Alfred Russel Wallace was a British naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist, and biologist. He is best known for independently conceiving the theory of evolution through natural selection; his paper on the subject was jointly publi...

Gustav Robert Kirchhoff was a German physicist who contributed to the fundamental understanding of electrical circuits, spectroscopy, and the emission of black-body radiation by heated objects. He coined the term black-body radiation in...

Anton Bruckner was an Austrian composer. Bruckner's reputation is based on his symphonies, masses, and motets. The symphonies are often considered emblematic of the final stage of Austro-German Romanticism, due to their rich harmonic langua...

John Kerr was a Scottish physicist and a pioneer in the field of electro-optics. He is best known for the discovery of what is now called the Kerr effect. Kerr's most important experimental work was the discovery of double refraction in...

The Right Honourable William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin, GCVO, OM, PC, PRS was a Scottish-Irish mathematical physicist and engineer, an outstanding leader in the physical sciences of the 19th century. Kelvin is known especially for his work...

Jozef Israëls was a Dutch painter, and "the most respected Dutch artist of the second half of the nineteenth century". He began with historical and dramatic subjects in the romantic style of the day. By chance, after an illness, he went to...

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...