Portal:Biography

Portal topics - (Random portal)

Activities

Culture

Foxe's Book of Martyrs

A biography, or simply bio, is a detailed description of a person's life. It involves more than just 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 their 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 unauthorized biography is one written without such permission or participation. An autobiography is written by the person themselves, sometimes with the assistance of a collaborator or ghostwriter. (Full article...)

Refresh with new selections below (purge)

Featured articles are displayed here, which represent some of the best content on English Wikipedia.

Image 1

Portrait by Michael Dahl, c. 1730

Caroline of Brandenburg-Ansbach (Wilhelmina Charlotte Caroline; 1 March 1683 – 20 November 1737) was Queen of Great Britain and Ireland and Electress of Hanover from 11 June 1727 (O.S.) until her death in 1737 as the wife of King George II.

Caroline's father, Margrave John Frederick of Brandenburg-Ansbach, belonged to a branch of the House of Hohenzollern and was the ruler of a small German state, the Principality of Ansbach. After Caroline was orphaned at a young age, she moved to the enlightened court of her guardians, King Frederick I and Queen Sophia Charlotte of Prussia. At the Prussian court, her previously limited education was widened and she adopted the liberal outlook possessed by Sophia Charlotte, who became her good friend and whose views influenced Caroline all her life. (Full article...)
Image 2
Robert Sterling Yard in Yosemite National Park, 1920

Robert Sterling Yard (February 1, 1861 – May 17, 1945) was an American writer, journalist, and wilderness activist. Born in Haverstraw, New York, Yard graduated from Princeton University and spent the first twenty years of his career in the editing and publishing business. In 1915, he was recruited by his friend Stephen Mather to help publicize the need for an independent national park agency. Their numerous publications were part of a movement that resulted in legislative support for a National Park Service (NPS) in 1916. Yard served as head of the National Parks Educational Committee for several years after its conception, but tension within the NPS led him to concentrate on non-government initiatives. He became executive secretary of the National Parks Association in 1919.

Yard worked to promote the national parks as well as educate Americans about their use. Creating high standards based on aesthetic ideals for park selection, he also opposed commercialism and industrialization of what he called "America's masterpieces". These standards subsequently caused discord with his peers. After helping to establish a relationship between the NPA and the United States Forest Service, Yard later became involved in the protection of wilderness areas. In 1935, he became one of the eight founding members of The Wilderness Society and acted as its first president from 1937 until his death eight years later. Yard is now considered an important figure in the modern wilderness movement. (Full article...)
Image 3

Fresco from Mycenae probably depicting a goddess or priestess, c. 1250 – c. 1180 BCE

Eritha (Mycenaean Greek: 𐀁𐀪𐀲, syllabic transcription e-ri-ta, pronounced [ˈɛ.rɪ.tʰa]; fl. c. 1180 BCE) was a Mycenaean priestess. She was a subject of the Mycenaean state of Pylos, in the southwestern Peloponnese, based at the cult site of Sphagianes. Sphagianes is believed to have been near the palatial centre of Pylos, and may have been located at modern Volimidia.

As a priestess, Eritha held an elevated position in Pylian society. She is the more prominent of the two priestesses known from Pylos, and held economic independence and social prominence unusual for women in the Pylian state. She held authority over several other people, including at least fourteen women who were probably assigned to her by the palatial state as servants to assist with the distribution of religious offerings. (Full article...)
Image 4

Flight Lieutenant Jackson in North Africa, 1941

John Francis Jackson, DFC (23 February 1908 – 28 April 1942) was an Australian fighter ace and squadron commander of World War II. He was credited with eight aerial victories, and led No. 75 Squadron during the Battle of Port Moresby in 1942. Born in Brisbane, he was a grazier and businessman, who also operated his own private plane, when he joined the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) Reserve in 1936. Called up for active service following the outbreak of war in 1939, Jackson served with No. 23 Squadron in Australia before he was posted to the Middle East in November 1940. As a fighter pilot with No. 3 Squadron he flew Gloster Gladiators, Hawker Hurricanes and P-40 Tomahawks during the North African and Syria–Lebanon campaigns.

Jackson was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and mentioned in despatches for his actions in the Middle East. Posted to the South West Pacific theatre, he was promoted to squadron leader in March 1942 and given command of No. 75 Squadron, operating P-40 Kittyhawks, at Port Moresby in Papua. Described as "rugged, simple" and "true as steel", Jackson was nicknamed "Old John" in affectionate tribute to his thirty-four years. He earned praise for his leadership during the defence of Port Moresby before his death in combat on 28 April. His younger brother Les took over No. 75 Squadron, and also became a fighter ace. Jacksons International Airport, Port Moresby, is named in John Jackson's honour. (Full article...)
Image 5

Olivier in 1972

Laurence Kerr Olivier, Baron Olivier (/ˈlɒrəns ˈkɜːr əˈlɪvieɪ/ LORR-ənss KUR ə-LIV-ee-ay; 22 May 1907 – 11 July 1989) was an English actor and director. He and his contemporaries Ralph Richardson and John Gielgud made up a trio of male actors who dominated the British stage of the mid-20th century. He also worked in films throughout his career, playing more than fifty cinema roles. Late in his career he had considerable success in television roles.

Olivier's family had no theatrical connections, but his father, a clergyman, decided that his son should become an actor. After attending a drama school in London, Olivier learned his craft in a succession of acting jobs during the late 1920s. In 1930 he had his first important West End success in Noël Coward's Private Lives, and he appeared in his first film. In 1935 he played in a celebrated production of Romeo and Juliet alongside Gielgud and Peggy Ashcroft, and by the end of the decade he was an established star. In the 1940s, together with Richardson and John Burrell, Olivier was the co-director of the Old Vic, building it into a highly respected company. There his most celebrated roles included Shakespeare's Richard III and Sophocles's Oedipus. (Full article...)
Image 6

Portrait of Henry Hoʻolulu Pitman at the Peabody Essex Museum

Timothy Henry Hoʻolulu Pitman (March 18, 1845 – February 27, 1863) was an American Union Army soldier of Native Hawaiian descent. Considered one of the "Hawaiʻi Sons of the Civil War", he was among a group of more than one hundred documented Native Hawaiian and Hawaii-born combatants who fought in the American Civil War while the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi was still an independent nation.

Born and raised in Hilo, Hawaiʻi, he was the eldest son of Kinoʻoleoliliha, a Hawaiian high chiefess, and Benjamin Pitman, an American pioneer settler from Massachusetts. Through his father's business success in the whaling and sugar and coffee plantation industries and his mother's familial connections to the Hawaiian royal family, the Pitmans were quite prosperous and owned lands on the island of Hawaiʻi and in Honolulu. He and his older sister Mary were educated in the mission schools in Hilo alongside other children of mixed Hawaiian descent. After the death of his mother in 1855, his father remarried to the widow of a missionary, thus connecting the family to the American missionary community in Hawaiʻi. However, following the deaths of his first wife and later his second wife, his father decided to leave the islands and returned to Massachusetts with his family in 1861. The younger Pitman continued his education in the public schools around Boston. (Full article...)
Image 7

Cyril Bassett, April 1916

Cyril Royston Guyton Bassett, VC (3 January 1892 – 9 January 1983) was a New Zealand recipient of the Victoria Cross (VC), the highest award for gallantry "in the face of the enemy" that could be awarded to British and Empire forces at the time. He was the only soldier serving with the New Zealand Expeditionary Force (NZEF) to be awarded the VC in the Gallipoli Campaign of the First World War.

Born in Auckland, Bassett was a bank worker when the First World War began. A member of New Zealand's Territorial Force, he volunteered for service abroad with NZEF and was posted to the New Zealand Divisional Signal Company as a sapper. He saw action on the opening day of the Gallipoli Campaign, and during the Battle of Chunuk Bair he performed the actions that led to his award of the VC. Medically evacuated due to sickness shortly after the battle, he later served on the Western Front and finished the war as a second lieutenant. Bassett returned to the banking profession but was recalled to active duty during the Second World War. He served on the Home Front and by the time he was taken off active duty in December 1943, he had been promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel and was commander of signals in the Northern Military District. When he retired from his banking career he became a justice of the peace in Devonport. He died in 1983 at the age of 91. (Full article...)
Image 8

Sanderson in 2008

Theresa Ione Sanderson (born 14 March 1956) is a British former javelin thrower. She appeared in every Summer Olympics from 1976 to 1996, winning the gold medal in the javelin throw at the 1984 Olympics. She was the second track and field athlete to compete at six Olympics, and the first Black British woman to win an Olympic gold medal.

Sanderson won gold medals in the javelin throw at three Commonwealth Games (1978, 1986 and 1990) and at the 1992 IAAF World Cup. She was runner-up at the 1978 European Athletics Championships, and competed in three world championships (1983, 1987, and 1997). Sanderson was UK National Champion three times and AAA National Champion in amateur athletics ten times. She set five Commonwealth records and ten British national records in the javelin, as well as records at the junior and masters levels. During her career, Sanderson had a rivalry with fellow Briton Fatima Whitbread, who took the bronze in the 1984 Olympics. (Full article...)
Image 9

Bolt in the cockpit of his F-86 Sabre in July 1953

John Franklin Bolt (19 May 1921 – 8 September 2004) was a naval aviator in the United States Marine Corps and a decorated flying ace who served during World War II and the Korean War. He remains the only U.S. Marine to achieve ace status in two wars and was also the only Marine jet fighter ace. He rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel during his military career.

Born to a poor family in Laurens, South Carolina, Bolt was a self-described "workaholic" and was involved in numerous groups and social activities throughout his life. After dropping out of the University of Florida for financial reasons in 1941, he joined the US Navy and trained as a Marine Corps pilot. Sent to the Pacific Theater of Operations, he flew an F4U Corsair during the campaigns in the Marshall Islands and New Guinea, claiming six victories against Japanese A6M Zeros. (Full article...)
Image 10

Solomon Porcius Sharp (August 22, 1787 – November 7, 1825) was an American lawyer and politician, serving as attorney general of Kentucky and a member of the United States Congress and the Kentucky General Assembly. His murder by Jereboam O. Beauchamp in 1825 is referred to as the Beauchamp–Sharp Tragedy or "The Kentucky Tragedy."

Sharp began his political career representing Warren County in the Kentucky House of Representatives. He briefly served in the War of 1812, then returned to Kentucky and was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1813. He was re-elected to a second term, though his support of a controversial bill regarding legislator salaries cost him his seat in 1816. Allied with Kentucky's Debt Relief Party, he returned to the Kentucky House in 1817; in 1821, he accepted Governor John Adair's appointment to the post of Attorney General of Kentucky. Adair's successor, Joseph Desha, re-appointed him to this position. In 1825, Sharp resigned as attorney general to return to the Kentucky House. (Full article...)
Image 11

Gould in 1897

Arthur Joseph "Monkey" Gould (10 October 1864 – 2 January 1919) was a Welsh international rugby union centre and fullback who was most associated as a club player with Newport Rugby Football Club. He won 27 caps for Wales, 18 as captain, and critics consider him the first superstar of Welsh rugby. A talented all-round player and champion sprinter, Gould could side-step and kick expertly with either foot. He never ceased practising to develop his fitness and skills, and on his death was described as "the most accomplished player of his generation".

Following the withdrawal of their regular fullback, Newport RFC first selected Gould in 1882, when he was 18. He was never dropped from the side thereafter and played regularly until he retired in 1898. Gould played for Newport during their "invincible" season of 1891–92, when they did not lose a match, and scored a record 37 tries in Newport's 24-game 1893–94 season, a club record that still stands. Gould frequently travelled due to his job as a public contractor, and consequently turned out for a number of other sides during his career, including the clubs Richmond and London Welsh, and the county side Middlesex. (Full article...)
Image 12

Du Bois in 1907

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (/duːˈbɔɪs/ doo-BOYSS; February 23, 1868 – August 27, 1963) was an American sociologist, socialist, historian, and Pan-Africanist civil rights activist.

Born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, Du Bois grew up in a relatively tolerant and integrated community. After completing graduate work at Harvard University, where he was the first African American to earn a doctorate, Du Bois rose to national prominence as a leader of the Niagara Movement, a group of black civil rights activists seeking equal rights. Du Bois and his supporters opposed the Atlanta Compromise. Instead, Du Bois insisted on full civil rights and increased political representation, which he believed would be brought about by the African-American intellectual elite. He referred to this group as the talented tenth, a concept under the umbrella of racial uplift, and believed that African Americans needed the chance for advanced education to develop their leadership. (Full article...)
Image 13

Gustave Doré's portrait of Baron Munchausen

Baron Munchausen (/ˈmʌntʃaʊzən, ˈmʊntʃ-/; German: [ˈmʏnçˌhaʊzn̩]) is a fictional German nobleman created by the German writer Rudolf Erich Raspe in his 1785 book Baron Munchausen's Narrative of His Marvellous Travels and Campaigns in Russia. The character is loosely based on baron Hieronymus Karl Friedrich Freiherr von Münchhausen.

Born in Bodenwerder, Hanover, the real-life Münchhausen fought for the Russian Empire during the Russo-Turkish War of 1735–1739. After retiring in 1760, he became a minor celebrity within German aristocratic circles for telling outrageous tall tales based on his military career. After hearing some of Münchhausen's stories, Raspe adapted them anonymously into literary form, first in German as ephemeral magazine pieces and then in English as the 1785 book, which was first published in Oxford by a bookseller named Smith. The book was soon translated into other European languages, including a German version expanded by the poet Gottfried August Bürger. The real-life Münchhausen was deeply upset at the development of a fictional character bearing his name, and threatened legal proceedings against the book's publisher. Perhaps fearing a libel suit, Raspe never acknowledged his authorship of the work, which was only established posthumously. (Full article...)
Image 14

Francis bin Fathallah bin Nasrallah Marrash (Arabic: فرنسيس بن فتح الله بن نصر الله مرّاش, ALA-LC: Fransīs bin Fatḥ Allāh bin Naṣr Allāh Marrāsh; 1835 or 29 June 1836 – 1874), also known as Francis al-Marrash or Francis Marrash al-Halabi, was a Syrian scholar, publicist, writer and poet of the Nahda or the Arab Renaissance, and a physician. Most of his works revolve around science, history and religion, analysed under an epistemological light. He traveled throughout West Asia and France in his youth, and after some medical training and a year of practice in his native Aleppo, during which he wrote several works, he enrolled in a medical school in Paris; yet, declining health and growing blindness forced him to return to Aleppo, where he produced more literary works until his early death.

Historian Matti Moosa considered Marrash to have been the first truly cosmopolitan Arab intellectual and writer of modern times. Marrash adhered to the principles of the French Revolution and defended them in his own works, implicitly criticizing Ottoman rule in West Asia and North Africa. He was also influential in introducing French romanticism in the Arab world, especially through his use of poetic prose and prose poetry, of which his writings were the first examples in modern Arabic literature, according to Salma Khadra Jayyusi and Shmuel Moreh. His modes of thinking and feeling, and ways of expressing them, have had a lasting influence on contemporary Arab thought and on the Mahjari poets. (Full article...)
Image 15

Lithograph of Ross in 1845, by Nicolas Eustache Maurin

Ludwig Ross (22 July 1806 – 6 August 1859) was a German classical archaeologist. He is chiefly remembered for the rediscovery and reconstruction of the Temple of Athena Nike in 1835–1836, and for his other excavation and conservation work on the Acropolis of Athens. He was also an important figure in the early years of archaeology in the independent Kingdom of Greece, serving as Ephor General of Antiquities between 1834 and 1836.

As a representative of the "Bavarocracy" – the dominance by northern Europeans, especially Bavarians, of Greek government and institutions under the Bavarian King Otto of Greece – Ross attracted the enmity of the native Greek archaeological establishment. He was forced to resign as Ephor General over his delivery of the Athenian "Naval Records", a series of inscriptions first unearthed in 1834, to the German August Böckh for publication. He was subsequently appointed as the first professor of archaeology at the University of Athens, but lost his post as a result of the 3 September 1843 Revolution, which removed most non-Greeks from public service in the country. He spent his final years as a professor in Halle, where he argued unsuccessfully against the reconstruction of the Indo-European language family, believing the Latin language to be a direct descendant of Ancient Greek. (Full article...)

More featured articles

... that Margaret C. Roberts was encouraged to study medicine by LDS Church leader Brigham Young to reduce mortality rates during childbirth?
... that the English actor Jude Law is actually named David, a result of his parents naming their children after their best friends?
... that US congressman Mike Collins called for Bishop Mariann Budde to be "added to the deportation list" after she urged President Donald Trump to "have mercy"?
... that although Agnes Kimball was a popular recording artist of opera and musical theatre, she never appeared as a singing actress on the stage?
... that artist Dan Hays uses what he calls "the tactile, flawed and time-consuming medium of painting" to reproduce the effect of a low-resolution JPEG?
... that An Amorous History of the Silver Screen has been read as a biographic metafilm, paralleling its lead's rise from prostitution into film stardom?
... that near the end of her life, feminist and educator Nadezhda Stasova wrote that Russian women "still have not learned to stop being men's slaves"?
... that LGBTQ activist Alexey Davydov became the first person to be charged with violating Russia's 2013 anti-gay law after he displayed a sign that read "being gay is normal" at a children's library?
... that a leader of a terrorist group in the Russian Empire was revealed in 1908 to have been a police agent for 15 years?
... that the Louafi Bouguera Olympic Bridge was named after the first Franco-Algerian athlete to win an Olympic gold medal?
... that before discovering a rudimentary audio workstation on his mother's phone, the French musician Lewis OfMan wanted to be a perfumer?
... that the alt-pop musician Lucy Tun cites death metal and RuPaul's Drag Race as influences?

The following are images from various biography-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1Eminent Victorians set the standard for 20th century biographical writing, when it was published in 1918. (from Biography)
Image 2Third volume of a 1727 edition of Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans printed by Jacob Tonson (from Biography)
Image 3Cover of the first English edition of Benjamin Franklin's autobiography, 1793 (from Autobiography)
Image 4Saint Augustine of Hippo wrote Confessions, the first Western autobiography ever written, around 400. Portrait by Philippe de Champaigne, 17th century. (from Autobiography)
Image 5Einhard as scribe (from Biography)
Image 6James Boswell wrote what many consider to be the first modern biography, The Life of Samuel Johnson, in 1791. (from Biography)
Image 7A scene from the Baburnama (from Autobiography)
Image 8John Foxe's The Book of Martyrs, was one of the earliest English-language biographies. (from Biography)

Do you have a question about Wikipedia biographical content that you can't find the answer to? Consider asking it at the Wikipedia reference desk.

For editor resources and to collaborate with other editors on improving Wikipedia's Biography-related articles, see WikiProject Biography.

Image 1
Aminah Cendrakasih
Photograph credit: Tati Studio; restored by Chris Woodrich
Aminah Cendrakasih (born 29 January 1938) is an Indonesian actress. She started in films in her teens, her first starring role being in 1955. She continued acting into her seventies, appearing in almost 120 feature films during her career, as well as in several television roles. In 2012, she received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Bandung Film Festival, and received another at the 2013 Indonesian Movie Awards.
More selected portraits
Image 2
John Henry Newman
Painting: John Everett Millais
John Henry Newman (1801–90) was a British cleric and leader in the Oxford Movement, a group of Anglicans who wished to return the Church of England to many Catholic beliefs and forms of worship traditional in the medieval times. In 1845 Newman converted to Catholicism, eventually rising to cardinal.
More selected portraits
Image 3
Tōyō Miyatake
Photo credit: Ansel Adams
Portrait of Tōyō Miyatake (1896–1979) by Ansel Adams, 1943. Miyatake was a Japanese American internee and camp photographer at Manzanar War Relocation Camp during World War II. A studio photographer prior to his internment, Miyatake started taking photos at Manzanar with an improvised camera fashioned from parts he smuggled into the camp. His activity was discovered after nine months, but camp director Ralph Merritt supported the endeavor and allowed him to have his stored studio equipment shipped to the camp. Miyatake met and befriended Adams at the camp and in 1979 they published a book together, Two Views of Manzanar.
More selected portraits
Image 4
Mary of Teck
Photo credit: Bain News Service
Mary of Teck was the queen consort of King George V as well as the Empress of India. Before her accession, she was successively Duchess of York, Duchess of Cornwall and Princess of Wales. By birth, she was a princess of Teck, in the Kingdom of Württemberg, with the style Her Serene Highness. To her family, she was informally known as May, after her birth month. Queen Mary was known for setting the tone of the British royal family, as a model of regal formality and propriety, especially during state occasions. She was the first Queen Consort to attend the coronation of her successors. Noted for superbly bejewelling herself for formal events, Queen Mary left a collection of jewels now considered priceless.
More selected portraits
Image 5
Jeff Dunham
Photograph: Richard Mclaren
American ventriloquist and stand-up comedian Jeff Dunham with his puppet "Achmed the Dead Terrorist". Dunham, whose puppets Time magazine has described as "politically incorrect, gratuitously insulting and ill tempered", uses Achmed to satirize terrorists.
More selected portraits
Image 6
Nataliya Gotsiy
Photo credit: Peter Duhon
Ukrainian fashion model Nataliya Gotsiy modeling for Cynthia Rowley, Spring 2007 New York Fashion Week. She was the winner of the Ford Supermodel of the World 2004 search. She has appeared on the cover of French Elle and Italian Marie Claire and modeled for Behnaz Sarafpour, Christian Lacroix, Diane von Furstenberg, Dior, Dolce & Gabbana, Dries van Noten, Gucci, Oscar de la Renta, Valentino, and Vivienne Westwood, among others.
More selected portraits
Image 7
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Painting: Vasily Perov
Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–81; depicted in 1872) was a Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist and philosopher. After publishing his first novel, Poor Folk, at age 25, Dostoyevsky wrote (among others) eleven novels, three novellas, and seventeen short novels, including Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1869), and The Brothers Karamazov (1880).
More selected portraits
Image 8
Jeremy Doyle
Photo: Sport the Library
Jeremy Doyle (1983–2011) was an Australian wheelchair basketball player. Left paraplegic after a car accident, he was classified as a 1 point player. While representing his country Doyle won two gold medals, first at the 2009 Paralympic World Cup and again at the 2010 Wheelchair Basketball World Championship.
More selected portraits
Image 9
Enoch Powell
Photograph: Allan Warren
Enoch Powell (1912–98), a professor of Ancient Greek by age 25 and brigadier during World War II, took up politics in the late 1940s and in the 1960s was selected for several cabinet positions. In 1968, he gave the "Rivers of Blood" speech about the dangers of immigration to the United Kingdom and of proposed anti-discrimination legislation.
More selected portraits
Image 10
Ada Lovelace
Painting: Alfred Edward Chalon
Ada Lovelace (1815–1852) was an English mathematician and writer, chiefly known for her work on using Charles Babbage's planned mechanical general-purpose computer, the Analytical Engine. Her notes include what is recognised as the first algorithm intended to be carried out by a machine, and as such she is often regarded as the first computer programmer.
More selected portraits
Image 11
Lies Noor
Photograph credit: Djakartawood Studio; restored by Chris Woodrich
Lies Noor (c. 1938 – 1961) was an Indonesian actress. She first appeared on film in Pulang (Homecoming) in 1952, while she was still at school. She rose in popularity with a string of successful films, and was able to command high fees for her roles. In the mid-1950s, having married and had a child, she took a break from her career to care full-time for her son. After returning to acting in 1960, however, she developed encephalitis the next year and died in hospital two days later. This photograph of Noor was taken around 1956.
More selected portraits
Image 12
Edgar Allan Poe
Daguerreotype credit: W.S. Hartshorn
A daguerreotype of Edgar Allan Poe taken in 1848, less than a year before his death. Best known for his tales of the macabre and mystery, Poe was one of the early American practitioners of the short story and a progenitor of detective fiction and crime fiction. He is also credited with contributing to the emergent science fiction genre. A copyright statement is inscribed on this image because it is a photograph of the original daguerreotype.
More selected portraits
Image 13
Walt Whitman
Photograph: George C. Cox; restoration: Adam Cuerden
Walt Whitman (1819–1892) was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse. His work was very controversial in its time, particularly his poetry collection Leaves of Grass (first published in 1855, but continuously revised until Whitman's death), which was described as obscene for its overt sexuality.
More selected portraits
Image 14
Theodore Roosevelt and John Muir
Photo credit: Underwood and Underwood
U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt (left) and nature preservationist John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club, stand together on Glacier Point in Yosemite National Park. In the background can be seen Upper and Lower Yosemite Falls. During this trip in 1903, Muir convinced Roosevelt to add Yosemite Valley and Mariposa Grove to the park, which had been established in 1890.
More selected portraits
Image 15
Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux
Image credit: The Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News
Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux was a 19th-century French sculptor and painter who sought to inject movement and spontaneity into his works. This engraving, done to commemorate him after his death, shows his sculpture Flore below him, and others of his works above. In his time, some of his works, particularly La Danse, were criticised as indecent, but today his sculptures are exhibited in major museums of art worldwide.
More selected portraits

edit

5 July 2025 – Far-right politics in Croatia, Popular music in Croatia: Croatian nationalist rock musician Marko Perković Thompson gives a concert at Zagreb Hippodrome, attended by 504,000 people, making it the most-attended ticketed concert ever. (Associated Press)
1 July 2025 – China–Philippines relations: The Chinese government sanctions former Philippine Senate majority leader Francis Tolentino, barring him from entering China, citing his conduct on China-related issues. (Reuters)
26 June 2025 – Ecuadorian conflict: Ecuadorian president Daniel Noboa announces the recapture of José Adolfo Macías Villamar, the leader of the Los Choneros cartel and Ecuador's most wanted criminal, in Manta, Manabí Province, after he disappeared from a prison last year. (DW)
21 June 2025 – Belarus–United States relations, Human rights in Belarus: Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko pardons several opposition figures, including opposition leader Siarhei Tsikhanouski, following a deal brokered by U.S. special envoy to Ukraine Keith Kellogg. (Politico)
15 June 2025 – Middle Eastern crisis: According to American officials, U.S. president Donald Trump vetoed a plan by Israel to assassinate the supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. (Reuters)
13 June 2025 – Middle Eastern crisis: Israeli decapitation strikes kill commander-in-chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Hossein Salami, senior nuclear scientist and former head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran Fereydoon Abbasi, and chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran Mohammad Bagheri and Quds Force commander Esmail Qaani. (The Times of Israel) (BBC News)

Updated: 21:05, 5 July 2025

edit

"Dare to be naïve."

— Buckminster Fuller

In Synergetics, 1975

Archive – More from Wikiquote

edit

Category puzzle

Select [►] to view subcategories

Biography (genre)

Biography awards

Biographers

The Biography Channel shows

edit

Note: This page is automatically updated.

Purge server cache

This is a list of recognized content, updated weekly by JL-Bot (talk · contribs) (typically on Saturdays). There is no need to edit the list yourself. If an article is missing from the list, make sure it is tagged (e.g. {{WikiProject Biography}}) or categorized correctly and wait for the next update. See WP:RECOG for configuration options.

The following Wikimedia Foundation sister projects provide more on this subject:

Commons
Free media repository
Wikibooks
Free textbooks and manuals
Wikidata
Free knowledge base
Wikinews
Free-content news
Wikiquote
Collection of quotations
Wikisource
Free-content library
Wikiversity
Free learning tools
Wiktionary
Dictionary and thesaurus

Discover Wikipedia using portals

Purge server cache

Share this article:

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article Portal:Biography, and is written by contributors. Text is available under a CC BY-SA 4.0 International License; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.

Portal:Biography

Portal:Biography

The Biography Portal

Featured biographies – load new batch

Did you know... - show different entries

General images

Need help?

Get involved

Selected portrait

On this day – July 6

Births

Deaths

In the news

Quote of the week

Related portals

Categories

Recognized content

Featured articles

Associated Wikimedia

Share this article: