the people

I love reading and learning. One of the ways I enjoy learning is by reading about people. I find that reading a biography of an individual can be instrumental in understanding not only how they ticked but also how the entire culture or society ticked. This is a list of individuals I have or would like to read about. Over time the list will expand – and perhaps contract. I am indebted to Basic Famous People for providing lists from which I created my first lists.

Notes:

• I do not always highlight the most important aspects of an individual’s life, but rather the most interesting. For example, an individuals involvement in spiritism, immorality, politics, or etc. may provide significant insight into the thoughts of the time and it is this I am as interested in as the actual biography of the individual. Biography is a method for seeing into the soul of a time, not just of a person.
• I have begun numbering by my own subjective and, admittedly biased, scoring mechanism the importance of various biographies. I hate to do so, but the list is growing so long that I must somehow delineate those individuals whose biographies I consider of primary importance against those which, while valuable, may be of secondary importance. 1 indicates highest importance, 10 indicates lowest. Please note that this is a very cursory ordering system – perhaps it will advance with time, but there are so many people that it is impossible for me to consider how they relate to one another…I am just attempting to provide some very overarching sense of what biographies one might want to tackle first and which later. Please let me know if you believe I have “under” or “over” ranked someone and why and I will make adjustments as I believe appropriate.

Biographies:

• Abigail Adams.
• John Adams.
• Douglas Adams.
• Samuel Adams.
• Louisa May Alcott.
• Hans Christian Andersen.
• Anselm of Canterbury.
• Marcus Aurelius.
• Thomas Aquinas.
• Francis Asbury.
• Isaac Asimov.
• Charles Babbage.
• Bach.
• Francis Bacon.
• Lucille Ball.
• Hosea Ballou.
• Honore de Balzac.
• Karl Barth (4).
• Henry Ward Beecher (8) – A famous preacher of the 19th century who attracted massive crowds to his church in NYC, he was an advocate for abolitionism and woman’s suffrage. He was accused of having an affair, did not believe in a literal hell, and embraced evolutionary theory while also being a steadfast proponent of God’s boundless love. He helped raise money to send rifles to Kansas to assist abolitionists in holding the state by force.
• Ludwig van Beethoven (4) – One of the most famous composers of history. When he began to lose his hearing he was tempted to commit suicide, he may have been bipolar.
• Alexander Graham Bell (3) – Invented the telephone and did significant research in numerous other areas including therapy for the deaf, aeronautics, and so on. He also studied and partook in discussions regarding eugenics – this at a time when forced sterilization was being proposed (and sometimes approved) in legislation.
• David Berkowitz.
• Tim Berners-Lee (4).
• Otto von Bismarck.
• William Blake.
• Humphrey Bogart.
• Niels Bohr.
• Napoleon Bonaparte.
• Dietrich Bonhoeffer (4) – A Lutheran pastor who resigned a prestigious teaching post to teach in a small illegal seminary during the days of Hitler, wrote the beloved books The Cost of Discipleship and Life Together. He worked with elements of German Army Intelligence to assassinate Hitler. The attempts were unsuccessful and eventually Bonhoeffer was imprisoned and then executed.
• Jack the Ripper (8).
• William Booth (7).
• Ray Bradbury.
• Brahms.
• Werner von Braun.
• John Brown (6) – Best known for his raid upon Harper’s Ferry Arsenal in an attempt to foment a slave uprising, he was considered a murderer by the South and a hero by the North. He fathered twenty children, several of whom where mentally ill and seems to have been an unstable person himself. His actions would help set the stage for the American Civil War.
• John Bunyan (4).
• Edmund Burke.
• Aaron Burr (6).
• Edgar Rice Burroughs.
• Richard E. Byrd.
• Lord Byron.
• John Calvin (4).
• Al Capone (6).
• Dale Carnegie.
• Lewis Carroll (6).
• George Washington Carver (4).
• Johnny Cash (7).
• Fidel Castro (5).
• Joseph Stalin (3).
• Neville Chamberlain (6).
• Charlie Chaplin.
• Charlemagne.
• Geoffrey Chaucer.
• Hugo Chavez.
• G.K. Chesterton.
• Noam Chomsky.
• Agatha Christie.
• John Chrysostom.
• Winston Churchill.
• Arthur C. Clarke.
• Carl vol Clausewitz.
• Bill Clinton.
• Christopher Columbus.
• Commodus.
• Calvin Coolidge.
• Nicholaus Copernicus.
• Jacques Cousteau.
• William Cowper (9).
• Davy Crockett (9).
• Oliver Cromwell (7).
• Walter Cronkite (9).
• Fanny Crosby (7).
• Aleister Crowley (8).
• Marie Curie (5).
• Doug Cutting (8) – An open source advocate and developer he is instrumental in the creation and maintenance of various high importance open source projects. His work includes Lucene, Nutch, and Hadoop.
• Salvador Dali.
• Matt Damon (7) – Co-wrote Good Willing Hunting and also starred in the film, which was a critical and popular success. Has since gone on to star in a number of successful films. Is involved in philanthropy through several organizations and has a wife and four children.
• Dante.
• Charles Darwin.
• Jefferson Davis.
• John Dewey.
• Philip K. Dick.
• Charles Dickens.
• Emily Dickinson.
• John Dillinger.
• Walt Disney.
• Benjamin Disraeli.
• James Dobson.
• Fyodor Dostoevsky.
• Frederick Douglass (5) – African-American abolitionist who escaped from slavery and became one of the intellectual leaders of the abolitionist movement. He was a minister in the Episcopal church, an advocate for temperance and woman’s suffrage, had an affair, and after his first wife died married a white woman – at a time when this was highly unusual.
• Arthur Conan Doyle (7).
• Peter Drucker (8).
• W. E. B. Du Bois (4).
• Henry van Dyke (10) – Wrote the hymn “Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee”, was a professor at Princeton, and was minister to Luxembourg and the Netherlands under Woodrow Wilson.
• Amelia Earhart.
• Wyatt Earp (10).
• Meister Eckhart.
• Mary Baker Eddy (6).
• Thomas Edison (3).
• Jonathan Edwards (4).
• Albert Einstein (2).
• T.S. Eliot (7).
• Ralph Waldo Emerson.
• Friedrich Engels.
• Erasmus.
• Jerry Falwell.
• Richard Feynman.
• Charles Grandison Finney.
• Henry Ford.
• Viktor Frankl.
• Benjamin Franklin.
• Sigmund Freud.
• Erich Fromm.
• John Wayne Gacy (10).
• Galileo Galilei.
• Vasco da Gama.
• Mahatma Gandhi (1).
• James A. Garfield.
• Bill Gates (4).
• Carl Friedrich Gauss.
• Theodore Seuss Geisel.
• Murray Gell-Mann.
• Geronimo.
• Kahlil Gibran.
• Allen Ginsberg.
• Kurt Godel.
• Godric of Finchale.
• Joseph Goebbels.
• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
• Mikhail Gorbachev.
• John Gotti.
• Billy Graham.
• Ulysses S. Grant.
• Keith Green.
• Nathanael Greene.
• Leslie Groves.
• Che Guevara.
• Johannes Gutenberg.
• Alexander Hamilton.
• Dag Hammerskjold.
• John Hancock
• George Frideric Handel.
• Warren G. Harding.
• Benjamin Harrison.
• William Henry Harrison.
• Franz Joseph Haydn – Famous musical composer.
• Rutherford B. Hayes.
• Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.
• Martin Heidegger.
• Werner Heisenberg.
• Hermann von Helmhultz.
• Ernest Hemingway.
• Jimi Hendrix.
• Matthew Henry (9).
• Patrick Henry (7).
• Jim Henson (8).
• Rudolf Hess.
• Edmund Hillary.
• Heinrich Himmler.
• Gary Hirte.
• Alfred Hitchcock.
• Adolf Hitler.
• A.A. Hodge.
• Jimmy Hoffa.
• Robert Hooke.
• Herbert Hoover.
• J. Edgar Hoover.
• Frederick Hopkins.
• Grace Hopper.
• Harry Houdini.
• Sam Houston.
• Oliver O. Howard  (6) – A Union commander during the Civil War, he was also a minister. Following the war he led the Freedmen’s Bureau, a government organization that sought to assist those freed from slavery, was involved in the founding of a higher educational institution – now Howard University – for blacks, and attempted to integrate (racially) a church.
• Julia Ward Howe (6) – Best remember as the author of The Battle Hymn of the Republic, Howe was a pacificist, social activist, advocate for woman’s suffrage, and author of the controversial novel The Hermaphrodite, about an individual of ambiguous gender raised as a man. Her husband was heavily opposed to women’s involvement in the public and she published two books of poems in opposition to his wishes. Her husband was one of the financial suppliers behind John Brown’s military escapades in Kansas and at Harper’s Ferry.
• Fred Hoyle.
• L. Ron Hubbard (6).
• Howard Hughes.
• David Hume.
• Saddam Hussein (6).
• Aldous Huxley (5).
• Lee Iacocca.
• Andrew Jackson (3).
• Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson (7) – Famed military commander of the Confederacy during the American Civil War, Lee’s right-hand commander until his death. Jackson held a strongly Calvinistic form of Christianity which allowed him to live without fear on the battlefield. He was accidentally shot by his own men and died from complications.
• William James.
• John Jay  (5) – Initially opposed independence, became first Chief Justice of the United States.
• James Jeans.
• Thomas Jefferson (2).
• Joan of Arc (4).
• Steve Jobs (5).
• Andrew Johnson (5).
• Lyndon B. Johnson (4).
• Michael Jordan.
• James Joyce.
• Carl Jung (3) – One of history’s most famous psychologists, the inventor of analytical psychology. The MBTI is based upon his theories and his terms such as “introvert” and “extrovert” are still widely known and popularly utilized.
• Justinian I.
• Franz Kafka.
• Immanuel Kant.
• Alvin Karpis.
• Alan Kay.
• August Kekule.
• Helen Keller (5) – First deaf-blind individual to graduate with a Bachelors degree, prolific author, social activist (including suffrage, birth control, and pacifism), socialist, and Swedenborgian Christian.
• Gene Kelly.
• Lord Kelvin.
• Thomas a Kempis (4).
• D. James Kennedy.
• Edward M. Kennedy.
• John F. Kennedy (2).
• Robert F. Kennedy (5).
• Johannes Kepler.
• John Maynard Keynes.
• Genghis Khan (4).
• Soren Kierkegaard (4).
• Martin Luther King (2).
• Stephen King.
• Alfred Kinsey (4).
• Henry Kissinger.
• Robert Koch.
• David Koresh (9).
• Alfried Krupp.
• Stanley Kubrick.
• Louis L’Amour (8).
• Madeleine L’Engle (8).
• Marquis de Lafayette (8).
• Ronald David Laing.
• Michael Landon.
• Greg Laurie.
• D.H. Lawrence (7).
• T.E. Lawrence (7).
• Robert E. Lee  (6) – An able commander of military forces for the Confederacy during the American Civil War, Lee was a career military man prior to the war and following the war was eager to reconcile North and South. He took a position at what became Washington and Lee University and was devout in his Christian faith.
• Jeremiah Lanphier – Founder of a prayer movement.
• Gottfried Leibniz.
• John Lennon (4).
• Leonardo da Vinci (3).
• C.S. Lewis (3).
• Meriwether Lewis (6).
• Rush Limbaugh (9).
• Abraham Lincoln (1).
• Mary Todd Lincoln (4).
• Charles Lindbergh.
• Carl Linnaeus.
• David Livingstone (6).
• Andrew Lloyd Webber.
• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
• H.P. Lovecraft (9).
• George Lucas (9).
• Martin Luther (1).
• Douglas MacArthur.
• George MacDonald (8).
• Niccolo Machiavelli.
• James Madison (4).
• Nelson Mandela.
• Charles Manson.
• Mao Tse-Tung.
• Peter Marshall.
• Groucho Marx.
• Karl Marx.
• Abraham Maslow.
• Increase Mather.
• Frederick Denison Maurice.
• John McCain.
• Eugene McCarthy.
• Joseph McCarthy.
• William McKinley.
• Herman Melville.
• H.L. Mencken.
• Gregor Mendel.
• Thomas Merton.
• Michelangelo.
• Harvey Milk.
• John Milton.
• Ho Chi Minh.
• Marvin Minsky.
• James Monroe.
• Marilyn Monroe (9).
• Maria Montessori.
• Dwight L. Moody (7).
• J.P. Morgan.
• Mother Teresa (2).
• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
• Rich Mullins (8).
• Rupert Murdoch.
• Benito Mussolini (4).
• A.J. Muste.
• John von Neumann.
• John Henry Newman.
• Huey Newton.
• Isaac Newton (2).
• John Newton.
• Reinhold Niebuhr (7).
• Friedrich Nietzsche (4).
• Florence Nightingale (6).
• Richard Nixon (4).
• Alfred Nobel.
• Nostradamus.
• Henri Nouwen (7).
• Flannery O’Connor (7).
• Madalyn Murray O’Hair.
• Lawrence Oates.
• Barack Obama.
• Oliver North.
• Robert Oppenheimer.
• George Orwell (8).
• William Osler.
• Rudolf Otto.
• Thomas Paine.
• Emmeline Pankhurst.
• Blaise Pascal.
• Louis Pasteur.
• Wolfgang Paul.
• Linus Pauling.
• Ivan Petrovich Pavlov.
• Norman Vincent Peale.
• Rudolf Peierls.
• William Pendleton (10) – An Episcopalian minister who joined the Confederacy during the Civil War and served as Chief of Artillery in Lee’s army. Following the war Pendleton committed himself to helping the poor.
• Alan Perlis.
• John W. Peterson (8) – An influential Christian musician, wrote a number of popular hymns, was President and Editor-in-Chief of Singspiration, editor of the hymnal Great Hymns of the Faith. One of his better-known hymns is “Surely Goodness and Mercy.”
• Francesco Petrarch.
• Jean Piaget.
• Pablo Picasso (4).
• Franklin Pierce.
• Allan Pinkerton (7).
• Max Planck.
• Edgar Allen Poe.
• Henri Poincare.
• James K. Polk.
• Leonidas Polk (9) – An Episcopalian minister who, when converted while attending West Point, led the first revival at that institute. Became a commander for the Confederacy during the Civil War and died when a cannonball struck him in battle in 1864.
• Jackson Pollack (6).
• Marco Polo (5).
• Karl Popper.
• Beatrix Potter.
• Elvis Presley (5).
• Joseph Priestly.
• Gavrilo Princip.
• Ayn Rand (4).
• Raphael.
• Grigori Rasputin (9) – Grigori is a mysterious figure who played advisor to the Russian czar’s family. He was deeply associated with the occult and in the end was murdered – which is part of his claim to fame. The murderers poisoned him, shot him, stabbed him, and drowned him – all in an effort to kill the seemingly unkillable Rasputin.
• John Rawls.
• Ronald Reagan (4).
• Walter Reed.
• Wilhelm Reich.
• Theodor Reik.
• Rembrandt.
• Ernest Renan.
• Walter Reuther.
• Matteo Ricci.
• Anne Rice (8).
• Ellen Swallow Richards.
• Cardinal Richelieu.
• George Rieveschl.
• Pat Robertson (8).
• Robert Robinson (10)- A Baptist minister best known for composing Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing. Robinson may have converted to Unitarianism while still maintaining the full divinity of Christ towards the end of his life, though this is uncertain.
• John D. Rockefeller.
• George Rockwell.
• Gene Roddenberry.
• Carl Rogers.
• Franklin D. Roosevelt (1).
• Theodore Roosevelt (2).
• William Rosecrans (8) – A Union General during the American Civil War and a committed Catholic. Rosecrans believed in observing the Sabbath, even if it meant not pursuing the enemy as they were routed, and while readily using profanity and heavily consuming alcohol attended mass every day and engaged his men in religious discussions. His career ended after suffering heavy casualties at the Battle of Chickamauga.
• Jean Rostand.
• Henri Rousseau.
• Bertrand Russell (4).
• Ernest Rutherford.
• Albert Sabin.
• Marquis de Sade.
• Carl Sagan (4).
• Andrei Sakharov.
• Saladin (2).
• J.D. Salinger.
• Jonas Salk.
• Frederick Sanger.
• Ira D. Sankey (9).
• George Santayana.
• Jean-Paul Sartre.
• Dorothy L. Sayers.
• Phyllis Schlafly.
• Friedrich von Schlegel.
• Friedrich Schleiermacher.
• Arthur Schopenhauer.
• Franz Schubert.
• Albert Schweitzer.
• Sir Walter Scott.
• Bobby Seale.
• Hans Selye.
• Al Sharpton (5).
• George Bernard Shaw.
• George Beverly Shea (10) – A well known Christian musician and songwriter, in part for his association with Billy Graham.
• Mary Shelley.
• William T. Sherman (7).
• Charles Sherrington.
• William Shockley.
• Frank Sinatra (7).
• Upton Sinclair.
• Red Skelton (8).
• B.F. Skinner (4).
• Joseph Smith (5) – Founder of Mormonism, a religion established in the 19th century United States.
• Albert Speer.
• Herbert Spencer.
• Oswald Spengler.
• Benedict Spinoza.
• Benjamin Spock (6).
• Charles Spurgeon (5).
• Josef Stalin (2).
• Claus von Stauffenberg.
• John Steinbeck (4).
• Robert Louis Stevenson (7).
• James Stewart (7).
• Max Stirner.
• Harriet Beecher Stowe (5) – An abolitionist and author who is best known for her novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin which was instrumental in bringing to the public eye the horrors of slavery. She wrote nearly a book a year till the end of her life.
• Igor Stravinsky.
• Billy Sunday (8).
• Willie Sutton.
• Jimmy Swaggart.
• Jan Swammerdam.
• Emanuel Swedenborg (4) – A well-known and successful scientist who later in life began having visions and wrote a number of works on theology that depended on a heavy system of spiritualization for interpreting Scripture. Influenced numerous influential thinkers including Immanuel Kant and C.G. Jung.
• Jonathan Swift.
• William Howard Taft.
• Jeremy Taylor.
• Zachary Taylor.
• Pyotr Ilich Tchaivosky.
• Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.
• Edward Teller.
• Shirley Temple (7).
• Alfred Tennyson.
• Teresa of Avila (4).
• Mary Church Terrell.
• Nikola Tesla (3).
• Lewis Thomas.
• Norman Thomas.
• J.J. Thomson.
• Henry David Thoreau (5).
• Paul Tillich.
• Alexander R. Todd.
• J.R.R. Tolkien (7).
• Leo Tolstoy (5).
• Linus Torvalds (4).
• Paul Tournier.
• Arnold Joseph Toynbee.
• Leon Trotsky.
• Harry S. Truman.
• Sojourner Truth (7).
• Harriet Tubman (7).
• Alan Turing (7).
• Amos Tversky.
• Mark Twain (5).
• John Tyler.
• Martin Van Buren.
• Dick Van Dyke (9).
• Vincent Van Gogh (6).
• Jules Verne (4).
• Pancho Villa.
• Voltaire.
• Kurt Vonnegut.
• Raoul Wallenberg.
• Sam Walton.
• Andy Warhol.
• Booker T. Washington (2).
• George Washington (1).
• Thomas Watson Jr. (4)
• James Watson.
• Thomas J. Watson.
• Alan Watts.
• Isaac Watts (3) – A congregational (non-conformist/dissenter) minister in England he led a large church. He set the course for hymns by departing from the traditional form of using the Psalms as the text and using non-biblical texts. He wrote a standard work on logic which was used at Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, and Yale. He has written many of the most loved hymns including “O God, Our Help in Ages Past.” He brought imminency to the texts (using I, etc.) but also maintained doctrinal certainty in the statements of the verses.
• John Wayne (8).
• Daniel Webster.
• Noah Webster.
• Andre Weil.
• Simone Weil.
• Steven Weinberg.
• Lawrence Welk (9).
• Thomas H. Weller.
• Orson Welles (7).
• H.G. Wells (7).
• Charles Wesley (8) – Gifted composer, wrote many of the most popular hymns, younger brother of John Wesley.
• John Wesley (4) – Founder of the Methodists.
• Phillis Wheatley (8) – Forcibly taken from her homeland in Africa she was enslaved in America. She became one of the best-known and respected poets of her time in America and Britain and was eventually given her freedom. She died at 31 in poverty.
• John Archibald Wheeler.
• Fred Whipple.
• Alred North Whitehead.
• John Witherspoon (9) – A Presbyterian minister and president of what would become Princeton, he was a vocal advocate from the pulpit of independence and the only minister to sign the Declaration of Independence. He also advanced a “common-sense” philosophy in opposition to David Hume.
• Walt Whitman.
• Elie Wiesel.
• Simon Wiesenthal.
• Oscar Wilde.
• William the Conqueror (4).
• Richard Storrs Willis.
• John Wilmot.
• Bill Wilson.
• Edward O. Wilson.
• Woodrow Wilson.
• Ludwig Wittgenstein.
• Mary Wollstonecraft.
• Virginia Woolf (5).
• William Wordsworth.
• Steve Wozniak (7).
• Frank Lloyd Wright (7).
• Wilhelm Wundt.
• Malcolm X (2).
• Francis Xavier.
• William Butler Yeats (6) – An Irish author who won the Nobel Prize, an influential statesman, and member of occult societies. Involved in numerous love affairs.
• Alvin York.
• Brigham Young (5) – Young succeeded Joseph Smith as leader of the Mormon religion. He was instrumental in settling significant portions of the West, instituted rules treating blacks inequally in the religion, had over fifty wives, may have been involved with the Mountain Meadows Massacre, and was governor during the Utah War with the United States.
• Hideki Yukawa.
• Huldrych Zwingli (5).