new-england","url":"/works/good-newes-from-new-england/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"of-plymouth-plantation","url":"/works/of-plymouth-plantation/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"His marriage to Susanna White in May 1621 is recorded as the first marriage in the New England colonies.","source":{"title":"1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, “Winslow, Edward” (Wikisource)","url":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Winslow,_Edward"}},{"text":"He died at sea near Jamaica on 8 May 1655 while serving as a commissioner on Oliver Cromwell’s West Indies expedition.","source":{"title":"Edward Winslow (Pilgrim Hall Museum)","url":"https://www.pilgrimhall.org/edward-winslow/"}}],"records":[{"text":"He served as an assistant from 1624 to 1647, except in the years he was governor of the colony: 1633–1634, 1636–1637 and 1644–1645.","source":{"title":"1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, “Winslow, Edward” (Wikisource)","url":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Winslow,_Edward"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":null,"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"john-winthrop","name":"John Winthrop","url":"/great-lives/john-winthrop/","dates":"1588–1649","born":1588,"died":1649,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["statesmen-founders"],"knownFor":"English Puritan lawyer and longtime governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.","bio":"John Winthrop was born in 1588 in Edwardstone, Suffolk, England, into a family of landowners. He studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, practiced law in London and managed his family estate at Groton. A devout Puritan, he grew discouraged by the state of the Church of England and by economic troubles, and in 1629 he was elected governor of the Massachusetts Bay Company, which planned a colony in New England. In 1630 he led a fleet of eleven ships carrying about 700 settlers across the Atlantic. Before or during the voyage he delivered a sermon, A Model of Christian Charity, which describes the community they hoped to build as 'a city upon a hill', watched by all. The settlers founded Boston, and Winthrop served as governor for twelve of the colony's first twenty years. He took part in the trial and banishment of Anne Hutchinson. His journal is a major source for the early history of New England. He died in Boston in 1649.","keyDates":[{"date":"1588","event":"Born in Edwardstone, Suffolk"},{"date":"1629","event":"Elected governor of the Massachusetts Bay Company"},{"date":"1630","event":"Leads the Winthrop Fleet to New England"},{"date":"1630","event":"A Model of Christian Charity"},{"date":"1649","event":"Dies in Boston"}],"quotes":[],"author":"John Winthrop","relatedWorks":["a-model-of-christian-charity","massachusetts-body-of-liberties","of-plymouth-plantation","mourts-relation"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"a-model-of-christian-charity","url":"/works/a-model-of-christian-charity/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Puritan leader of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and a Congregationalist.","source":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Appletons%27_Cyclop%C3%A6dia_of_American_Biography/Winthrop%2C_John","sourceName":"Appletons' Cyclopaedia of American Biography (via Wikisource)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"john-witherspoon","name":"John Witherspoon","url":"/great-lives/john-witherspoon/","dates":"1723–1794","born":1723,"died":1794,"era":"18th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders","theologians-church-fathers"],"knownFor":"Scottish Presbyterian minister, president of the College of New Jersey, and the only active clergyman to sign the Declaration.","bio":"John Witherspoon was born in 1723 in Gifford, Scotland, educated at Edinburgh, and served as a Presbyterian minister before he was called, in 1768, to be president of the College of New Jersey, now Princeton. He strengthened the college, taught moral philosophy, and trained a generation of American leaders. In May 1776 he preached a widely heard sermon, The Dominion of Providence over the Passions of Men, arguing that the cause of liberty stood under God's providence. He was elected to the Continental Congress, signed the Declaration of Independence—the only active clergyman among the signers—and later signed the Articles of Confederation. Witherspoon worked on wartime committees and, after the peace, on organizing the Presbyterian Church in the new nation. He held people in slavery while at Princeton, a fact that sits beside his teaching on liberty and must be told with it. He died at his farm, Tusculum, near Princeton, in 1794.","keyDates":[{"date":"1723","event":"Born in Gifford, Scotland"},{"date":"1768","event":"Becomes president of the College of New Jersey (Princeton)"},{"date":"1776","event":"Preaches The Dominion of Providence; signs the Declaration"},{"date":"1778","event":"Signs the Articles of Confederation"},{"date":"1794","event":"Dies near Princeton, New Jersey"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["the-founding-documents"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-founding-documents","url":"/works/the-founding-documents/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":null,"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"ludwig-wittgenstein","name":"Ludwig Wittgenstein","url":"/great-lives/ludwig-wittgenstein/","dates":"1889–1951","born":1889,"died":1951,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["philosophers"],"knownFor":"Austrian-British philosopher of logic and language, author of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and Philosophical Investigations.","bio":"Ludwig Wittgenstein was born in Vienna in 1889, the youngest of eight children of the steel magnate Karl Wittgenstein, one of the richest men in Europe; the composer Johannes Brahms was among the family's visitors. He studied engineering in Berlin and Manchester, where he became interested in the foundations of mathematics, and in 1911 he went to Cambridge to study with Bertrand Russell. He served in the Austro-Hungarian army in the First World War and completed his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus while a prisoner of war; it was published in 1921. Believing he had solved the main problems of philosophy, he gave away his inherited fortune, worked as a schoolteacher in rural Austria, as a gardener in a monastery and on the design of a house for his sister. He returned to Cambridge in 1929 and became professor of philosophy in 1939. In the Second World War he worked as a hospital porter in London. His later ideas, which describe language as a set of 'language games', appeared after his death in Philosophical Investigations (1953). He died in Cambridge in 1951.","keyDates":[{"date":"1889","event":"Born in Vienna"},{"date":"1911","event":"Goes to Cambridge to study with Bertrand Russell"},{"date":"1921","event":"Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus published"},{"date":"1929","event":"Returns to Cambridge"},{"date":"1939","event":"Professor of philosophy at Cambridge"},{"date":"1951","event":"Dies in Cambridge"},{"date":"1953","event":"Philosophical Investigations published"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Ludwig Wittgenstein","relatedWorks":["wittgenstein-philosophical-investigations"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"wittgenstein-philosophical-investigations","url":"/works/wittgenstein-philosophical-investigations/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"He was a remarkable whistler who could whistle long, detailed pieces of music and would correct other whistlers if they were off tune.","source":{"title":"Ludwig Wittgenstein (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Wittgenstein"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Baptized in a Catholic church and given a Catholic burial; his father's parents were Jewish converts to Protestantism.","source":"https://iep.utm.edu/wittgens/","sourceName":"Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy","documented":true},"furtherReading":[{"series":"Very Short Introductions","title":"Wittgenstein: A Very Short Introduction","author":"A. C. Grayling","publisher":"Oxford University Press","year":2001,"isbn13":"9780192854117","url":"https://bookshop.org/a/130650/9780192854117"}],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"oliver-wolcott","name":"Oliver Wolcott","url":"/great-lives/oliver-wolcott/","dates":"1726–1797","born":1726,"died":1797,"era":"18th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders","military-leaders"],"knownFor":"Connecticut lawyer and militia commander who signed the Declaration and later became governor of the state.","bio":"Oliver Wolcott was born in 1726 in Windsor, Connecticut, the son of a colonial governor, and graduated from Yale before studying law. He served as sheriff, judge, and a member of the governor's council, and was sent to the Continental Congress. He was often away from Philadelphia on military duty; he signed the Declaration after the principal signing of 2 August 1776. As a militia general he helped turn out Connecticut troops, including men sent toward Saratoga in 1777, and he later served in the defense of the state. After the war he remained a judge and was elected governor of Connecticut in 1796. Wolcott died in office the next year. His public life joined legal office with the practical work of raising and leading militia in a long war.","keyDates":[{"date":"1726","event":"Born in Windsor, Connecticut"},{"date":"1776","event":"Signs the Declaration of Independence"},{"date":"1777","event":"Commands Connecticut militia during the Saratoga campaign"},{"date":"1796","event":"Becomes governor of Connecticut"},{"date":"1797","event":"Dies in office as governor"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["the-founding-documents"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-founding-documents","url":"/works/the-founding-documents/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":null,"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"wolfram-von-eschenbach","name":"Wolfram von Eschenbach","url":"/great-lives/wolfram-von-eschenbach/","dates":"c. 1170–c. 1220","born":1170,"died":1220,"era":"medieval","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Medieval German knight-poet, author of the Grail romance Parzival.","bio":"Wolfram von Eschenbach was a German poet of the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, regarded as the greatest narrative poet of medieval Germany. Almost everything known about him comes from his own works. He probably came from Eschenbach near Ansbach in Franconia, now called Wolframs-Eschenbach, and he describes himself as a knight of modest means who served noble patrons, among them Landgrave Hermann of Thuringia, at whose court he may have met other poets. He famously claimed that he could not read, though scholars doubt this. His masterpiece, Parzival, written around 1200 to 1210 in sixteen books, adapts Chrétien de Troyes's unfinished Perceval and tells of a young knight's growth from foolish ignorance to wisdom and compassion as king of the Grail. He also wrote the unfinished epic Willehalm, about wars between Christians and Saracens, which treats the enemy with notable sympathy; fragments of a poem called Titurel; and several lyric dawn songs. He died around 1220. Richard Wagner's opera Parsifal was based on his poem.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 1170","event":"Probable birth"},{"date":"c. 1200-1210","event":"Composes Parzival"},{"date":"c. 1210-1220","event":"Writes Willehalm"},{"date":"c. 1220","event":"Dies"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Wolfram von Eschenbach","relatedWorks":["wolfram-parzival"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"wolfram-parzival","url":"/works/wolfram-parzival/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A medieval Christian poet whose Parzival turns on the conflict of faith and doubt; a 13th-century poem cast him as the champion of Christianity, and he was buried in the church at Ober-Eschenbach.","source":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Wolfram_von_Eschenbach","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica (1911) (via Wikisource)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"mary-wollstonecraft","name":"Mary Wollstonecraft","url":"/great-lives/mary-wollstonecraft/","dates":"1759–1797","born":1759,"died":1797,"era":"18th-century","categories":["writers-poets","philosophers"],"knownFor":"English writer and philosopher, author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.","bio":"Mary Wollstonecraft was born in London in 1759. Her father wasted the family's money and was often violent, and she tried to protect her mother and sisters. With little formal education, she worked as a lady's companion and then, with her sisters and her friend Fanny Blood, opened a school at Newington Green, near London. Her first book, Thoughts on the Education of Daughters (1787), drew on that experience. After a year as a governess in Ireland, she settled in London as a writer and translator for the publisher Joseph Johnson. She replied to Edmund Burke's criticism of the French Revolution in A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790), and in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) she argued that women were not naturally inferior to men but appeared so because they were denied education, and that they should be educated as rational beings. She traveled to Paris to observe the Revolution and later to Scandinavia. In 1797 she married the philosopher William Godwin. She died in London that year, eleven days after giving birth to their daughter, Mary, later the author of Frankenstein.","keyDates":[{"date":"1759","event":"Born in London"},{"date":"1787","event":"Thoughts on the Education of Daughters"},{"date":"1790","event":"A Vindication of the Rights of Men"},{"date":"1792","event":"A Vindication of the Rights of Woman"},{"date":"1797","event":"Marries William Godwin"},{"date":"1797","event":"Dies in London"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Mary Wollstonecraft","relatedWorks":["vindication-of-the-rights-of-woman"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"vindication-of-the-rights-of-woman","url":"/works/vindication-of-the-rights-of-woman/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"The asteroid 90481 Wollstonecraft is named after her.","source":{"title":"Mary Wollstonecraft (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Wollstonecraft"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented in detail; she lived and taught in the Dissenting community of Newington Green.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Wollstonecraft","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[{"series":"Very Short Introductions","title":"Mary Wollstonecraft: A Very Short Introduction","author":"E. J. Clery","publisher":"Oxford University Press","year":2025,"isbn13":"9780192862563","url":"https://bookshop.org/a/130650/9780192862563"}],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"greg-woolf","name":"Greg Woolf","url":"/great-lives/greg-woolf/","dates":"born 1961","born":1961,"died":null,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"British historian of the Roman Empire, author of Rome: An Empire's Story.","bio":"Greg Woolf is a British historian and archaeologist of the late Iron Age and the Roman Empire. He was born in 1961 in Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, and studied ancient and modern history at Christ Church, Oxford, from 1981 to 1985, before research in classics at Trinity College, Cambridge. He taught at the University of Leicester and at Oxford, and from 1998 to 2014 he was professor of ancient history at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. From 2015 to 2021 he directed the Institute of Classical Studies at the University of London. In 2021 he became professor of ancient history at the University of California, Los Angeles, and in 2025 he became director of the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University. His research has focused on how provinces such as Gaul became Roman, on literacy, religion and cities in the ancient world. His books include Becoming Roman, Rome: An Empire's Story (2012), a history of the empire for general readers, and The Life and Death of Ancient Cities.","keyDates":[{"date":"1961","event":"Born in Hemel Hempstead"},{"date":"1998–2014","event":"Professor at St Andrews"},{"date":"2012","event":"Rome: An Empire's Story published"},{"date":"2021","event":"Joins UCLA"},{"date":"2025","event":"Director of the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, NYU"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Greg Woolf","relatedWorks":["woolf-rome-an-empires-story"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"woolf-rome-an-empires-story","url":"/works/woolf-rome-an-empires-story/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Woolf","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"virginia-woolf","name":"Virginia Woolf","url":"/great-lives/virginia-woolf/","dates":"1882–1941","born":1882,"died":1941,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"English novelist and essayist, author of Mrs Dalloway, To the Lighthouse and A Room of One's Own.","bio":"Virginia Woolf was born Adeline Virginia Stephen in London in 1882. She grew up in an affluent and intellectual family, the daughter of Leslie Stephen, and was educated at home. Happy summers at St Ives in Cornwall later influenced To the Lighthouse. After her parents' deaths she and her brothers and sister moved to Bloomsbury, in London, where their home became a meeting place for writers, artists and thinkers known as the Bloomsbury Group. In 1912 she married the writer Leonard Woolf, and in 1917 they founded the Hogarth Press, which published her books and those of other writers. Her novels, including Mrs Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927) and The Waves (1931), use a 'stream of consciousness' style that follows the thoughts and feelings of characters from moment to moment. Orlando (1928) is a playful fantasy about a hero who lives for centuries. In the long essay A Room of One's Own (1929) she argued that a woman needs money and a room of her own if she is to write. Throughout her life she suffered periods of serious mental illness. She died in 1941.","keyDates":[{"date":"1882","event":"Born in London"},{"date":"1912","event":"Marries Leonard Woolf"},{"date":"1917","event":"Founds the Hogarth Press"},{"date":"1925","event":"Mrs Dalloway published"},{"date":"1927","event":"To the Lighthouse published"},{"date":"1929","event":"A Room of One's Own published"},{"date":"1941","event":"Dies"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Virginia Woolf","relatedWorks":["woolf-to-the-lighthouse","mrs-dalloway","orlando","the-waves","woolf-a-room-of-ones-own","woolf-jacobs-room"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"woolf-to-the-lighthouse","url":"/works/woolf-to-the-lighthouse/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"mrs-dalloway","url":"/works/mrs-dalloway/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"orlando","url":"/works/orlando/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-waves","url":"/works/the-waves/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"woolf-a-room-of-ones-own","url":"/works/woolf-a-room-of-ones-own/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"woolf-jacobs-room","url":"/works/woolf-jacobs-room/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented; her parents were agnostics.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Woolf","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"john-woolman","name":"John Woolman","url":"/great-lives/john-woolman/","dates":"1720–1772","born":1720,"died":1772,"era":"18th-century","categories":["saints-reformers","writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American Quaker preacher and journal writer who campaigned against slavery.","bio":"John Woolman was born in 1720 in Rancocas, in the colony of West Jersey, into a Quaker farming family. As a young man he worked as a clerk for a shopkeeper in Mount Holly, New Jersey, and later as a tailor. When his employer asked him to write a bill of sale for an enslaved woman, he did so but told his employer that he thought slaveholding was inconsistent with Christianity, and he later refused to write the part of a customer's will that would have transferred ownership of an enslaved person. He became a traveling minister and journeyed through the American colonies urging fellow Quakers to free the people they held in slavery. His essay Some Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes (1754) argued against the practice. He lived simply and refused to wear dyed cloth, having learned that dye workers were harmed by the chemicals they used. His Journal, published after his death, is regarded as a classic of American spiritual writing. In 1772 he sailed to England to visit Quakers there, and he died of smallpox in York that year.","keyDates":[{"date":"1720","event":"Born in Rancocas, West Jersey"},{"date":"1754","event":"Some Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes"},{"date":"1772","event":"Travels to England"},{"date":"1772","event":"Dies in York"},{"date":"1774","event":"Journal published"}],"quotes":[],"author":"John Woolman","relatedWorks":["journal-of-john-woolman"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"journal-of-john-woolman","url":"/works/journal-of-john-woolman/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[{"text":"His Journal has been in print continuously for longer than any other book in North America except the Bible.","source":{"title":"John Woolman (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Woolman"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Quaker essayist, son of a Quaker farmer in West Jersey.","source":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dictionary_of_National_Biography%2C_1885-1900/Woolman%2C_John","sourceName":"Dictionary of National Biography (1885–1900) (via Wikisource)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"william-wordsworth","name":"William Wordsworth","url":"/great-lives/william-wordsworth/","dates":"1770–1850","born":1770,"died":1850,"era":"19th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"English Romantic poet of the Lake District who, with Coleridge, published Lyrical Ballads; Poet Laureate from 1843.","bio":"William Wordsworth was born in 1770 in Cockermouth, Cumberland, on the edge of the Lake District in northwestern England, the second of five children. His sister Dorothy, born the next year, became a poet and diarist and stayed close to him all his life. After their mother died in 1778, William was sent to Hawkshead Grammar School, and the brother and sister did not meet again for nine years. In 1787 he published his first sonnet and entered St John's College, Cambridge. In 1790 he went on a walking tour of the Alps, and in 1791 he visited revolutionary France. With his friend Samuel Taylor Coleridge he published Lyrical Ballads in 1798, which included 'Tintern Abbey' and 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner' and helped to launch the Romantic movement in English poetry. William and Dorothy settled at Dove Cottage in Grasmere, and he married Mary Hutchinson, whom he had known since childhood. In 1813 the family moved to Rydal Mount, near Ambleside. He became Poet Laureate in 1843 and died in 1850. His long autobiographical poem The Prelude was published after his death.","keyDates":[{"date":"1770","event":"Born in Cockermouth"},{"date":"1787","event":"Enters St John's College, Cambridge"},{"date":"1798","event":"Lyrical Ballads published with Coleridge"},{"date":"1843","event":"Becomes Poet Laureate"},{"date":"1850","event":"Dies; The Prelude published"}],"quotes":[],"author":"William Wordsworth","relatedWorks":["tintern-abbey","lyrical-ballads","poems-in-two-volumes","i-wandered-lonely-as-a-cloud","composed-upon-westminster-bridge","wordsworth-michael"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"tintern-abbey","url":"/works/tintern-abbey/"},{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"i-wandered-lonely-as-a-cloud","url":"/works/i-wandered-lonely-as-a-cloud/"},{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"composed-upon-westminster-bridge","url":"/works/composed-upon-westminster-bridge/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"lyrical-ballads","url":"/works/lyrical-ballads/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"poems-in-two-volumes","url":"/works/poems-in-two-volumes/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"wordsworth-michael","url":"/works/wordsworth-michael/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[{"name":"Wordsworth Grasmere","note":"Wordsworth lived and wrote for many years at Dove Cottage in Grasmere in the Lake District. Wordsworth Grasmere welcomes school groups to the cottage and the landscape that shaped his poetry.","url":"https://wordsworth.org.uk/learn/schools/","urlLabel":"Wordsworth Grasmere — schools"}],"faith":{"note":"Never rebelled against his religious upbringing; he became a supporter of the Church of England.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Wordsworth","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"christopher-wren","name":"Christopher Wren","url":"/great-lives/christopher-wren/","dates":"1632–1723","born":1632,"died":1723,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["artists-composers-architects","scientists-mathematicians"],"knownFor":"Architect of St. Paul's Cathedral who rebuilt London after the Great Fire.","bio":"Christopher Wren was born in Wiltshire, England, the son of a clergyman. At Oxford he studied mathematics and science and became part of the group that founded the Royal Society in 1660. He was professor of astronomy in London and at Oxford, and Isaac Newton praised his work. In September 1666 the Great Fire of London destroyed much of the city, including the old St. Paul's Cathedral and eighty-seven parish churches. Wren drew up a plan for a new city of broad avenues, which was not adopted, but as surveyor of the king's works he designed fifty-one new churches, each with its own steeple. His greatest work was the new St. Paul's Cathedral, with its great dome, begun in 1675 and declared complete in 1711. He also designed the Royal Hospital at Chelsea and the Royal Naval Hospital at Greenwich, and with Robert Hooke the Monument to the fire. He lived to ninety and was buried in St. Paul's. His tomb bears the Latin words: if you seek his monument, look around you.","keyDates":[{"date":"1660","event":"Helps found the Royal Society"},{"date":"1666","event":"Great Fire of London"},{"date":"1675","event":"Work begins on St. Paul's Cathedral"},{"date":"1711","event":"St. Paul's declared complete"},{"date":"1723","event":"Dies in London"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"Besides buildings, he invented a tipping-bucket rain gauge in 1662.","source":{"title":"Christopher Wren (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Wren"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Wren","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"blanche-fisher-wright","name":"Blanche Fisher Wright","url":"/great-lives/blanche-fisher-wright/","dates":"1887–1971","born":1887,"died":1971,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["artists-composers-architects"],"knownFor":"American illustrator whose pictures for The Real Mother Goose (1916) became a classic American picture book of nursery rhymes.","bio":"Blanche Fisher Wright was an American artist whose pictures gave generations of children their first look at the old nursery rhymes. Born Blanche Fisher in Wisconsin in 1887, she worked as a book illustrator in the 1910s and published under her first married name, Blanche Fisher Wright. In 1916 the publisher Rand McNally issued The Real Mother Goose with her illustrations. The rhymes themselves are traditional and anonymous, and no one knows who first made most of them up. Wright's part was to picture them, with cheerful drawings of Humpty Dumpty, Jack and Jill, Old Mother Goose riding her gander, and many more. The book became a favorite American nursery edition and is still reprinted today. She also illustrated The Goody-Naughty Book (1913), a series of school readers for Charles Scribner's Sons, and The Peter Patter Book of Nursery Rhymes (1918). She later married the actor Charles Laite, and in 1925 they took in a foster son, Gordon Laite, who grew up to illustrate children's books himself. She died in 1971.","keyDates":[{"date":"1887","event":"Born Blanche Fisher in Wisconsin"},{"date":"1913","event":"Illustrates The Goody-Naughty Book for Rand McNally"},{"date":"1915","event":"Illustrates the first of the Natural Method Readers for Scribner"},{"date":"1916","event":"The Real Mother Goose published by Rand McNally"},{"date":"1918","event":"Illustrates The Peter Patter Book of Nursery Rhymes"},{"date":"1925","event":"With her husband Charles Laite, takes in foster son Gordon Laite"},{"date":"1971","event":"Dies in Illinois"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Blanche Fisher Wright (illustrator); traditional rhymes","relatedWorks":["the-real-mother-goose"],"reading":[{"band":"K-2","kind":"library","work":"the-real-mother-goose","url":"/works/the-real-mother-goose/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blanche_Fisher_Wright","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["Wikipedia, Wikidata and Wikisource give 1887-1971; the Library of Congress name authority lists her birth as June 24, 1887, in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, and a death date of 1978, though the source it cites gives January 16, 1971."]},{"slug":"frank-lloyd-wright","name":"Frank Lloyd Wright","url":"/great-lives/frank-lloyd-wright/","dates":"1867–1959","born":1867,"died":1959,"era":"postwar-contemporary","categories":["artists-composers-architects"],"knownFor":"American architect of Fallingwater and the Guggenheim Museum, creator of the Prairie style.","bio":"Frank Lloyd Wright was born in Richland Center, Wisconsin. His mother gave him Froebel kindergarten blocks, which he said shaped his sense of form. He studied engineering briefly, then went to Chicago and worked for the architect Louis Sullivan. In 1893 he opened his own practice in Oak Park, Illinois, where he developed the Prairie style: long, low houses with flat overhanging roofs, open interior spaces and bands of windows, meant to suit the flat Midwestern landscape. He believed in organic architecture, buildings in harmony with their sites and their materials. His personal life was turbulent, and in 1914 a worker murdered seven people and set fire to his Wisconsin home, Taliesin. He rebuilt it and designed the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, which survived the 1923 earthquake. In the 1930s, when he was nearly seventy, he designed Fallingwater, a house built over a waterfall in Pennsylvania, and founded a school for apprentices at Taliesin and later at Taliesin West in Arizona. His last major work, the spiral Guggenheim Museum in New York, opened months after his death in 1959.","keyDates":[{"date":"1893","event":"Opens his own practice"},{"date":"1909","event":"Robie House in Chicago"},{"date":"1911","event":"Builds Taliesin in Wisconsin"},{"date":"1935–1937","event":"Fallingwater"},{"date":"1959","event":"Dies; Guggenheim Museum opens"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"book","title":"Who Was Frank Lloyd Wright?","author":"Ellen Labrecque","isbn13":"9780448483139","publisher":"Paperback","year":2015,"format":""}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Raised in a Unitarian family; his adult beliefs are not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Lloyd_Wright","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"wright-brothers","name":"The Wright Brothers","url":"/great-lives/wright-brothers/","dates":"Wilbur 1867–1912; Orville 1871–1948","born":1867,"died":1948,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["inventors"],"knownFor":"American brothers who built and flew the first successful powered airplane.","bio":"Wilbur and Orville Wright were sons of a bishop in Dayton, Ohio. Their father once brought home a toy helicopter powered by a rubber band, which fascinated them. Neither finished high school, but both read widely. They ran a printing business and then a bicycle shop, where they built their own bicycles. Inspired by the glider flights of Otto Lilienthal, they began working on flight in 1899. They saw that the hardest problem was control, and invented wing warping, twisting the wings to roll the aircraft. They tested gliders on the windy dunes of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, and when published data proved wrong, built their own wind tunnel to test wing shapes. They also designed their own propellers and, with their mechanic Charlie Taylor, a light engine. On 17 December 1903 Orville flew their Flyer for twelve seconds and 120 feet, the first controlled, sustained powered flight. By 1905 they could fly for over half an hour. Wilbur died of typhoid in 1912. Orville lived until 1948.","keyDates":[{"date":"1899","event":"Begin experiments on flight"},{"date":"1901","event":"Build a wind tunnel"},{"date":"1903","event":"First powered flight at Kitty Hawk, 17 December"},{"date":"1908","event":"Public flights in France and the U.S."},{"date":"1912","event":"Wilbur dies"},{"date":"1948","event":"Orville dies"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"book","title":"Who Were the Wright Brothers?","author":"James Buckley, Jr.","isbn13":"9780448479514","publisher":"Grosset & Dunlap","year":2014,"format":"paperback"},{"band":"6-8","kind":"book","title":"The Wright Brothers: How They Invented the Airplane","author":"Russell Freedman","isbn13":"9780823408757","publisher":"Holiday House","year":1991,"format":""},{"band":"9-12","kind":"book","title":"The Wright Brothers","author":"David McCullough","isbn13":"9781476728742","publisher":"Simon and Schuster","year":2015,"format":"hardcover"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"In 1878 their father brought home a toy helicopter made of paper, bamboo and cork, powered by a rubber band; the brothers later said it sparked their interest in flying.","source":{"title":"Wright brothers (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_brothers"}}],"records":[{"text":"On their longest flight over Huffman Prairie, Wilbur flew 24.5 miles (39.4 km) in 38 minutes and 3 seconds, landing safely when the fuel ran out.","source":{"title":"Wright brothers (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_brothers"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented; their father was a bishop in the Church of the United Brethren in Christ.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_brothers","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"john-wycliffe","name":"John Wycliffe","url":"/great-lives/john-wycliffe/","dates":"c. 1328–1384","born":1328,"died":1384,"era":"medieval","categories":["saints-reformers","theologians-church-fathers"],"knownFor":"Oxford theologian whose followers made the first complete English Bible.","bio":"John Wycliffe was born in Yorkshire and spent most of his career at Oxford University, where he became a leading philosopher and theologian. He was also a parish priest at Lutterworth. In the 1370s he served the English government, arguing that the king had the right to limit the Church's wealth and that clergy who lived in sin forfeited their authority. He taught that the Bible was the supreme authority for Christians and that everyone should be able to read it, criticized the wealth of the clergy and the papacy, and rejected the doctrine of transubstantiation. Pope Gregory XI condemned some of his teachings in 1377, but he was protected by powerful friends. His followers began translating the whole Bible from Latin into English, completing the first full English Bible in the 1380s, copied by hand. He sent out poor preachers, later called Lollards. After the Peasants' Revolt of 1381 he lost support, but he was allowed to retire to Lutterworth, where he died after a stroke in 1384. In 1428 his bones were dug up and burned by order of the Church.","keyDates":[{"date":"1372","event":"Doctor of theology at Oxford"},{"date":"1377","event":"Teachings condemned by Gregory XI"},{"date":"1380s","event":"First complete English Bible by his followers"},{"date":"1384","event":"Dies at Lutterworth"},{"date":"1415","event":"Condemned at the Council of Constance"},{"date":"1428","event":"His remains exhumed and burned"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"English priest and Oxford Doctor of Theology whose dissent made him a forerunner of the Protestant Reformation.","source":"https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15722a.htm","sourceName":"Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"johann-david-wyss","name":"Johann David Wyss","url":"/great-lives/johann-david-wyss/","dates":"1743–1818","born":1743,"died":1818,"era":"18th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Swiss pastor whose stories for his sons became The Swiss Family Robinson.","bio":"Johann David Wyss was born in Bern, Switzerland, in 1743, and he lived and died there. Inspired, it is said, by Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, he made up a long adventure story to entertain and teach his four sons, about a Swiss pastor, his wife and their four boys who are shipwrecked on a deserted tropical island and build a new life there, learning about plants, animals and practical skills as they go. Wyss himself never published the story. His son Johann Rudolf Wyss, a professor and writer known for the words of an early Swiss national anthem, edited the manuscript and published it in German in 1812 as Der Schweizerische Robinson, and another son, Johann Emmanuel, drew the illustrations. It was translated into English two years later as The Swiss Family Robinson, and later translators and editors expanded and changed it considerably. Wyss died in Bern in 1818.","keyDates":[{"date":"1743","event":"Born in Bern"},{"date":"1812","event":"The Swiss Family Robinson published by his son"},{"date":"1814","event":"First English translation, two years later"},{"date":"1818","event":"Dies in Bern"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Johann David Wyss","relatedWorks":["the-swiss-family-robinson"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-swiss-family-robinson","url":"/works/the-swiss-family-robinson/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"Jules Verne reportedly said The Swiss Family Robinson was one of his favourite books, and he wrote a sequel to it, The Castaways of the Flag (1900).","source":{"title":"Johann David Wyss (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_David_Wyss"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented in detail; his writing has been described as firmly Christian and moral in tone.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_David_Wyss","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"george-wythe","name":"George Wythe","url":"/great-lives/george-wythe/","dates":"c. 1726–1806","born":1726,"died":1806,"era":"18th-century","categories":["statesmen-founders","legal-scholars-lawgivers"],"knownFor":"Virginia lawyer and first American law professor, teacher of Jefferson, who signed the Declaration and later turned against slavery.","bio":"George Wythe was born about 1726 in Elizabeth City County, Virginia, studied law, and became one of the most respected lawyers in the colony. He taught Thomas Jefferson and, later, other young men who would shape the country, including John Marshall, and in 1779 he became the first professor of law in an American college, at William and Mary. He was in Virginia during the summer of 1776 and signed the Declaration later in the year, after returning to Congress. He helped revise Virginia's laws, sat in the convention that ratified the Constitution, and spent his later years as a judge in Richmond. Wythe had held people in slavery; in later life he freed those he still held and used his place on the bench to limit slavery where the law allowed. In 1806 he died after being poisoned, almost certainly by a grandnephew who stood to inherit. His life is one of the clearest examples among the signers of a mind willing to be corrected by the principles he had signed.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 1726","event":"Born in Elizabeth City County, Virginia"},{"date":"1776","event":"Signs the Declaration of Independence, after returning to Congress"},{"date":"1779","event":"Becomes professor of law at the College of William and Mary"},{"date":"1788","event":"Sits in the Virginia convention that ratifies the Constitution"},{"date":"1806","event":"Dies in Richmond after being poisoned"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":["the-founding-documents"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"the-founding-documents","url":"/works/the-founding-documents/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":null,"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"xenophon","name":"Xenophon","url":"/great-lives/xenophon/","dates":"c. 430–354 BC","born":-430,"died":-354,"era":"ancient","categories":["military-leaders","writers-poets","philosophers"],"knownFor":"Athenian soldier, historian and student of Socrates who led the Ten Thousand home from Persia and told the story in his Anabasis.","bio":"Xenophon was born around 430 BC in Erchia, a district of Athens, the son of Gryllus, from an aristocratic family. Like many wealthy young Athenians, he spent time with the philosopher Socrates, and he probably served in the Athenian cavalry. As a young man he joined a force of Greek soldiers hired by the Persian prince Cyrus the Younger, who was trying to seize the Persian throne. After Cyrus was killed at the Battle of Cunaxa, the Greeks, known as the Ten Thousand, were stranded deep in enemy territory, and Xenophon, then about thirty, was elected one of their leaders. He helped guide them on a long march north until they reached the Black Sea. His book Anabasis tells this story. Xenophon later became associated with Sparta and was given an estate at Scillus, where he lived for many years. He wrote the Hellenica, a history of Greece continuing from where Thucydides had stopped; the Cyropaedia, about Cyrus the Great; and dialogues about Socrates, including the Memorabilia. He died around 354 BC, probably in Corinth.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 430 BC","event":"Born in Athens"},{"date":"401 BC","event":"Battle of Cunaxa; elected a leader of the Ten Thousand"},{"date":"c. 354 BC","event":"Dies, probably in Corinth"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Xenophon","relatedWorks":["the-persian-expedition"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-persian-expedition","url":"/works/the-persian-expedition/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[{"text":"His writings on warfare are believed to be among the first to describe flanking moves and feints.","source":{"title":"Xenophon (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenophon"}}],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented beyond Greek religion.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenophon","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["Birth year approximate; death year 355 or 354 BC."]},{"slug":"elizabeth-yates","name":"Elizabeth Yates","url":"/great-lives/elizabeth-yates/","dates":"1905–2001","born":1905,"died":2001,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"American author of Amos Fortune, Free Man, the Newbery-winning life of an African-born man who bought his freedom in New England.","bio":"Elizabeth Yates was born in 1905 in Buffalo, New York, the seventh of eight children. Her father was a farmer, and she grew up with a love of animals and nature, while her mother encouraged her interest in books and writing. After finishing school she moved to New York City and began working as a writer, contributing travel articles to newspapers including The Christian Science Monitor and The New York Times. She married William McGreal and lived for some years in England before the couple settled on a farm in Peterborough, New Hampshire. Her novel Mountain Born was a Newbery runner-up in 1944, and Amos Fortune, Free Man, a biographical novel about an African man who was enslaved in Massachusetts, bought his freedom and became a tanner in Jaffrey, New Hampshire, won the Newbery Medal in 1951. Many of her books were illustrated by the British artist Nora S. Unwin. She wrote dozens of books for children and adults, including a three-volume autobiography. She died in 2001.","keyDates":[{"date":"1905","event":"Born in Buffalo, New York"},{"date":"1944","event":"Mountain Born a Newbery runner-up"},{"date":"1951","event":"Newbery Medal for Amos Fortune, Free Man"},{"date":"2001","event":"Dies"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Elizabeth Yates","relatedWorks":["amos-fortune-free-man"],"reading":[{"band":"6-8","kind":"library","work":"amos-fortune-free-man","url":"/works/amos-fortune-free-man/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Faith not well documented.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Yates_%28writer%29","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":false},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"w-b-yeats","name":"W. B. Yeats","url":"/great-lives/w-b-yeats/","dates":"1865–1939","born":1865,"died":1939,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Irish poet and dramatist, leader of the Irish Literary Revival and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature.","bio":"William Butler Yeats was born in 1865 in Dublin, Ireland, the son of a portrait painter. He was educated in Dublin and London and spent childhood holidays in County Sligo, in the west of Ireland. He studied at an art school in Dublin before turning to poetry. From an early age he was fascinated by Irish legends, which shaped his early poems. In 1889 he met Maud Gonne, an actress and campaigner for Irish independence, whom he loved for many years. With Lady Gregory and others he helped found the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, which opened in 1904 and became Ireland's national theatre. His later poetry, in collections such as The Tower (1928), became more direct and powerful, and poems such as 'Easter, 1916' and 'The Second Coming' are among the most famous in English. In 1917 he married Georgie Hyde-Lees. After Irish independence he served as a senator of the Irish Free State from 1922 to 1928. In 1923 he received the Nobel Prize in Literature. He died in France in 1939.","keyDates":[{"date":"1865","event":"Born in Dublin"},{"date":"1889","event":"Meets Maud Gonne"},{"date":"1904","event":"Abbey Theatre opens"},{"date":"1917","event":"Marries Georgie Hyde-Lees"},{"date":"1922","event":"Becomes a senator of the Irish Free State"},{"date":"1923","event":"Nobel Prize in Literature"},{"date":"1939","event":"Dies in France"}],"quotes":[],"author":"W. B. Yeats (editor)","relatedWorks":["fairy-and-folk-tales-of-the-irish-peasantry","the-second-coming"],"reading":[{"band":"3-5","kind":"library","work":"fairy-and-folk-tales-of-the-irish-peasantry","url":"/works/fairy-and-folk-tales-of-the-irish-peasantry/"},{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"the-second-coming","url":"/works/the-second-coming/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Raised Protestant; he held strong interests in mysticism and the occult.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._B._Yeats","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"al-zahrawi","name":"Al-Zahrawi (Abulcasis)","url":"/great-lives/al-zahrawi/","dates":"c. 936–1013","born":936,"died":1013,"era":"medieval","categories":["physicians-medicine"],"knownFor":"Surgeon of Muslim Spain whose illustrated surgical treatise, the last book of his encyclopedia al-Tasrif, was used in European schools for centuries.","bio":"Abu al-Qasim Khalaf ibn al-Abbas al-Zahrawi, known in Latin Europe as Abulcasis, was born around 936 near Córdoba in al-Andalus, Muslim Spain; his name links him to Madinat al-Zahra, the palace city of the Umayyad caliphs. He is often described as a court physician to Caliph al-Hakam II. Over a long career he wrote al-Tasrif, a medical encyclopedia in thirty treatises covering diet, drugs, diseases and treatment. Its final treatise, on surgery, was the most influential: it described cautery, the treatment of wounds, fractures and dislocations, the removal of bladder stones, obstetrics and dentistry, and included drawings of some two hundred surgical instruments, several of them his own designs. In the twelfth century Gerard of Cremona translated the surgical treatise into Latin, and it became a standard textbook in European universities into the Renaissance. Al-Zahrawi urged surgeons to know anatomy well and to refuse operations they could not perform safely. He died around 1013, the year Córdoba was sacked during civil war.","keyDates":[{"date":"c. 936","event":"Born near Córdoba, al-Andalus"},{"date":"c. 1000","event":"Completes al-Tasrif, his thirty-part medical encyclopedia"},{"date":"c. 1013","event":"Dies in Córdoba"},{"date":"12th century","event":"Gerard of Cremona translates the surgical treatise into Latin"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"avicenna-canon-of-medicine-book-i","url":"/works/avicenna-canon-of-medicine-book-i/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A Muslim physician and author.","source":"https://www.britannica.com/biography/Abu-al-Qasim","sourceName":"Encyclopaedia Britannica","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":["Birth and death years are approximate (c. 936 and c. 1013).","The court-physician role under al-Hakam II is traditional and not well documented.","\"About 200 instruments\" is the usual count; editions differ."]},{"slug":"yevgeny-zamyatin","name":"Yevgeny Zamyatin","url":"/great-lives/yevgeny-zamyatin/","dates":"1884–1937","born":1884,"died":1937,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Russian writer and naval engineer whose novel We, banned in the Soviet Union, became a model for later dystopian fiction.","bio":"Yevgeny Zamyatin was born in 1884 in Lebedyan, a town south of Moscow, the son of a Russian Orthodox priest and schoolmaster and a musician mother. He remembered himself as a lonely child, reading under the piano while his mother played Chopin. He studied naval engineering in Saint Petersburg and as a young man joined the Bolsheviks; for his underground activity he was arrested, imprisoned and exiled more than once. In 1916 he was sent to England to supervise the building of icebreakers at shipyards near Newcastle upon Tyne. There he wrote The Islanders, a satire of English life. He returned to Russia in 1917, but he grew disturbed by the new Soviet government's demands for conformity. His novel We, set in a future state where people have numbers instead of names, became the first work banned by the Soviet censorship board. The manuscript was smuggled to New York, and an English translation was published in 1924. Attacked and blacklisted at home, he wrote to Joseph Stalin asking permission to leave, and in 1931 he went abroad. He died in poverty in Paris in 1937.","keyDates":[{"date":"1884","event":"Born in Lebedyan, Russia"},{"date":"1916","event":"Supervises icebreaker construction in England"},{"date":"1924","event":"We published in English in New York"},{"date":"1931","event":"Leaves the Soviet Union"},{"date":"1937","event":"Dies in Paris"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Yevgeny Zamyatin","relatedWorks":["we"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"we","url":"/works/we/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"He remembered himself as a lonely child reading a book under the piano while his mother played Chopin.","source":{"title":"Yevgeny Zamyatin (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yevgeny_Zamyatin"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Son of a Russian Orthodox priest; he lost his faith and became an atheist.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yevgeny_Zamyatin","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"zheng-he","name":"Zheng He","url":"/great-lives/zheng-he/","dates":"1371–1433","born":1371,"died":1433,"era":"medieval","categories":["explorers","military-leaders"],"knownFor":"Chinese admiral who led seven great treasure fleet voyages across the Indian Ocean.","bio":"Zheng He was born Ma He into a Muslim family in Yunnan, in southwestern China. When Ming armies conquered Yunnan around 1381, he was captured as a boy, made a eunuch, and placed in the household of the prince of Yan. He served the prince as a soldier and became his trusted aide, and when the prince seized the throne as the Yongle Emperor, he gave Ma He the name Zheng. In 1405 the emperor sent Zheng He to command an enormous fleet of large wooden ships, called treasure ships, with tens of thousands of sailors and soldiers. Between 1405 and 1433 he led seven voyages, visiting Southeast Asia, India, Sri Lanka, the Persian Gulf, Arabia and the east coast of Africa as far as Mombasa. The fleets carried silk and porcelain, brought back gifts and envoys, and displayed Ming power; a giraffe from Africa caused a sensation at court. Zheng He died around 1433, probably during or after the last voyage. Later Ming emperors stopped the voyages, and China turned inward for centuries.","keyDates":[{"date":"1371","event":"Born in Yunnan"},{"date":"1405","event":"First treasure fleet voyage"},{"date":"1414","event":"Giraffe brought to the court"},{"date":"1431–1433","event":"Seventh voyage"},{"date":"1433","event":"Dies"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"A Muslim.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zheng_He","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"stefan-zweig","name":"Stefan Zweig","url":"/great-lives/stefan-zweig/","dates":"1881–1942","born":1881,"died":1942,"era":"early-20th-century","categories":["writers-poets"],"knownFor":"Austrian writer of novellas, biographies and the memoir The World of Yesterday, among the most translated authors of the 1920s and 1930s.","bio":"Stefan Zweig was born in Vienna in 1881 into a wealthy Jewish family and grew up in the capital of Austria-Hungary. He studied philosophy at the University of Vienna, earning a doctorate in 1904. In the 1920s and 1930s he was one of the most widely translated and popular writers in the world. He wrote short novels and stories, such as Letter from an Unknown Woman (1922) and The Royal Game (1941), and the novel Beware of Pity (1939). He was also famous for lively biographies and historical studies, including Three Masters (1920), on Balzac, Dickens and Dostoevsky, Decisive Moments in History (1927), Marie Antoinette (1932) and Mary Stuart (1935). In 1934, after the rise of the Nazis, he left Austria for England, and in 1940 he moved to New York and then to Brazil, which he praised in the book Brazil, Land of the Future. Increasingly despairing about the fate of Europe, he and his wife Lotte died together at their home in Petrópolis in 1942. His memoir, The World of Yesterday, appeared after his death.","keyDates":[{"date":"1881","event":"Born in Vienna"},{"date":"1920","event":"Three Masters published"},{"date":"1927","event":"Decisive Moments in History published"},{"date":"1934","event":"Leaves Austria for England"},{"date":"1940","event":"Moves to the Americas"},{"date":"1942","event":"Dies in Petrópolis, Brazil"}],"quotes":[],"author":"Stefan Zweig","relatedWorks":["chess"],"reading":[{"band":"9-12","kind":"library","work":"chess","url":"/works/chess/"}],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Born into a Jewish family; he did not renounce his Jewish faith and wrote often on Jewish themes.","source":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan_Zweig","sourceName":"Wikipedia","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]},{"slug":"huldrych-zwingli","name":"Huldrych Zwingli","url":"/great-lives/huldrych-zwingli/","dates":"1484–1531","born":1484,"died":1531,"era":"renaissance-early-modern","categories":["saints-reformers","theologians-church-fathers"],"knownFor":"Leader of the Reformation in Zürich, Switzerland.","bio":"Huldrych Zwingli was born in the Toggenburg valley of Switzerland, the son of a farmer who was the village headman. He became a priest and admired Erasmus. As a chaplain to Swiss mercenary troops in Italy, he saw the battle of Marignano in 1515 and turned against the mercenary trade. In 1519 he became the people's priest at the Great Minster in Zürich, where he began preaching straight through the Gospel of Matthew from the Greek text. In 1522 some of his followers broke the Lenten fast by eating sausages, and Zwingli defended them, arguing that only Scripture could bind Christians. After public debates in 1523, the Zürich city council adopted his reforms. Images were removed from churches, the Mass was replaced with a simple communion service, and monasteries were closed. At the Marburg Colloquy in 1529 he met Martin Luther but they could not agree on the Lord's Supper, which Zwingli saw as a memorial. When war broke out between Protestant and Catholic Swiss cantons, he went with Zürich's troops as chaplain and was killed at the Battle of Kappel in 1531.","keyDates":[{"date":"1519","event":"Becomes priest at the Great Minster, Zürich"},{"date":"1522","event":"Affair of the Sausages"},{"date":"1523","event":"Zürich adopts his reforms"},{"date":"1529","event":"Marburg Colloquy with Luther"},{"date":"1531","event":"Killed at Kappel"}],"quotes":[],"author":null,"relatedWorks":[],"reading":[],"majorWorks":[],"funFacts":[{"text":"He loved music and could play several instruments, including the violin, harp, flute, dulcimer and hunting horn.","source":{"title":"Huldrych Zwingli (Wikipedia)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huldrych_Zwingli"}}],"records":[],"livedPlaces":[],"faith":{"note":"Founder of the Reformation in Switzerland.","source":"https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15772a.htm","sourceName":"Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)","documented":true},"furtherReading":[],"needsVerification":[]}]}