Alain Aspect is a French physicist noted for his experimental work on quantum entanglement. In the early 1980s, while working on his PhD thesis from the lesser academic rank of lecturer, he performed the elusive "Bell test experiments" that...

Johan Cruijff was a Dutch professional football player and coach. As a player he won the Ballon d'Or three times, in 1971, 1973 and 1974. Cruyff was one of the most famous exponents of the football philosophy known as Total Football explore...

David Robert Jones, known professionally as David Bowie, was an English singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, record producer, arranger, painter, and actor. Bowie was a figure in popular music for over four decades, and was known as an...

Over the past twenty years, Smith has written more than fifty books, including specialist academic titles, short story collections, and a number of immensely popular children's books. In 1998, McCall Smith's detective novel, The No. 1 Ladie...

George Orwell's prophetic, nightmarish vision of "Negative Utopia" is timelier than ever-and its warnings more powerful. "It is probable that no other work of this generation has made us desire freedom more earnestly or loathe tyranny wi...

Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber is a highly successful English composer of musical theatre. He was the most popular theatre composer of the late 20th century and is arguably the most popular theatre composer of all time, with multiple showpieces th...

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is a declaration adopted by the United Nations General Assembly (10 December 1948 at Palais de Chaillot, Paris). The Guinness Book of Records describes the UDHR as the "Most Translated Docume...

Albert Arnold "Al" Gore, Jr. is the former 45th Vice President of the United States who served from 1993 to 2001 under President Bill Clinton. He is currently an author, businessperson, and American environmental activist who starred in the...

Philippe Starck recalls spending his childhood underneath his father's drawing boards; hours spent sawing, cutting, gluing, sanding, dismantling bikes, motor cycles and other objects. Endless hours, a whole lifetime spent taking apart and p...

Simone de Beauvoir's "The Second Sex" was one of the most influential books of the twentieth century, and remains the foundation of the feminist movement. I have read Madame de Beauvoir and the complete uncensoured version of this brill...

The European Union (EU) is a family of democratic European countries, committed to working together for peace and prosperity. It is not a State intended to replace existing states, but it is more than any other international organisation. T...

Terry Tai-Ming Gou, sometimes written as Terry Guo, is a Taiwanese tycoon who leads Hon Hai Precision, a company that manufactures electronics on contract for other companies. It is now the largest such electronics manufacturing services co...

Steve Wozniak, known as Woz, is an American inventor, computer engineer and programmer who co-founded Apple Computer (now Apple Inc.) with Steve Jobs and Ronald Wayne. Wozniak single-handedly invented both the Apple I and Apple II computers...

Anatoly Yevgenyevich Karpov is a Russian chess grandmaster and former World Champion. He was the official world champion from 1975 to 1985 when he was defeated by Garry Kasparov. He played three matches against Kasparov for the title from 1...

Zhang Yimou is an internationally acclaimed Chinese filmmaker and cinematographer. He made his directorial debut in 1987 with the film Red Sorghum. One of Zhang's recurrent themes is a celebration of the resilience, even the stubbornness, o...