Henry Walter Bates was an English naturalist and explorer who gave the first scientific account of mimicry in animals. He was most famous for his expedition to the rainforests of the Amazon with Alfred Russel Wallace, starting in 1848. Wall...

Jean-Martin Charcot was a French neurologist and professor of anatomical pathology. He is known as "the founder of modern neurology" and is "associated with at least 15 medical eponyms", including Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease and amyotrophic...

Thomas Henry Huxley was one of the first adherents to Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection, and did more than anyone else to advance its acceptance among scientists and the public alike. As is evident from the letter quoted abo...

Johann Strauss II (the Younger), was an Austrian composer known especially for his waltzes, such as The Blue Danube. Son of the composer Johann Strauss I, and brother to the composers Josef Strauss and Eduard Strauss, Johann II is the most...

Paul Kruger was instrumental in negotiations with the British, which later led to the restoration of Transvaal as an independent state under British rule. In 1882, the 57 year old Paul Kruger was elected president of Transvaal. He l...

One hundred and fifty years ago [Summer 1826] Joseph Nicéphore Niépce succeeded in obtaining a camera picture on a polished pewter plate, sensitized with bitumen of Judea. This material has the unusual property of hardening in light (not bl...

Bernhard Riemann was a German mathematician who made contributions to analysis, number theory, and differential geometry. In the field of real analysis, he is mostly known for the first rigorous formulation of the integral, the Riemann inte...

Spotted Elk was the name of a chief of the Miniconjou Lakota Sioux. He was a son of chief One Horn (Miniconjou) and became a chief upon the death of his father. He was a highly renowned chief with skills in war and negotiations. He became k...

Hormuzd Rassam was a native Assyrian Assyriologist, British diplomat and traveller who made a number of important discoveries, including the clay tablets that contained the Epic of Gilgamesh, the world's oldest literature. In addition, he f...

John Hanning Speke was an officer in the British Indian Army who made three exploratory expeditions to Africa and who is most associated with the search for the source of the Nile. In 1844 he was commissioned into the British army and p...

Charles-Theodore-Henri De Coster was a Belgian novelist whose efforts laid the basis for a native Belgian literature. His masterpiece was The Legend of Thyl Ulenspiegel and Lamme Goedzak (1867), a 16th-century romance, in which Belgian patr...

James Augustus Grant was a Scottish explorer of eastern equatorial Africa. In 1846 he joined the Indian army. He saw active service in the Sikh War (1848—49), served throughout the Indian Mutiny of 1857, and was wounded in the operations fo...

Pierre Eugène Marcellin Berthelot was a French chemist and politician noted for the Thomsen-Berthelot principle of thermochemistry. He synthesized many organic compounds from inorganic substances and disproved the theory of vitalism[citatio...

Lakshmibai, the Rani of Jhansi was the queen of the Maratha-ruled princely state of Jhansi, situated in the north-central part of India. She was one of the leading figures of the Indian Rebellion of 1857 and for Indian nationalists a symbol...

Saigo Takamori was one of the most influential samurai in Japanese history, living during the late Edo Period and early Meiji Era. He has been dubbed the last true samurai. He was born Saigo Kokichi, and received the given name Takamori in...