Collins Bartholomew, formerly John Bartholomew and Son, is a long-established map publishing company originally based in Edinburgh, Scotland. It is currently a subsidiary of HarperCollins.

George Bartholomew (8 January 1784 – 23 October 1871, active from 1797) worked as an engraver for Daniel Lizars in Edinburgh. His son, John Bartholomew Senior (1805 - 9 April 1861), began working independently in about 1826, founding the firm that bears his name. Notable work included Black’s General Atlas of 1846.

John Bartholomew Junior (1831–1893) and his son John George Bartholomew (1860–1920) brought the firm to prominence. In particular, J.G. Bartholomew made the firm a publisher of its own works, rather than a producer of maps for other firms. John (Ian) Bartholomew (1890–1962) oversaw the Times Survey Atlas of the World (1922) and later the Mid-Century Edition of the Times Atlas of the World (1955-60).

The cartographic tradition continued into a fifth family generation. John Christopher Bartholomew (1923–2008) shared his ancestors' fascination with the natural sciences, their meticulous standards and spirit of enterprise, and oversaw the publication of some of the most detailed and popular maps of the last century, including The Times Comprehensive Atlas of the World (1967). His brother Robert, who was trained in printing, soon became the production director, and another brother, Peter, who was trained in accountancy, was first appointed as managing director and later became executive chairman. The youngest brother Alick also went into publishing, specialising in books on holistic science and medicine, and became an authority on Viktor Schauberger.

John Bartholomew Junior (25 December 1831 – 29 March 1893) was a Scottish cartographer.

He was born in Edinburgh. His father John Bartholomew Senior started a cartographical establishment in Edinburgh,Scotland and he was educated in the work. He was subsequently assistant to the German geographer August Petermann, until in 1856 he took up the management of his father's firm. For this establishment, now known as the Edinburgh Geographical Institute, Bartholomew built up a reputation unsurpassed in Great Britain for the production of the finest cartographical work.

Bartholomew is best known for the development of colour contouring (or hypsometric tints), the system of representing altitudes on a graduated colour scale, with areas of high altitude in shades of brown and areas of low altitude in shades of green. He first showcased his colour contouring system at the Paris Exhibition of 1878; although it initially met with skepticism, it went on to become standard cartographical practice.

Among his numerous publications, particularly worthy of note is the series of maps of Great Britain reduced from the Ordnance Survey to scales of ½ inch and ¾ inch to 1 mile, with relief shown by contour lines and hypsometric tints. The ½ inch series is among the finest of its kind ever produced.

World War I (WWI), which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939 (World War II), and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918. It involved all the world's great powers, which were assembled in two opposing alliances: the Allies (based on the Triple Entente of the United Kingdom, France and Russia) and the Central Powers (originally centred around the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy; but, as Austria–Hungary had taken the offensive against the agreement, Italy did not enter into the war). These alliances both reorganised (Italy fought for the Allies), and expanded as more nations entered the war. Ultimately more than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, were mobilised in one of the largest wars in history. More than 9 million combatants were killed, largely because of enormous increases in lethality of weapons, thanks to new technology, without corresponding improvements in protection or mobility. It was the sixth-deadliest conflict in world history, subsequently paving the way for various political changes such as revolutions in the nations involved.

Francis Sellers Collins (born April 14, 1950), is an American physician-geneticist, noted for his discoveries of disease genes and his leadership of the Human Genome Project (HGP). He currently serves as Director of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. Prior to being appointed Director, he founded and was president of the BioLogos Foundation. Collins has written a book about his Christian faith, and Pope Benedict XVI appointed Francis Collins to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.

Raised on a small farm in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley, Collins was home schooled until the sixth grade. He attended Robert E. Lee High School. Through most of his high school and college years, he aspired to be a chemist, and had little interest in what he then considered the "messy" field of biology. What he refers to as his "formative education" was received at the University of Virginia, where he earned a B.S. in Chemistry in 1970. He went on to attain a Ph.D. in physical chemistry at Yale University in 1974. While at Yale, however, a course in biochemistry sparked his interest in the subject. After consulting with his old mentor from the University of Virginia, Carl Trindle, he changed fields and enrolled in medical school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, earning there an M.D. in 1977.