Daniel (Hebrew: דָּנִיֵּאל, Modern Daniyyel Tiberian Dāniyyêl ; Arabic: دانيال, meaning in Hebrew "God is my Judge") is the protagonist in the Book of Daniel of the Hebrew Bible. In the narrative, when Daniel was a young man, he was taken into Babylonian captivity where he was educated in Chaldean thought. However, he never converted to Neo-Babylonian ways. By Divine Wisdom from his God, Yahweh, he interpreted dreams and visions of kings, thus becoming a prominent figure in the court of Babylon. Eventually, he had apocalyptic visions of his own that have been interpreted as the Four monarchies. Some of the most famous tales of Daniel are: Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, The writing on the wall and Daniel in the lions' den.

In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim (BC 606), Daniel and his friends Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah were among the young Jewish nobility carried off to Babylon. The four were chosen for their intellect and beauty to be trained as advisors to the Babylonian court,(Daniel 1) Daniel was given the name Belteshazzar, i.e., prince of Bel, or Bel protect the king!(not to be confused with the neo-Babylonian king, Belshazzar). Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah were given the Babylonian names, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, respectively.

Daniel Howard Yergin (born February 6, 1947) is a Pulitzer Prize winning American author, speaker, and economic researcher. Yergin is the co-founder and chairman of Cambridge Energy Research Associates, an energy research consultancy that is now part of IHS Inc.. He is best known as author of The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power; and The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World.

Born in Los Angeles, California to a Chicago Tribune reporter father and a mother who was a sculptor and painter, Yergin attended Beverly Hills High School. He received his B.A. from Yale University in 1968, where he served on the board of the Yale Daily News, and was a founder of The New Journal. He earned his Ph.D. in International Relations (1974) from Cambridge University where he was a Marshall Scholar. He also holds honorary doctoral degrees from Colorado School of Mines, University of Houston, and the University of Missouri.

From 1977 through 1980, he was a Lecturer at the Harvard Business School and, until 1983, a Lecturer at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. He founded Cambridge Energy Research Associates(CERA) in 1982 with the purchase of a $7.00 file cabinet from Goodwill. In 2004, CERA was acquired by the information company IHS Inc. In addition to being chairman of IHS CERA, he is also executive vice president of IHS.