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Introduction

Third Volume of a 1727 edition of Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans printed by Jacob Tonson

A biography, or simply bio, is a detailed description of a person's life. It involves more than just the basic facts like education, work, relationships, and death; it portrays a person's experience of these life events. Unlike a profile or curriculum vitae (résumé), a biography presents a subject's life story, highlighting various aspects of his or her life, including intimate details of experience, and may include an analysis of the subject's personality.

Biographical works are usually non-fiction, but fiction can also be used to portray a person's life. One in-depth form of biographical coverage is called legacy writing. Works in diverse media, from literature to film, form the genre known as biography.

An authorized biography is written with the permission, cooperation, and at times, participation of a subject or a subject's heirs. An autobiography is written by the person himself or herself, sometimes with the assistance of a collaborator or ghostwriter.

Selected biographies

Pol Pot (, ; Khmer: ? born Saloth Sâr 19 May 1925 - 15 April 1998) was a Cambodian communist revolutionary and politician who served as the general secretary of the Communist Party of Kampuchea from 1963 to 1981. Ideologically a Marxist-Leninist and Khmer nationalist, he led the Khmer Rouge group from 1963 until 1997. From 1976 to 1979, he served as the Prime Minister of Democratic Kampuchea.

Born to a prosperous farmer in Prek Sbauv, French Cambodia, Pol Pot was educated at some of Cambodia's elite schools. In the 1940s, Pol Pot moved to Paris, France, where he joined the French Communist Party and adopted Marxism-Leninism, particularly as it was presented in the writings of Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong. Returning to Cambodia in 1953, he joined the Marxist-Leninist Khmer Vi?t Minh organisation in its guerrilla war against King Norodom Sihanouk's newly independent government. Following the Khmer Vi?t Minh's 1954 retreat into North Vietnam, Pol Pot returned to Phnom Penh, working as a teacher while remaining a central member of the Cambodian Marxist-Leninist movement. In 1959, he helped convert the movement into the Kampuchean Labour Party--later renamed the Communist Party of Kampuchea--and in 1960 took control of it as party secretary. To avoid state repression, he relocated in 1962 to a Vi?t C?ng encampment in the jungle before visiting Hanoi and Beijing. In 1968, he re-launched the war against Sihanouk. Read more...
Hypatia (born c. 350-370; died 415 AD) was a Hellenistic Neoplatonist philosopher, astronomer, and mathematician, who lived in Alexandria, Egypt, then part of the Eastern Roman Empire. She was a prominent thinker of the Neoplatonic school in Alexandria, where she taught philosophy and astronomy. She is the first female mathematician whose life is reasonably well recorded. Hypatia was renowned in her own lifetime as a great teacher and a wise counselor. She is known to have written a commentary on Diophantus's thirteen-volume Arithmetica, which may survive in part, having been interpolated into Diophantus's original text, and another commentary on Apollonius of Perga's treatise on conic sections, which has not survived. Many modern scholars also believe that Hypatia may have edited the surviving text of Ptolemy's Almagest, based on the title of her father Theon's commentary on Book III of the Almagest.

Hypatia is known to have constructed astrolabes and hydrometers, but did not invent either of these, which were both in use long before she was born. Although she herself was a pagan, she was tolerant towards Christians and taught many Christian students, including Synesius, the future bishop of Ptolemais. Ancient sources record that Hypatia was widely beloved by pagans and Christians alike and that she established great influence with the political elite in Alexandria. Towards the end of her life, Hypatia advised Orestes, the Roman prefect of Alexandria, who was in the midst of a political feud with Cyril, the bishop of Alexandria. Rumors spread accusing her of preventing Orestes from reconciling with Cyril and, in March 415 AD, she was murdered by a mob of Christians led by a lector named Peter. Read more...
Kapoor in Aah, 1953

Raj Kapoor (14 December 1924 - 2 June 1988 was an Indian film actor, producer and director of Indian cinema. Born at Kapoor Haveli in Peshawar to actor Prithviraj Kapoor- he was a member of the Kapoor family which produced several Bollywood superstars.

Kapoor is regarded as one of the greatest and most influential actors and filmmakers in the history of cinema. and known as "the greatest showman of Hindi cinema". He received multiple accolades, including 3 National Film Awards and 11 Filmfare Awards in India. The Filmfare Lifetime Achievement Award is named after Raj Kapoor. He was a two-time nominee for the Palme d'Or grand prize at the Cannes Film Festival for his films Awaara (1951) and Boot Polish (1954). His performance in Awaara was ranked as one of the top ten greatest performances of all time by Time magazine. His films attracted worldwide audiences, particularly in Asia and Europe. He was called "the Clark Gable of the Indian film industry". Read more...
Offset poster for Beuys' 1974 US lecture-series "Energy Plan for the Western Man", Ronald Feldman Gallery

Joseph Beuys (German: ['jo:z?f 'bs]; 12 May 1921 - 23 January 1986) was a German Fluxus, happening, and performance artist as well as a sculptor, installation artist, graphic artist, art theorist, and pedagogue.

His extensive work is grounded in concepts of humanism, social philosophy and anthroposophy; it culminates in his "extended definition of art" and the idea of social sculpture as a gesamtkunstwerk, for which he claimed a creative, participatory role in shaping society and politics. His career was characterized by open public debates on a very wide range of subjects including political, environmental, social and long term cultural trends. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential artists of the second half of the 20th century. Read more...
Timur facial reconstruction from skull

Timur (Persian: ‎ Tem?r, Chagatai: Temür; 9 April 1336 - 18 February 1405), historically known as Amir Timur and Tamerlane (Persian: ‎ Tem?r(-i) Lang, "Timur the Lame"), was a Turco-Mongol conqueror. As the founder of the Timurid Empire in Persia and Central Asia, he became the first ruler in the Timurid dynasty. According to John Joseph Saunders, Timur was "the product of an islamized and iranized society", and not steppe nomadic.

Born into the Barlas confederation in Transoxiana (in modern-day Uzbekistan) on 9 April 1336, Timur gained control of the western Chagatai Khanate by 1370. From that base, he led military campaigns across Western, South and Central Asia, the Caucasus and southern Russia, and emerged as the most powerful ruler in the Muslim world after defeating the Mamluks of Egypt and Syria, the emerging Ottoman Empire, and the declining Delhi Sultanate. From these conquests, he founded the Timurid Empire, but this empire fragmented shortly after his death. Read more...
Turgenev, by Ilya Repin, 1874

Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev (; Russian: ? , tr. Iván Sergéyevich Turgénev, IPA: [?'van sr'e?vt? t?r'enf]; November 9 [O.S. October 28] 1818 – September 3, 1883) was a Russian novelist, short story writer, poet, playwright, translator and popularizer of Russian literature in the West.

His first major publication, a short story collection entitled A Sportsman's Sketches (1852), was a milestone of Russian realism, and his novel Fathers and Sons (1862) is regarded as one of the major works of 19th-century fiction. Read more...
Anne, Emily, and Charlotte Brontë, by their brother Branwell (c. 1834). He painted himself among his sisters, but later removed the image so as not to clutter the picture.
The Brontës were a nineteenth-century literary family, born in the village of Thornton and later associated with the village of Haworth in the West Riding of Yorkshire, England. The sisters, Charlotte (1816-1855), Emily (1818-1848), and Anne (1820-1849), are well known as poets and novelists. Like many contemporary female writers, they originally published their poems and novels under male pseudonyms: Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. Their stories immediately attracted attention for their passion and originality. Charlotte's Jane Eyre was the first to know success, while Emily's Wuthering Heights, Anne's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and other works were later to be accepted as masterpieces of literature.

The three sisters and their brother, Branwell (1817-1848), were very close and during childhood developed their imaginations first through oral storytelling and play set in an intricate imaginary world, and then through the collaborative writing of increasingly complex stories set therein. Read more...
An artistic depiction of Hafez with a Chang (harp) player.

Khw?ja Shams-ud-D?n Mu?ammad fe?-e Sh?r?z? (Persian: ? ? ? ‎), known by his pen name Hafez (? fe? 'the memorizer; the (safe) keeper'; 1315-1390) and as "Hafiz", was a Persian poet who "lauded the joys of love and wine but also targeted religious hypocrisy". His collected works are regarded as a pinnacle of Persian literature and are often found in the homes of people in the Persian speaking world, who learn his poems by heart and still use them as proverbs and sayings. His life and poems have been the subject of much analysis, commentary and interpretation, influencing post-14th century Persian writing more than any other author.

Hafez is best known for his poems that can be described as "antinomian" and with the medieval use of the term "theosophical"; this term theosophy in the 13th and 14th centuries was used to indicate mystical work by "authors only inspired by the holy books" (as distinguished from theology). Hafez primarily wrote in the literary genre of lyric poetry, or ghazals, that is the ideal style for expressing the ecstasy of divine inspiration in the mystical form of love poems. Read more...
Portrait of Racine

Jean Racine (French: [ ?asin]), baptismal name Jean-Baptiste Racine (22 December 1639 – 21 April 1699), was a French dramatist, one of the three great playwrights of 17th-century France (along with Molière and Corneille), and an important literary figure in the Western tradition. Racine was primarily a tragedian, producing such "examples of neoclassical perfection" as Phèdre, Andromaque, and Athalie, although he did write one comedy, Les Plaideurs, and a muted tragedy, Esther, for the young.

Racine's plays displayed his mastery of the dodecasyllabic alexandrine; he is renowned for elegance, purity, speed, and fury, and for what Robert Lowell described as a "diamond-edge", and the "glory of its hard, electric rage". The linguistic effects of Racine's poetry are widely considered to be untranslatable, although many eminent poets have attempted to do so, including Lowell, Richard Wilbur, Ted Hughes, Tony Harrison, and Derek Mahon into English, and Friedrich Schiller into German. The latest translations Racine's plays into English have been by Alan Hollinghurst (Berenice, Bajazet), by RADA director Edward Kemp (Andromache), Neil Bartlett and earned a 2011 American Book Award for the poet Geoffrey Argent. Racine's dramaturgy is marked by his psychological insight, the prevailing passion of his characters, and the nakedness of both plot and stage. Read more...
Wong Kar-wai, BBS (born 17 July 1958) is a Hong Kong filmmaker. Internationally renowned as an auteur of the Hong Kong Second Wave, his visually unique and highly stylized work includes As Tears Go By (1988), Days of Being Wild (1990), Ashes of Time (1994), Chungking Express (1994), Fallen Angels (1995), Happy Together (1997), 2046 (2004) and The Grandmaster (2013). His film In the Mood for Love (2000), starring Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung, notably garnered widespread critical acclaim.

Wong's films frequently feature protagonists who yearn for romance in the midst of a knowingly brief life. His scenes can often be described as sketchy, digressive, exhilarating, and containing vivid imagery. Read more...
Fridtjof Nansen (Norwegian: [²ft:j?f 'n?nsn?]; 10 October 1861 - 13 May 1930) was a Norwegian explorer, scientist, diplomat, humanitarian and Nobel Peace Prize laureate. In his youth he was a champion skier and ice skater. He led the team that made the first crossing of the Greenland interior in 1888, traversing the island on cross-country skis. He won international fame after reaching a record northern latitude of 86°14? during his Fram expedition of 1893-1896. Although he retired from exploration after his return to Norway, his techniques of polar travel and his innovations in equipment and clothing influenced a generation of subsequent Arctic and Antarctic expeditions.

Nansen studied zoology at the Royal Frederick University in Christiania and later worked as a curator at the University Museum of Bergen where his research on the central nervous system of lower marine creatures earned him a doctorate and helped establish neuron doctrine. Later, famed neuroscientist Santiago Ramón y Cajal would win the 1906 Nobel Prize in Medicine for his research on the same subject, though "technical priority" for the theory is given to Nansen. After 1896 his main scientific interest switched to oceanography; in the course of his research he made many scientific cruises, mainly in the North Atlantic, and contributed to the development of modern oceanographic equipment. As one of his country's leading citizens, in 1905 Nansen spoke out for the ending of Norway's union with Sweden, and was instrumental in persuading Prince Carl of Denmark to accept the throne of the newly independent Norway. Between 1906 and 1908 he served as the Norwegian representative in London, where he helped negotiate the Integrity Treaty that guaranteed Norway's independent status. Read more...
Wright in 1954

Frank Lloyd Wright (born June 8, 1867 - April 9, 1959) was an American architect, interior designer, writer, and educator, who designed more than 1,000 structures, 532 of which were completed. Wright believed in designing structures that were in harmony with humanity and its environment, a philosophy he called organic architecture. This philosophy was best exemplified by Fallingwater (1935), which has been called "the best all-time work of American architecture". His creative period spanned more than 70 years.

Wright was the pioneer of what came to be called the Prairie School movement of architecture, and he also developed the concept of the Usonian home in Broadacre City, his unique vision for urban planning in the United States. In addition to his houses, Wright designed original and innovative offices, churches, schools, skyscrapers, hotels, museums, and other structures. He often designed interior elements for these buildings, as well, including furniture and stained glass. Wright wrote 20 books and many articles and was a popular lecturer in the United States and Europe. Wright was recognized in 1991 by the American Institute of Architects as "the greatest American architect of all time". Read more...
Paul Cézanne ( or ; French: [p?l sezan]; 19 January 1839 - 22 October 1906) was a French artist and Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th-century conception of artistic endeavor to a new and radically different world of art in the 20th century. Cézanne's often repetitive, exploratory brushstrokes are highly characteristic and clearly recognizable. He used planes of colour and small brushstrokes that build up to form complex fields. The paintings convey Cézanne's intense study of his subjects.

Cézanne is said to have formed the bridge between late 19th-century Impressionism and the early 20th century's new line of artistic enquiry, Cubism. Both Matisse and Picasso are said to have remarked that Cézanne "is the father of us all." Read more...
Knuth in 2005

Donald Ervin Knuth ( k?-NOOTH; born January 10, 1938) is an American computer scientist, mathematician, and professor emeritus at Stanford University.

He is the author of the multi-volume work The Art of Computer Programming. He contributed to the development of the rigorous analysis of the computational complexity of algorithms and systematized formal mathematical techniques for it. In the process he also popularized the asymptotic notation. In addition to fundamental contributions in several branches of theoretical computer science, Knuth is the creator of the TeX computer typesetting system, the related METAFONT font definition language and rendering system, and the Computer Modern family of typefaces. Read more...
Jayavarman VII, posthumous name of Mahaparamasaugata, (Khmer: , c.1120-1218) was a king (reigned c.1181–1218) of the Khmer Empire in present-day Siem Reap, Cambodia. He was
born in 1120. He was the son of King Dharanindravarman II (r. 1150-1160) and Queen Sri Jayarajacudamani. He married Princess Jayarajadevi and then, after her death, married her sister Indradevi. The two women are commonly thought to have been a great inspiration to him, particularly in his unusual devotion to Buddhism, as only one prior Khmer king was a Buddhist. He then built the Bayon as a monument to Buddhism. Jayavarman VII is generally considered the most powerful of the Khmer monarchs by historians. Read more...
Kubrick, age 21, 1949

Stanley Kubrick (; July 26, 1928 - March 7, 1999) was an American film director, screenwriter, and producer. He is frequently cited as one of the greatest and most influential directors in cinematic history. His films, which are mostly adaptations of novels or short stories, cover a wide range of genres, and are noted for their realism, dark humor, unique cinematography, extensive set designs, and evocative use of music.

Kubrick was raised in the Bronx, New York City, and attended William Howard Taft High School from 1941 to 1945. He only received average grades, but displayed a keen interest in literature, photography, and film from a young age, and taught himself all aspects of film production and directing after graduating from high school. After working as a photographer for Look magazine in the late 1940s and early 1950s, he began making short films on a shoestring budget, and made his first major Hollywood film, The Killing, for United Artists in 1956. This was followed by two collaborations with Kirk Douglas, the war picture Paths of Glory (1957) and the historical epic Spartacus (1960). His reputation as a filmmaker in Hollywood grew, and he was approached by Marlon Brando to film what would become One-Eyed Jacks (1961), though Brando eventually decided to direct it himself. Read more...
S?seki in 1912
Natsume S?seki ( , February 9, 1867 - December 9, 1916), born Natsume Kin'nosuke ( ), was a Japanese novelist. He is best known for his novels Kokoro, Botchan, I Am a Cat and his unfinished work Light and Darkness. He was also a scholar of British literature and composer of haiku, kanshi, and fairy tales. From 1984 until 2004, his portrait appeared on the front of the Japanese 1000 yen note. In Japan, he is often considered the greatest writer in modern Japanese history. He has had a profound effect on almost all important Japanese writers since. Read more...
Charles Babbage

Charles Babbage KH FRS (; 26 December 1791 - 18 October 1871) was an English polymath. A mathematician, philosopher, inventor and mechanical engineer, Babbage originated the concept of a digital programmable computer.

Considered by some to be a "father of the computer", Babbage is credited with inventing the first mechanical computer that eventually led to more complex electronic designs, though all the essential ideas of modern computers are to be found in Babbage's analytical engine. His varied work in other fields has led him to be described as "pre-eminent" among the many polymaths of his century. Read more...
Charles IV (Czech: Karel IV., German: Karl IV., Latin: Carolus IV; 14 May 1316 - 29 November 1378), born Wenceslaus, was a King of Bohemia and the first King of Bohemia to also become Holy Roman Emperor. He was a member of the House of Luxembourg from his father's side and the Czech House of P?emyslid from his mother's side; he emphasized the latter due to his lifelong affinity for the Czech side of his inheritance, and also because his direct ancestors in the P?emyslid line included two saints.

He was the eldest son and heir of King John of Bohemia, who died at the Battle of Crécy on 26 August 1346. His mother, Elizabeth of Bohemia, was the sister of King Wenceslas III, the last of the male P?emyslid rulers of Bohemia. Charles inherited the County of Luxembourg from his father and was elected king of the Kingdom of Bohemia. On 2 September 1347, Charles was crowned King of Bohemia. Read more...
Abd al-Rahman III and his court in Medina Azahara, by Dionisio Baixeras Verdaguer.

Abd al-Rahman III (?Abd al-Rahm?n ibn Muhammad ibn ?Abd All?h ibn Muhammad ibn ?abd al-Rahman ibn al-Hakam al-Rabdi ibn Hisham ibn ?abd al-Rahman al-Dakhil; Arabic: ‎; 11 January 889/91 – 15 October 961) was an Arab Emir and Caliph of Córdoba (912-961) of the Umayyad dynasty in al-Andalus. Called al-Nasir li-Din Allah ("the Defender of God's Faith"), he ascended the throne in his early 20s and reigned for half a century as the most powerful prince of Iberia. Although people of all creeds enjoyed tolerance and freedom of religion under his rule, he repelled the Fatimids, partly by supporting their Maghrawa enemies in North Africa, and partly by claiming the title Caliph (ruler of the Islamic world) for himself. Read more...

Did you know...

... that Femi Claudius Cole offers free health checks as she campaigns to become President of Sierra Leone?
... that Australian artist John Peter Russell painted a portrait of Vincent van Gogh and gave it to him as a mark of their friendship?
... that Jean Trogneux is a chain of macaron shops named after the father of Brigitte Macron, wife of the President of France?
... that Charles Reynolds, who successfully persuaded the Pope to excommunicate Henry VIII of England, was posthumously attainted for treason?
... that the Franciscan Helmut Schlegel wrote the lyrics of an oratorio Laudato si, including writings by Francis of Assisi and Pope Francis, and the Magnificat?
... that Richard Painter, chief ethics lawyer to President George W. Bush, is suing President Trump for his alleged violation of the US Constitution?
... that the newspaper publisher Sir Hildebrand Harmsworth gave money to a charity fund after his chauffeur killed a boy while driving Harmsworth's car?
... that federal deputy Adriana Terrazas Porras served as coordinator of Enrique Serrano Escobar's campaign for Governor of Chihuahua?
... that President Jozef Tiso argued in a 1942 speech that Slovakia's complicity in the Holocaust was consistent with Christian morality?
... that Ralph Abernathy was harshly criticized by other African-American civil rights activists for alleging in his autobiography that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. committed adultery the night before he was assassinated?
... that during the 1623 papal conclave, the election of Pope Urban VIII was supposedly foretold by a swarm of bees?
... that Dorothy Weir Young was the daughter of impressionist painter J. Alden Weir, and wrote a biography of him that was published posthumously in 1960?

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Wayne Douglas Gretzky, OC (born January 26, 1961) is a Canadian former professional ice hockey player and former head coach. He played 20 seasons in the National Hockey League (NHL) for four teams from 1979 to 1999. Nicknamed "The Great One", he has been called "the greatest hockey player ever" by many sportswriters, players, and the NHL itself.

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