360People who shaped history
Scientists, explorers, inventors and leaders, each in 60 words.
- Physicist and mathematician · 1643–1727
Isaac Newton
Isaac Newton was an English scientist who explained gravity and the laws of motion. His book Principia, published in 1687, showed that the same force that makes an apple fall keeps the Moon in orbit. He also split white light into colours with a prism, built the first practical reflecting telescope and helped invent calculus.
- Scientist · 1791–1867
Michael Faraday
Michael Faraday was an English scientist, the son of a blacksmith, who left school at 13. In 1831 he discovered electromagnetic induction, the principle behind every electric generator and transformer, and built the first generator. He also made the first electric motor, and his popular Christmas Lectures for young people at the Royal Institution still continue today.
- Naturalist · 1809–1882
Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin was an English naturalist whose theory of evolution by natural selection explained how living things change over generations. His ideas grew from a five-year voyage around the world on HMS Beagle, including a visit to the Galápagos Islands. He published On the Origin of Species in 1859. It became the foundation of modern biology.
- Nurse and statistician · 1820–1910
Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale was a British nurse who founded modern nursing. In military hospitals during the Crimean War in the 1850s, she cut deaths by insisting on cleanliness, fresh air and good food, and became known as 'the Lady with the Lamp'. She used pioneering charts to persuade officials, and founded a nursing school in London in 1860.
- Physicist and chemist · 1867–1934
Marie Curie
Marie Curie was a Polish-born French scientist who pioneered the study of radioactivity, a word she coined. With her husband Pierre, she discovered polonium and radium in 1898. She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, in 1903, and remains the only person to win Nobel Prizes in two different sciences, physics and chemistry.
- Inventor · 1847–1931
Thomas Edison
Thomas Edison was an American inventor and businessman who held more than 1,000 patents. He invented the phonograph, the first machine to record and play back sound, developed a practical electric light bulb and built early power stations. His laboratory at Menlo Park, New Jersey, was one of the first research labs devoted to invention.
- Aviation pioneers · 1867–1912 and 1871–1948
Wilbur and Orville Wright
Wilbur and Orville Wright were American brothers who ran a bicycle shop in Dayton, Ohio, and built the first successful powered aeroplane. On 17 December 1903, at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, Orville flew the Wright Flyer for 12 seconds. Their key breakthrough was a way to control an aircraft in the air, still used in principle today.
- Physicist · 1879–1955
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein was a German-born physicist whose theories of relativity changed our understanding of space, time and gravity. In 1905, while working in a patent office, he published four landmark papers, including the idea behind E = mc². His general relativity of 1915 explained gravity as curved space-time. He won the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics.
- Founder of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia · 1875–1953
King Abdulaziz Al Saud
King Abdulaziz bin Abdulrahman Al Saud was the founder of the modern Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. In 1902 he recovered Riyadh, and over three decades he unified the regions of the Arabian Peninsula, proclaiming the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia on 23 September 1932. Under his reign, oil was discovered and the young nation began to develop.
- Doctor and scientist · 1881–1955
Alexander Fleming
Alexander Fleming was a Scottish doctor and scientist who discovered penicillin, the first antibiotic, in 1928. Returning to his London laboratory after a holiday, he noticed that a mould had killed the bacteria growing around it. Mass-produced in the 1940s by a team in Oxford, penicillin has saved millions of lives. He shared the 1945 Nobel Prize.
- Cosmonaut · 1934–1968
Yuri Gagarin
Yuri Gagarin was a Soviet pilot who became the first human in space. On 12 April 1961, he orbited the Earth once in the Vostok 1 spacecraft, in a flight of 108 minutes. The son of a carpenter, he became a worldwide celebrity. The date of his flight is celebrated every year as the International Day of Human Space Flight.
- Astronaut · 1930–2012
Neil Armstrong
Neil Armstrong was an American astronaut and the first person to walk on the Moon. On 20 July 1969, as commander of Apollo 11, he stepped onto the lunar surface and said: 'That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.' A former test pilot and engineer, he later taught aerospace engineering and avoided fame.
- Inventor of the World Wide Web · born 1955
Tim Berners-Lee
Tim Berners-Lee is a British computer scientist who invented the World Wide Web. Working at CERN near Geneva, he proposed it in March 1989 and created the first web browser, web server and website by the end of 1990. He and CERN made the web free for everyone to use, which helped it grow to more than a billion websites.
- Cosmonaut · born 1937
Valentina Tereshkova
Valentina Tereshkova is a Soviet cosmonaut who became the first woman in space. On 16 June 1963, aged 26, she launched aboard Vostok 6 and orbited the Earth 48 times in almost three days. A former textile worker and amateur parachutist, she remains the only woman to have flown a space mission alone.
- Astronaut, first Arab in space · born 1956
HRH Prince Sultan bin Salman bin Abdulaziz
HRH Prince Sultan bin Salman bin Abdulaziz became the first Arab, first Muslim and first member of a royal family to travel into space. In June 1985 he flew aboard the space shuttle Discovery as a payload specialist, helping to deploy the Arabsat satellite. He later led Saudi Arabia's tourism and heritage authority and the Saudi Space Commission.