Hall of Influence

Amorite king of Babylon (c. 1792–1750 BCE) who brought most of Mesopotamia under his rule and is known for the law stele that bears his name.

Mbzt · CC BY 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Female pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty who ruled Egypt first as regent and then as king, known for her building projects and the trading expedition to Punt.

Unknown · CC0 · Wikimedia Commons

Pharaoh of the 19th Dynasty who ruled Egypt from c. 1279 to 1213 BCE. He campaigned in the Levant, concluded a peace treaty with the Hittites after the Battle of Kadesh of which both versions survive, and commissioned monuments such as Abu Simbel and the Ramesseum.

Pbuergler · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Founder of the Achaemenid Persian Empire, which under his rule came to include Media, Lydia and Babylonia and grew into the largest empire of its time.

Mohammad Reza Domiri Ganji محمدرضا دومیری گنجی · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Wandering teacher from the north-east of the Indian subcontinent on whose teaching Buddhism is based. His dates are disputed: traditionally ca. 563–483 BCE, while many modern scholars place his death ca. 410–400 BCE.

พระมหาเทวประภาส วชิรญาณเมธี (ผู้ถ่าย-ปล่อยสัญญาอนุญาตภาพให้นำไปใช้ได้เพื่อการศึกษาโดยอยู่ภา่ยใต้ cc-by-sa-3.0) ผู้สร้างสรรค์ผลงาน/ส่งข้อมูลเก็บในคลังข้อมูลเสรีวิกิมีเดียคอมมอนส์ - เทวประภาส มากคล้าย · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Chinese thinker whose ethics of virtue, duty and family shaped East Asia for 2,500 years.

Anonymous Chinese painter of the Western Han period · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Athenian philosopher who used critical dialogue to question virtue, knowledge and justice. His thought is known chiefly through his pupils, not his own writings.

Copy of Lysippos (?) · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Greek philosopher and founder of the Academy in Athens. His dialogues examine knowledge, ethics and the organisation of society.

Marie-Lan Nguyen · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Greek philosopher who established logic, biology, ethics and politics as systematic fields of study.

After Lysippos · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Macedonian king who conquered the Persian Empire and advanced into South Asia. His campaigns spread Greek culture and also involved destruction and enslavement.

Unknown author · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Third emperor of the Maurya Empire (c. 268–232 BCE), who after the war in Kalinga pursued a policy of dhamma that he had recorded in rock and pillar inscriptions.

Photo Dharma from Sadao, Thailand · CC BY 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Greek mathematician and engineer from Syracuse who calculated areas and volumes, investigated the laws of the lever and of floating bodies, and died when the Romans took his city.

Domenico Fetti · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

First emperor of a unified China, who standardised administration, writing and measures. His authoritarian rule mobilised large numbers of forced labourers for wars and construction projects.

Unknown (18??–18??) · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Carthaginian general who crossed the Alps into Italy in the Second Punic War and inflicted a heavy defeat on Rome at Cannae, but ultimately lost the war.

Fratelli Alinari · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Roman general and statesman whose conquests and seizure of power ushered in the end of the Republic.

Ángel M. Felicísimo from Mérida, España · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Last reigning ruler of Ptolemaic Egypt. She used political and personal alliances in an effort to preserve her kingdom in the face of Rome.

Louis le Grand · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

First Roman emperor, who established the principate after the civil wars, received the honorific Augustus in 27 BCE and ruled the Roman Empire for more than forty years.

Justin Benttinen · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Jewish preacher from Galilee and central figure of Christianity. Historians place his birth around 6–4 BCE and his crucifixion around 30–33 CE; Christians believe he is the risen Son of God.

Unknown artist · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Alexandrian mathematician, astronomer and Neoplatonist philosopher. She taught a circle of pupils and was killed by a Christian mob in 415.

Jules Maurice Gaspard · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Arab religious and political leader associated with the origins of Islam. Muslims regard him as the final prophet and the Quran as God's revelation to him.

بلال الدويك · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Chinese empress and the only woman to rule China as emperor. In 690 she founded the Zhou dynasty, which interrupted the Tang dynasty until 705.

Likely to be Zhang Xuan (张萱) · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Frankish king and, from 800, emperor who brought large parts of western and central Europe under his rule. His educational and ecclesiastical reforms accompanied violent conquests and forced conversion to Christianity.

Charlemagne. Autorité émettrice de monnaie indéterminé. Atelier monétaire. Émetteur · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Scholar from Basra who worked in Cairo under the Fatimids. His Kitāb al-Manāẓir (Book of Optics) deals with light and vision and was later translated into Latin; in the West he is known as Alhazen. His birth and death years are approximate.

Adolph Boÿ, engraved by Jeremias Falck. Used as the frontispiece to Johannes Hevelius, Selenographia, 1647 · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Norse explorer from Greenland who, according to the Icelandic sagas, reached Vinland around the year 1000. The sagas partly contradict one another; the link between Leif and the Norse site of L'Anse aux Meadows is an inference.

Sculptor Daniels, John K. 1875-1978 Photo: Sharon Mollerus · CC BY 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Japanese writer and lady-in-waiting at the Heian court, author of 'The Tale of Genji' (early 11th century), often called one of the world's earliest novels. Her dates are approximate, and her personal name has not survived.

Tosa Mitsuoki (1617 - 1691) · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Persian physician and philosopher from Central Asia. His 'Canon of Medicine' was a standard work for centuries in the Islamic world and in Europe, and his philosophy influenced both Islamic and Christian thinkers.

National Library of Medicine · No restrictions · Wikimedia Commons

German Benedictine abbess who recorded visions, composed liturgical songs and the sung play Ordo Virtutum, and wrote on nature and medicine. In 2012 Pope Benedict XVI named her a Doctor of the Church.

Unknown author · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Founder of the Ayyubid dynasty and sultan of Egypt and Syria. He defeated the crusader army at Hattin in 1187, took Jerusalem and then fought the Third Crusade.

Giovio, Paolo, 1483-1552 · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Founder of the Mongol Empire, the largest contiguous land empire in history.

Unknown author · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Venetian traveller whose account of Asia strongly influenced European views. His travel book combines personal experience with accounts by others and includes disputed details.

Unknown author · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Ruler of the West African Mali Empire, known for his pilgrimage to Mecca and support for Islamic scholarship. His empire was connected to gold trade, taxation and slavery.

attributed to Abraham Cresques · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Moroccan traveller and legal scholar who described large parts of Africa and Asia. His Rihla is an important, though not everywhere independently verifiable, source on the fourteenth century.

Léon Benett · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

North African historian, jurist and thinker from Tunis. In his Muqaddimah (1377) he analyses how group solidarity (ʿasabiyyah) brings dynasties to power and how it weakens over generations.

Reda Kerbush · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Chinese admiral who led seven Ming expeditions across the Indian Ocean. The voyages combined diplomacy and trade with the exercise of military power.

Marcin Konsek · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

King of Joseon (Korea) from 1418 to 1450. During his reign the Korean alphabet Hangul was created and promulgated in 1446, and the court promoted science, agricultural knowledge and technology. No portrait from his time survives; the image shows the 2009 statue in Seoul.

Marsilar · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

French young woman who played a significant symbolic and military role during the Hundred Years' War. She said she acted on the direction of holy voices and was executed in 1431.

Unknown · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Fifteenth-century Sapa Inca to whom colonial chronicles attribute the expansion of Cusco into the empire of Tawantinsuyu; his dates and personal role are debated.

Unknown · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Genoese sailor who reached the Caribbean under the flag of Castile from 1492. His voyages accelerated lasting contact between continents and ushered in violent colonisation.

Sebastiano del Piombo · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Italian artist and investigator who combined painting with anatomy, engineering and close observation of nature. His notebooks contain both practical studies and speculative designs.

Attributed to Francesco Melzi · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Humanist from the Low Countries who combined classical scholarship with criticism of church and society. He advocated education, textual study and religious reform without a schism in the Church.

Hans Holbein the Younger · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Founder of Sikhism and first of the ten gurus of the Sikhs. His hymns appear in the Guru Granth Sahib; many details of his life story come from later, hagiographic sources (janamsakhis).

Amritpal Singh Mann . Painted by Jaimal Singh Naqqash (1860–1916), Mehtab Singh Naqqash (1871–1940), and Hukum Singh. · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Portuguese navigator who made the first sea voyage from Europe to India in 1497–1499; his second expedition (1502–1503) involved violence against shipping and coastal cities.

Sailko · CC BY 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Astronomer and canon from Royal Prussia who set out in De revolutionibus (1543) a model in which the Earth and the other planets orbit the Sun.

Unknown author · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Florentine sculptor, painter, architect and poet of the High Renaissance, known for the Pietà, the David and the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel.

Attributed to Daniele da Volterra · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Portuguese navigator who began, for the Spanish crown, the expedition that became the first circumnavigation of the Earth. He died in the Philippines; Juan Sebastián Elcano completed the voyage with the survivors.

Unknown author · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

German theologian whose criticism of indulgences became a catalyst for the Reformation. His influential religious reforms coexisted with fierce polemic, including harmful anti-Jewish writings.

Lucas Cranach the Elder · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Tenth Ottoman sultan (reigned 1520–1566). Under his rule Belgrade, Rhodes and much of Hungary were conquered and the kanun legislation was systematised; in Europe he is called 'the Magnificent', in Turkish 'Kanuni' (the Lawgiver).

Circle of Titian · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Nobleman of the House of Nassau, Prince of Orange and leader of the Dutch Revolt against King Philip II of Spain. As stadholder and councillor of the king he turned against the persecution of heretics and against centralisation; from 1568 he led the armed resistance and from 1572 the government of Holland and Zeeland. He strove for the unity of the Netherlands and for religious peace between Catholics and Protestants and was assassinated in Delft in 1584.

Adriaen Thomasz. Key · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Mughal emperor from 1556 to 1605 who extended the empire over most of northern and central India. He reformed administration and taxation, brought Hindu Rajput rulers into his government and held religious debates at his court.

Govardhan / Mir Ali Heravi · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Korean admiral who repeatedly defeated Japanese invasion fleets with the Joseon navy during the Imjin War (1592–1598). He was killed in the naval battle of Noryang.

Unknown author · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Italian natural philosopher who combined telescopic observations with the study of motion. His defence of heliocentrism led to his condemnation by the Roman Inquisition.

Justus Sustermans · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

English playwright, poet and actor known for tragedies, comedies and history plays. His works are performed and reinterpreted around the world.

Attributed to John Taylor · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

German astronomer and mathematician who derived the laws of planetary motion from Tycho Brahe's observations, including elliptical planetary orbits.

August Köhler [1] · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Queen of Ndongo and Matamba, in present-day Angola, who for decades resisted Portuguese expansion through diplomacy and war. She allied herself with the Dutch West India Company, among others; her state was itself involved in the slave trade. The portrait is a 19th-century depiction.

Achille Devéria · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

French philosopher, mathematician and natural philosopher, known for 'I think, therefore I am', the separation of mind and body, and analytic geometry.

After Frans Hals · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Dutch VOC navigator who, in 1642, became the first documented European to reach Tasmania and New Zealand. These lands had long been inhabited by Indigenous communities.

Unknown author · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Dutch painter, printmaker and draughtsman known for his use of light and penetrating portraits. His work includes biblical scenes, group portraits and numerous self-portraits.

Rembrandt · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

English physicist and mathematician who formulated classical mechanics and the law of universal gravitation.

Godfrey Kneller · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Mexican poet, playwright and nun from New Spain. She is regarded as one of the most important writers of the Spanish-language Baroque and defended women's right to study in her 'Respuesta a Sor Filotea' (1691). Her year of birth is disputed: 1648 or 1651.

Miguel Cabrera · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

German composer and organist of the late Baroque, known for his counterpoint and for his cantatas, Passions and keyboard music. His work gained wide recognition only in the nineteenth century.

Elias Gottlob Haussmann · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

British naval officer and cartographer who charted large parts of the Pacific on three voyages (1768–1779); his voyages preceded British colonisation of inhabited territories.

Nathaniel Dance-Holland · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Leader of the Haitian Revolution, which grew from a slave uprising into a struggle against slavery and colonial rule. He became governor-general of Saint-Domingue and died in French captivity.

Alexandre-François-Louis, comte de Girardin · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Salzburg composer who wrote operas, symphonies, chamber music and concertos. His works are central to the European classical repertoire.

Johann Nepomuk della Croce · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Hawaiian ruler who between 1782 and 1810 united the Hawaiian Islands into a single kingdom through war and negotiation. He made use of Western weapons and advisers but upheld the traditional kapu system. His year of birth is approximate.

Louis Choris · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Japanese ukiyo-e artist from Edo, known for the series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji (including 'The Great Wave off Kanagawa') and the sketchbooks of the Hokusai Manga.

missing name · CC0 · Wikimedia Commons

French emperor and general who conquered much of Europe and shaped modern civil law.

Jacques-Louis David · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

German naturalist and explorer who travelled through Spanish America in 1799–1804 and, through measurement, laid the foundations of plant geography. In his Kosmos he described nature as a coherent whole.

Joseph Karl Stieler · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

German composer and pianist whose work marks the transition from Classical to Romantic music. From his late twenties he grew increasingly deaf and kept composing.

Joseph Karl Stieler · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Venezuelan officer and statesman who played a key role in the wars of independence of Spanish South America and became president of Gran Colombia. That union broke apart in 1830.

José Gil de Castro · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Founder of the Zulu Kingdom (king from about 1816). The picture of him rests on oral tradition and colonial-era accounts of varying reliability, and historians judge his role in the 'mfecane' differently.

James King · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

English fossil collector and expert who uncovered important Jurassic marine reptiles. Her finds contributed to new understanding of extinct animals and the history of the Earth.

Credited to 'Mr. Grey' in Crispin Tickell's book 'Mary Anning of Lyme Regis' (1996) · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

British naturalist who developed the theory of evolution by natural selection. His theory explained common descent and the adaptation of organisms without a predetermined goal.

Charles_Darwin_seated.jpg : Henry Maull (1829–1914) and John Fox (1832–1907) (Maull & Fox) [ 3 ] derivative work: Bea o · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Sixteenth president of the United States (1861–1865), who led the country through the Civil War. The self-taught son of a pioneer family in Kentucky won the election of 1860 on a platform opposing the expansion of slavery, after which eleven southern states seceded. With the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 and the Thirteenth Amendment he made the abolition of slavery a war aim. A few days after the surrender of the main southern army he was shot dead in Washington.

Alexander Gardner · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

British mathematician who wrote extensive notes on Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine. She recognised that such a machine could process more than numbers alone.

Antoine Claudet · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Prussian statesman who, as minister president from 1862, brought about German unification under Prussian leadership through three wars and was the first chancellor of the German Empire from 1871 to 1890. He introduced the world's first statutory social insurance, but fought Catholics and Social Democrats with emergency laws. With a system of alliances he kept the peace between the European great powers after 1871.

Jacques Pilartz · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

German philosopher, economist and journalist who wrote the 'Communist Manifesto' (1848) with Friedrich Engels and analysed capitalism in 'Das Kapital'. His ideas influenced labour movements and socialist parties, and later communist states.

John Jabez Edwin Mayall · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

British nurse, statistician and reformer of health care. During the Crimean War she led the nursing at the British military hospital at Scutari from 1854, where she became known as 'the Lady with the Lamp'. After the war she showed with figures and innovative diagrams that most soldiers had died of preventable diseases. With her nursing school in London (1860) she laid the foundation for nursing as a trained profession.

Henry Hering (1814-1893) · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

French chemist and microbiologist whose research on fermentation, spontaneous generation and vaccines supported the germ theory of disease. The Institut Pasteur in Paris bears his name.

Paul Nadar · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

American abolitionist who escaped from slavery in 1849 and then helped dozens of others flee via the Underground Railroad. In the Civil War she served as a scout and spy for the Union army and in 1863 helped lead the Combahee River Raid. Her year of birth is approximate.

Powelson, Benjamin F. 1823 - 1885 · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Emperor of Ethiopia from 1889 to 1913. He greatly expanded the empire to the south and west, founded Addis Ababa and in 1896 defeated an Italian invasion army at Adwa, preserving Ethiopia's independence. His southern conquests remain contested in Ethiopia.

Unknown author · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Dutch painter and draughtsman who made over two thousand artworks in about ten years. Few of them were sold during his lifetime; his letters to his brother Theo offer insight into his work.

Vincent van Gogh · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Serbian-American engineer and inventor whose polyphase induction motor, licensed by Westinghouse in 1888, contributed to the rise of alternating-current power systems. His later plans for wireless power transmission were never realised. In the 1930s he advocated eugenics, and antisemitic remarks by him are on record, including in an 1898 letter.

Napoleon Sarony · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Bengali poet, writer, composer and painter; in 1913 the first non-European winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature. He founded the school at Santiniketan.

Georges Chevalier · CC BY 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Filipino writer, physician and reformer whose novels 'Noli me tángere' (1887) and 'El filibusterismo' (1891) exposed abuses under Spanish colonial rule. His execution in 1896 made him the national hero of the Philippines.

unknown author · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

American industrialist and founder of the Ford Motor Company (1903). With the Model T (1908), the moving assembly line (1913) and the five-dollar day (1914) he made the car affordable for broad sections of the population. In the 1920s he spread antisemitic ideas through his newspaper The Dearborn Independent and the compilation 'The International Jew'.

Fred Hartsook · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Researched radioactivity and was the first person to receive Nobel Prizes in two sciences.

Henri Manuel · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Indian independence leader who organised mass non-violent resistance to British colonial rule. His political and moral influence was substantial, while aspects of his social views remain contested.

Elliott & Fry · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Norwegian polar explorer who led the first successful passage through the Northwest Passage. In December 1911, his team became the first documented expedition to reach the geographic South Pole.

Anonymous Unknown author · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

British prime minister who led resistance to Nazi Germany; his colonial policies remain contested.

Unknown · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Dictator of the Soviet Union whose terror, purges and famines caused millions of deaths.

Franklin D. Roosevelt Library Public Domain Photographs · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Physicist who redefined space, time and gravity through the theory of relativity. He also made fundamental contributions to quantum physics and statistical mechanics.

Oren Jack Turner · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Mexican peasant leader and one of the central figures of the Mexican Revolution. From the sugar state of Morelos he led from 1911 the Liberation Army of the South, which demanded the return of village lands taken by the great haciendas. His Plan of Ayala (1911) became the programme of the agrarian revolution. He refused to submit to successive governments in Mexico City and was killed in an ambush in 1919.

Agustín Casasola · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Spanish painter, sculptor and printmaker who worked for most of his life in France and is regarded as the most influential visual artist of the twentieth century. With Georges Braque he developed Cubism from 1908. His painting 'Guernica' (1937), made after the bombing of the Basque town in the Spanish Civil War, became one of the best-known indictments of war. He left tens of thousands of works.

Argentina . Revista Vea y Lea · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

German field marshal regarded as one of the ablest operational commanders of the Second World War. He devised the plan for the breakthrough in the Ardennes in 1940, captured Sevastopol in 1942 and retook Kharkov in March 1943. Under his command the 11th Army in the Crimea cooperated with the killing squads of Einsatzgruppe D; a British military court convicted him of war crimes in 1949. His memoirs contributed greatly to the myth of a 'clean' Wehrmacht.

Unknown. · CC BY-SA 3.0 de · Wikimedia Commons

Dictator of Nazi Germany, responsible for the Second World War in Europe and the Holocaust.

Heinrich Hoffmann · CC BY-SA 3.0 de · Wikimedia Commons

Vietnamese revolutionary and statesman, founder of the Communist Party of Vietnam (1930) and of the Viet Minh (1941). After thirty years abroad he proclaimed the independence of Vietnam in Hanoi on 2 September 1945 and led the struggle against French colonial rule, which was decided at Dien Bien Phu in 1954. As president of North Vietnam he was, until his death in 1969, the symbol of the struggle for reunification; under his rule land reform and political repression cost thousands of people their lives.

Unknown author · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

German fighter pilot of the First World War, known as the Red Baron. With 80 officially confirmed air victories he was the most successful pilot of that war. He led Jasta 11 and then Jagdgeschwader I, the 'flying circus', and was killed over the Somme on 21 April 1918.

C. J. von Dühren · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Spanish general who joined the military rising against the Second Republic in July 1936, led the Nationalists to victory in the Spanish Civil War and ruled Spain as dictator from 1939 until his death in 1975. During and after the war his regime, according to historians, had 130,000 to 150,000 people executed or murdered. In the Second World War Spain officially stayed out of the fighting but sent the Blue Division to the Eastern Front.

Unknown author · CC0 · Wikimedia Commons

Spanish Communist politician and orator, known as 'La Pasionaria'. The miner's daughter from Biscay became a member of parliament in 1936 and, with the slogan '¡No pasarán!', grew into the voice of Republican resistance in the Civil War. After the defeat she lived in exile for 38 years, mostly in the Soviet Union, where she led the Communist Party of Spain and remained loyal to Stalin's line; in 1977 she returned and was elected to parliament again.

Nemo · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Soviet marshal who defended Moscow, helped encircle German forces at Stalingrad and captured Berlin.

не указан · CC BY 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Soviet marshal of Polish descent and one of the most important commanders on the Eastern Front. He was arrested and tortured in 1937 during the Great Purge, released in 1940 and then commanded at Moscow, Stalingrad, Kursk and in Operation Bagration. In 1945 he commanded the victory parade in Moscow; from 1949 to 1956 he was, on Stalin's orders, Minister of Defence of Poland.

Unknown author · CC BY 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

American jazz trumpeter and singer from New Orleans whose solos and scat singing changed the character of jazz in the 1920s. He became an internationally known entertainer; his stage persona is a subject of debate.

Harry Warnecke / Gus Schoenbaechler · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

British writer and journalist, born Eric Arthur Blair in British India. After five years as a colonial police officer in Burma he wrote about poverty, imperialism and politics. In 1937 he fought in the Spanish Civil War with a militia of the POUM, was seriously wounded and had to flee from Communist persecution. That experience led to 'Homage to Catalonia' and to his two most famous books, 'Animal Farm' (1945) and 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' (1949).

Branch of the National Union of Journalists (BNUJ). · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Finnish sniper in the Winter War (1939–1940) against the Soviet Union, known by the nickname 'White Death'. He is regarded as the sniper with the most recorded kills in a major war, although the counts differ: 259 confirmed rifle kills according to an army chaplain's diary, and about 500 according to his own memoir.

Unknown author · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Mexican painter who depicted physical pain, identity and social relations. Her self-portraits connect personal experience with Mexican visual traditions.

Guillermo Kahlo · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

American marine biologist and writer whose book 'Silent Spring' (1962) put the effects of pesticides such as DDT on the public agenda and contributed to the environmental movement and the creation of the US EPA.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

French writer and existentialist thinker whose 'The Second Sex' (1949) became a foundational text of modern feminism. She lived for decades in a non-exclusive relationship with Jean-Paul Sartre and was politically active, including on Algeria and abortion.

Moshe Milner · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Ghanaian politician and Pan-Africanist who led the Gold Coast to independence in 1957 and became the first prime minister and later president of Ghana. His rule included large-scale development plans, but also a one-party state and detention without trial; in 1966 he was removed by a coup.

Abbie Rowe · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

British mathematician and logician who laid a foundation for theoretical computer science with the Turing machine (1936) and helped break Enigma messages at Bletchley Park during the Second World War. In 1952 he was convicted for homosexual acts.

Elliott & Fry · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

German Waffen-SS tank commander in the Second World War. He is known above all for the ambush at Villers-Bocage on 13 June 1944, in which much of a British vanguard was destroyed in a short time. He was killed in Normandy on 8 August 1944; his reputation was strongly shaped by Nazi propaganda and later glorifying literature.

File:Bundesarchiv Bild 101I-299-1802-09, Michael Wittmann.jpg : Scheck derivative work: Georgfotoart · CC BY-SA 3.0 de · Wikimedia Commons

Anti-apartheid activist who became South Africa's first democratically elected president after 27 years in prison.

Kingkongphoto & www.celebrity-photos.com from Laurel · CC BY-SA 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons

New Zealand mountaineer and explorer who, with Tenzing Norgay, made the first confirmed ascent of Mount Everest on 29 May 1953. Later he worked for Sherpa communities in Nepal.

Photographer unidentified. Retouched by TimofKingsland . · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

British chemist and X-ray crystallographer whose X-ray images of DNA, including 'Photo 51', contributed to the discovery of the double helix. She then studied the structure of viruses such as the tobacco mosaic virus.

MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

German Wehrmacht gunner and tank commander in the Second World War. Post-war popular literature often calls him the most successful 'tank ace', crediting him with up to 168 destroyed tanks, but his former superior stated that such numbers cannot be verified. He was killed in Moravia on 28 April 1945.

dqd · CC0 · Wikimedia Commons

American Baptist minister and civil rights leader who organised non-violent resistance to racial segregation. He later explicitly linked equal civil rights to economic justice and criticism of war.

Yoichi Okamoto · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

American test pilot and astronaut who became the first person to walk on the Moon in July 1969. Apollo 11 resulted from a large, collective scientific and engineering effort.

Unknown author · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

British primatologist and conservationist known for long-term field research on chimpanzees in Gombe. She campaigned internationally for animal welfare, habitats and local communities.

U.S. Department of State from United States · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

American singer and actor who from 1954 brought together rhythm and blues, country and gospel and so took rock and roll to a mass audience. He is called the 'King of Rock and Roll' and is one of the best-selling solo artists in history; estimates of his worldwide sales vary widely.

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Inc. Reproduction Number: LC-USZ6-2067 Location: NYWTS -- BIOG · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Kenyan biologist and activist who founded the Green Belt Movement in 1977, a movement that linked tree planting to women's rights and democracy. In 2004 she became the first African woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

Kingkongphoto & www.celebrity-photos.com from Laurel Maryland, USA · CC BY-SA 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons

American singer, songwriter and dancer who broke through as a child with the Jackson 5 and in the 1980s made 'Thriller', the best-selling album of all time. He is called the 'King of Pop' and changed the music video, stage performance and the place of black artists in pop music. He was twice accused of child abuse; in 2005 a jury acquitted him on all counts.

Matthew Rolston; Distributed by Epic Records · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Australian wildlife keeper and television presenter who introduced a large audience to reptiles and conservation. His direct handling of wild animals was also discussed critically.

Richard Giles aka rich 115 · CC BY 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons

South African-born Canadian-American entrepreneur, founder of the space company SpaceX (2002) and chief executive of Tesla, which turned electric cars into a mass product. In 2022 he bought Twitter, which he renamed X, and in 2025 he led President Trump's cost-cutting project DOGE for several months. His statements and political role make him a highly polarising figure.

Gage Skidmore · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons