Browsing People by period: 1900 – 1950 (495 records)
  • 1834 – 1902, English

    Celebrated historian and Roman Catholic. He rejected the new doctrine of papal infallibility.

  • 1838 – 1918, American

    Historian and essayist. He was one of the master expositors of the related values of sense experience (using our eyes, ears, and other sense organs to take in every bit of life) and empiricism (relying on observation, including careful self-observation rather than on logic or on authority). His life and work also expressed the value of a life of contemplation rather than action (in contrast to his immediate forebears, who served as U.S. presidents, congressmen and ambassadors); of friendship and private life; of beauty and estheticism; of knowledge and discovery; and of the appreciation of complexity and paradox.

  • 1860 – 1935, American

    Jane Addams was one of the first American public intellectuals, and a hugely successful activist and reformer as well. In 1931, she became the first American woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize. She may have been the most influential woman in American history. She founded Hull House, a "settlement house" intended to serve the poor of Chicago, in 1897, and lived there the rest of her life.

    As time passed, she became a spokesperson for the poor, for women, for children, for families, for sanitation, for public health, for social and political reform, first in Chicago, then nationally, and finally throughout the world. Concern for the poor and minorities led her gradually into active politics. This included, in addition to municipal reform, winning voting rights for women and also a pacifist approach to world affairs.

    In her time, Addams was as famous as a president, and her books were read everywhere.

  • 1870 – 1937, Austrian

    Psychiatrist, member of Freud's inner circle, then rebel against Freud. His idea of the "inferiority complex," became deeply embedded in popular culture. For a time, especially in the 1950's, almost any degree of ambition or effort was popularly dismissed by some as evidence of a feeling of inferiority.

  • 1906 – 1949, Egyptian

    Religious leader. He founded the Muslim Brotherhood, an influential and controversial Islamic fundamentalist movement in Egypt. After the Brotherhood was charged with the assassination of the Prime Minister in 1948, he was murdered.

  • 1859 – 1916, Russian, and then American

    Writer. He wrote the musical "Fiddler on the Roof" and helped preserve Yiddish culture.

  • 1840 – 1913, American

    Self-made merchant (B. Altman and Co.). He assembled a major collection of art and left it to the Metropolitan Museum. His marriage of business and art collecting illustrates a fairly common theme in the history of money and power.

  • 1872 – 1928, Norwegian

    The first explorer to reach the South Pole in Antarctica. When his colleague, Umberto Nobile, disappeared somewhere near the North Pole, Amundsen went looking for him. Nobile turned up, but Amundsen was never seen again.

  • 1836 – 1917, English

    The first woman physician and first woman town mayor in England. She also established a hospital that both treated and taught women.

  • 1820 – 1906, American

    Social reformer and preeminent American feminist. She fought against alcohol and slavery but especially for a woman's right to be independent of her husband and to vote. With Elizabeth Cady Stanton, she founded the National American Woman Suffrage Association in 1869 and thereafter traveled tirelessly around the country speaking and agitating to promote the organization and its cause. She also co-authored a multi-volume history of the Women's Suffrage movement.

  • 1880 – 1918, Italian

    Poet and critic. He rejected existing poetic canons and norms and embraced a romantic love of the novel, the unexpected, the bizarre, especially the surreal, a term which he himself coined.

  • 1890 – 1936, Argentinian

    Dancer. She helped establish the value of Spanish dance as an expression of passion and as an art form.

  • 1883 – 1935, Polish

    Religious and social activist. He was a student of theology and of Nietsche, a pacifist, an exponent of radical Christianity (including social activism and a rejection of economic injustice), a founder of communities committed to his Bruderhoff movement, and an opponent of Nazism. His collected writings, God's Revolution, were published posthumously.

  • 1896 – 1948, French

    Dramatist, actor, critic and writer. In 1927, he co-founded the Theatre Alfred Jarry, named for the author of the play "Ubu Roi," one of the earliest works of surrealism. Artaud loved surrealism, the irrational, and the absurd.

  • 1881 – 1938, Turkish

    General and president of Turkey. He successfully defended Gallipoli against a British and Australian assault force during World War I, one of the pivotal battles of world history, in that Turkish failure might have ended the Great War or at least resupplied the Russians and thus prevented the Bolshevik revolution. Later he saved Turkey from invading Greek armies and subsequently westernized and secularized Turkey by decree and force. Overnight Turks had to learn and adopt a new Western alphabet and dress and accept the emancipation of women and much else, but the reforms succeeded, and Ataturk died a revered figure. Today Turkey largely follows Ataturk's political and cultural blueprint, but the idea of westernization and secularization still remains controversial.

  • 1872 – 1950, Indian

    Philosopher. His life and thought expressed the value of yoga, mysticism, the attainment of a higher consciousness, and the communal life at his ashram.

  • 1857 – 1941, English

    Soldier and social organizer. He became well known to the British public for his celebrated defense of Mafeking in South Africa during the Boer War. After his retirement from the military, he founded the Boy Scouts and (with his sister) the Girl Guides (Girl Scouts in the U.S.). Scouting quickly became an international movement seeking to teach youths good character ("A scout is truthful.") as well as skills and a love of the outdoors.

  • 1863 – 1944, Belgian

    Chemist. Among other inventions, he helped develop plastics, an extraordinarily useful material which poses risks for the environment and for human health. He thus illustrated the power of combining science with technology but also the inherent ambiguity of all technical advances.

  • 1818 – 1903, Scottish

    Psychologist. He emphasized the empirical study of the human mind as an organ, a part of the body, an approach and a view that has broad implications for many of the valuations we make.

  • 1888 – 1946, Scottish

    Inventor. His invention of television (along with Marconi and others) had profound implications for the development and transmission of culture and values.