Portal:Biography

Portal topics: Activities; Culture; Geography; Health; History; Mathematics; Nature; People; Philosophy; Religion; Society; Technology; Random portal

The Biography Portal

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. (Full article...)

Refresh with new selections below (purge)

Selected biographies – show different entries

Michael Francis Egan (September 29, 1761 – July 22, 1814) was an Irish, later American, prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. He was born in Ireland in 1761, and joined the Franciscan Order at a young age. He served as a priest in Rome, Ireland, and Pennsylvania and became known as a gifted preacher. In 1808, Egan was appointed the first Bishop of Philadelphia, and held that position until his death in 1814. Egan's tenure as bishop saw the construction of new churches and the expansion of the Catholic Church membership in his diocese, but much of his time was consumed by disputes with the lay trustees of his pro-cathedral, St. Mary's Church in Philadelphia. He died in Philadelphia, probably of tuberculosis, in 1814. (Full article...)
The Bus Uncle is a Cantonese YouTube viral video clip of a quarrel between two men aboard a bus in Hong Kong on 27 April 2006. While the older man, who came to be nicknamed the Bus Uncle, scolded the man seated behind him, a nearby passenger used a camera phone to record the entire incident. The resulting six-minute video was uploaded to the Hong Kong Golden Forum, YouTube, and Google Video. The clip became YouTube's most viewed video in May 2006, attracting viewers with its rhetorical outbursts and copious use of profanity by the older man, receiving 1.7 million hits in the first 3 weeks of that month.

The video became a cultural sensation in Hong Kong, inspiring vigorous debate and discussion on lifestyle, etiquette, civic awareness and media ethics within the city, eventually attracting the attention of the media around the world. (Full article...)
Isidor Isaac Rabi (/ˈrɑːbi/; born Israel Isaac Rabi, July 29, 1898 – January 11, 1988) was an American physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1944 for his discovery of nuclear magnetic resonance, which is used in magnetic resonance imaging. He was also one of the first scientists in the United States to work on the cavity magnetron, which is used in microwave radar and microwave ovens.

Born into a traditional Polish-Jewish family in Rymanów, Galicia, Rabi came to the United States as a baby and was raised in New York's Lower East Side. He entered Cornell University as an electrical engineering student in 1916, but soon switched to chemistry. Later, he became interested in physics. He continued his studies at Columbia University, where he was awarded his doctorate for a thesis on the magnetic susceptibility of certain crystals. In 1927, he headed for Europe, where he met and worked with many of the finest physicists of the time. (Full article...)
Æthelbald in the early 14th-century Genealogical Roll of the Kings of England

Æthelbald (died 860) was King of Wessex from 855 to 860. He was the second of five sons of King Æthelwulf. In 850, Æthelbald's elder brother Æthelstan defeated the Vikings in the first recorded sea battle in English history, but he is not recorded afterwards and probably died in the early 850s. The next year Æthelwulf and Æthelbald inflicted another defeat on the Vikings at the Battle of Aclea. In 855 Æthelwulf went on pilgrimage to Rome and appointed Æthelbald King of Wessex, while Æthelberht, the next oldest son, became King of Kent, which had been conquered by Wessex thirty years earlier.

On his way back from Rome, Æthelwulf stayed for several months with Charles the Bald, King of the Franks, whose twelve-year-old daughter Judith he married. When he returned to England in 856, Æthelbald refused to give up the crown. Most historians believe that Æthelbald continued to be king of Wessex while Æthelberht gave up Kent to his father, but some think that Wessex itself was divided, with Æthelbald ruling the west and his father the east, while Æthelberht kept Kent. When Æthelwulf died in 858 Æthelbald continued as (or became again) king of Wessex and his brother resumed (or carried on) his kingship of Kent. (Full article...)
Edward Elgar, c. 1900

Sir Edward William Elgar, 1st Baronet, (/ˈɛlɡɑːr/; 2 June 1857 – 23 February 1934) was an English composer, many of whose works have entered the British and international classical concert repertoire. Among his best-known compositions are orchestral works including the Enigma Variations, the Pomp and Circumstance Marches, concertos for violin and cello, and two symphonies. He also composed choral works, including The Dream of Gerontius, chamber music and songs. He was appointed Master of the King's Musick in 1924.

Although Elgar is often regarded as a typically English composer, most of his musical influences were not from England but from continental Europe. He felt himself to be an outsider, not only musically, but socially. In musical circles dominated by academics, he was a self-taught composer; in Protestant Britain, his Roman Catholicism was regarded with suspicion in some quarters; and in the class-conscious society of Victorian and Edwardian Britain, he was acutely sensitive about his humble origins even after he achieved recognition. He nevertheless married the daughter of a senior British Army officer. She inspired him both musically and socially, but he struggled to achieve success until his forties, when after a series of moderately successful works his Enigma Variations (1899) became immediately popular in Britain and overseas. He followed the Variations with a choral work, The Dream of Gerontius (1900), based on a Roman Catholic text that caused some disquiet in the Anglican establishment in Britain, but it became, and has remained, a core repertory work in Britain and elsewhere. His later full-length religious choral works were well received but have not entered the regular repertory. (Full article...)
Thomas Nigel Kneale (18 April 1922 – 29 October 2006) was a Manx screenwriter who wrote professionally for more than 50 years, was a winner of the Somerset Maugham Award, and was twice nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best British Screenplay. In 2000, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Horror Writers Association.

Predominantly a writer of thrillers that used science-fiction and horror elements, he was best known for the creation of the character Professor Bernard Quatermass. Quatermass was a heroic scientist who appeared in various television, film and radio productions written by Kneale for the BBC, Hammer Film Productions and Thames Television between 1953 and 1996. Kneale wrote original scripts and successfully adapted works by writers such as George Orwell, John Osborne, H. G. Wells and Susan Hill. (Full article...)
Ray Lindwall was a key member of Donald Bradman's famous Australian cricket team, which toured England in 1948. The Australians went undefeated in their 34 matches; this unprecedented feat by a Test side touring England earned them the sobriquet The Invincibles.

Lindwall played as a right-arm opening fast bowler and right-handed batsman in the lower middle-order. Along with Keith Miller, Lindwall formed Australia's first-choice pace duo, regarded as one of the best of all time, and Bradman typically used them in short and sharp bursts against the home batsmen. The pair were used to target England's leading batsmen, Len Hutton and Denis Compton during the major matches, and subdued Hutton for much of the summer. England had agreed to make a new ball available after every 55 overs, more often than the usual regulations at the time, thereby allowing the pair more frequent use of a shiny ball that swung at high pace. Bradman gave the duo lighter workloads in the tour matches in order to preserve their energy for the new ball battles against England's key batsmen in the Tests. Lindwall was a capable lower-order batsman who made two Test centuries during his career, and he featured in several rearguard actions that boosted Australia's scores during the tour. (Full article...)
Dinar minted in Yusuf I's name

Abu al-Hajjaj Yusuf ibn Ismail (Arabic: أبو الحجاج يوسف بن إسماعيل‎; 29 June 1318 – 19 October 1354), known by the regnal name al-Muayyad billah (المؤيد بالله, "He who is aided by God"), was the seventh Nasrid ruler of the Emirate of Granada on the Iberian Peninsula. The third son of Ismail I (r. 1314–1322), he was Sultan between 1333 and 1354, after his brother Muhammad IV (r. 1325–1333) was assassinated.

Coming to the throne at age fifteen, he was initially treated as a minor and given only limited power by his ministers and his grandmother Fatima. In February 1334, his representatives secured a four-year peace treaty with Granada's neighbours Castile and the Marinid Sultanate; which was joined by Aragon in May. After gaining more control of the government, in 1338 or 1340 he expelled the Banu Abi al-Ula family, who had masterminded the murder of his brother and been the leaders of the Volunteers of the Faith—North African soldiers who fought for Granada. After the treaty expired, he allied himself with Abu al-Hasan Ali (r. 1331–1348) of the Marinids against Alfonso XI of Castile (r. 1312–1350). After winning a major naval victory in April 1340, the Marinid-Granadan alliance was decisively defeated on 30 October, in the disastrous Battle of Río Salado. In its aftermath, Yusuf was unable to prevent Castile from taking several Granadan castles and towns, including Alcalá de Benzaide, Locubín, Priego, and Benamejí. In 1342–1344, Alfonso XI besieged the strategic port of Algeciras. Yusuf led his troops in diversionary raids into Castilian territory, and later engaged the besieging army, but the city fell in March 1344. A ten-year peace treaty with Castile followed. (Full article...)
A page from Israel the Grammarian's commonplace book, commenting on Porphyry's Isagoge

Israel the Grammarian (c. 895 – c. 965) was one of the leading European scholars of the mid-tenth century. In the 930s, he was at the court of King Æthelstan of England (r. 924–39). After Æthelstan's death, Israel successfully sought the patronage of Archbishop Rotbert of Trier and became tutor to Bruno, later the Archbishop of Cologne. In the late 940s Israel is recorded as a bishop, and at the end of his life he was a monk at the Benedictine monastery of Saint-Maximin in Trier.

Israel was an accomplished poet, a disciple of the ninth-century Irish philosopher John Scottus Eriugena and one of the few Western scholars of his time to understand Greek. He wrote theological and grammatical tracts, and commentaries on the works of other philosophers and theologians. (Full article...)
Evans in Washington, D.C., on August 8, 1925

Hiram Wesley Evans (September 26, 1881 – September 14, 1966) was the Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, an American white supremacist group, from 1922 to 1939. A native of Alabama, Evans attended Vanderbilt University and became a dentist. He operated a small, moderately successful practice in Texas until 1920, when he joined the Klan's Dallas chapter. He quickly rose through the ranks and was part of a group that ousted William Joseph Simmons from the position of Imperial Wizard, the national leader, in November 1922. Evans succeeded him and sought to transform the group into a political power.

Evans had led the kidnapping and torture of a black man while leader of the Dallas Klan, but as Imperial Wizard, he publicly discouraged vigilante actions for fear that they would hinder his attempts to gain political influence. In 1923, Evans presided over the largest Klan gathering in history, attended by over 200,000, and endorsed several successful candidates in 1924 elections. He moved the Klan's headquarters from Atlanta to Washington, DC, and organized a march of 30,000 members, the largest march in the organization's history, on Pennsylvania Avenue. Evans' efforts notwithstanding, the Klan was buffeted by damaging publicity in the early 1920s, partially because of leadership struggles between Evans and his rivals, which hindered his political efforts. (Full article...)
Holmes c. 1879

Oliver Wendell Holmes (/hoʊmz/; August 29, 1809 – October 7, 1894) was an American physician, poet, and polymath based in Boston. A member of the Fireside Poets, he was acclaimed by his peers as one of the best writers of the day. His most famous prose works are the "Breakfast-Table" series, which began with The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table (1858). He was also an important medical reformer. In addition to his work as an author and poet, Holmes also served as a physician, professor, lecturer and inventor and, although he never practiced it, he received formal training in law.

Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Holmes was educated at Phillips Academy and Harvard College. After graduating from Harvard in 1829, he briefly studied law before turning to the medical profession. He began writing poetry at an early age; one of his most famous works, "Old Ironsides", was published in 1830 and was influential in the eventual preservation of the USS Constitution. Following training at the prestigious medical schools of Paris, Holmes was granted his Doctor of Medicine degree from Harvard Medical School in 1836. He taught at Dartmouth Medical School before returning to teach at Harvard and, for a time, served as dean there. During his long professorship, he became an advocate for various medical reforms and notably posited the controversial idea that doctors were capable of carrying puerperal fever from patient to patient. Holmes retired from Harvard in 1882 and continued writing poetry, novels and essays until his death in 1894. (Full article...)
Gustav Mahler, photographed in 1907 at the end of his period as director of the Vienna Hofoper

Gustav Mahler (German: [ˈmaːlɐ]; 7 July 1860 – 18 May 1911) was an Austro-Bohemian Romantic composer, and one of the leading conductors of his generation. As a composer he acted as a bridge between the 19th century Austro-German tradition and the modernism of the early 20th century. While in his lifetime his status as a conductor was established beyond question, his own music gained wide popularity only after periods of relative neglect, which included a ban on its performance in much of Europe during the Nazi era. After 1945 his compositions were rediscovered by a new generation of listeners; Mahler then became one of the most frequently performed and recorded of all composers, a position he has sustained into the 21st century. In 2016, a BBC Music Magazine survey of 151 conductors ranked three of his symphonies in the top ten symphonies of all time.

Born in Bohemia (then part of the Austrian Empire) to Jewish parents of humble origins, the German-speaking Mahler displayed his musical gifts at an early age. After graduating from the Vienna Conservatory in 1878, he held a succession of conducting posts of rising importance in the opera houses of Europe, culminating in his appointment in 1897 as director of the Vienna Court Opera (Hofoper). During his ten years in Vienna, Mahler—who had converted to Catholicism to secure the post—experienced regular opposition and hostility from the anti-Semitic press. Nevertheless, his innovative productions and insistence on the highest performance standards ensured his reputation as one of the greatest of opera conductors, particularly as an interpreter of the stage works of Wagner, Mozart, and Tchaikovsky. Late in his life he was briefly director of New York's Metropolitan Opera and the New York Philharmonic. (Full article...)
Blanchard shown in an 1859 engraving by Jules Porreau

Sophie Blanchard (25 March 1778 – 6 July 1819), commonly referred to as Madame Blanchard and is also known by many combinations of her maiden and married names, including Madeleine-Sophie Blanchard, Marie Madeleine-Sophie Blanchard, Marie Sophie Armant and Madeleine-Sophie Armant Blanchard, was a French aeronaut and the wife of ballooning pioneer Jean-Pierre Blanchard. Blanchard was the first woman to work as a professional balloonist, and after her husband's death she continued ballooning, making more than 60 ascents. Known throughout Europe for her ballooning exploits, Blanchard entertained Napoleon Bonaparte, who promoted her to the role of "Aeronaut of the Official Festivals", replacing André-Jacques Garnerin. On the restoration of the monarchy in 1814 she performed for Louis XVIII, who named her "Official Aeronaut of the Restoration".

Ballooning was a risky business for the pioneers. Blanchard lost consciousness on a few occasions, endured freezing temperatures and almost drowned when her balloon crashed in a marsh. In 1819, she became the first woman to be killed in an aviation accident when, during an exhibition in the Tivoli Gardens in Paris, she launched fireworks that ignited the gas in her balloon. Her craft crashed on the roof of a house and she fell to her death. (Full article...)
Thelma Catherine "Pat" Nixon (née Ryan; March 16, 1912 – June 22, 1993), also commonly known as Patricia Nixon, was an American educator and the wife of Richard Nixon, the 37th President of the United States. During her more than 30 years in public life, she served as both the Second (1953–1961) and First Lady of the United States (1969–1974).

Born in Ely, Nevada, she grew up with her two brothers in what is now Cerritos, California, graduating from high school in 1929. She attended Fullerton Junior College and later the University of Southern California. She paid for her schooling by working multiple jobs, including pharmacy manager, typist, radiographer, and retail clerk. In 1940, she married lawyer Richard Nixon and they had two daughters, Tricia and Julie. Dubbed the "Nixon team," Richard and Pat Nixon campaigned together in his successful congressional campaigns of 1946 and 1948. Richard Nixon was elected Vice President in 1952 alongside General Dwight D. Eisenhower, whereupon Pat became Second Lady. Pat Nixon did much to add substance to the role of the Vice President's wife, insisting on visiting schools, orphanages, hospitals, and village markets as she undertook many missions of goodwill across the world. (Full article...)
The title page of a 1634 version of Hues' Tractatus de globis in the collection of the Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal

Robert Hues (1553 – 24 May 1632) was an English mathematician and geographer. He attended St. Mary Hall at Oxford, and graduated in 1578. Hues became interested in geography and mathematics, and studied navigation at a school set up by Walter Raleigh. During a trip to Newfoundland, he made observations which caused him to doubt the accepted published values for variations of the compass. Between 1586 and 1588, Hues travelled with Thomas Cavendish on a circumnavigation of the globe, performing astronomical observations and taking the latitudes of places they visited. Beginning in August 1591, Hues and Cavendish again set out on another circumnavigation of the globe. During the voyage, Hues made astronomical observations in the South Atlantic, and continued his observations of the variation of the compass at various latitudes and at the Equator. Cavendish died on the journey in 1592, and Hues returned to England the following year.

In 1594, Hues published his discoveries in the Latin work Tractatus de globis et eorum usu (Treatise on Globes and Their Use) which was written to explain the use of the terrestrial and celestial globes that had been made and published by Emery Molyneux in late 1592 or early 1593, and to encourage English sailors to use practical astronomical navigation. Hues' work subsequently went into at least 12 other printings in Dutch, English, French and Latin. (Full article...)

Did you know... - show different entries

... that the 1979 Salvadoran coup d'état overthrew President Carlos Humberto Romero?
... that President Donald Trump watched the 2019 film Joker with his friends and family at the White House and reportedly enjoyed it?
... that Yabu Meizan's success as a porcelain artist inspired a rival workshop to sell imitations under his name?
... that Sir Donald Douglas was President of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, and his son Sir Neil Douglas was President of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh?
... that Clyde Foster, a mathematician with NASA, persuaded former Nazi rocket scientist Wernher von Braun to support a computer science program at historically black Alabama A&M University?
... that Hildegard Uhrmacher, a coloratura soprano who appeared as Mozart's Konstanze and Bernd Alois Zimmermann's Marie, titled her 2006 autobiography Hilde, du schaffst das (Hilde, you'll manage)?
... that the Cyfarthfa Band was conducted by a circus musician and his son?
... that when a spectator tried to help Australia's first Olympian Edwin Flack after he collapsed during the 1896 marathon event, the athlete punched him to the ground?
... that after Ruth Darrow's son died from hemolytic disease of the newborn, she was inspired to study the disease, and became the first person to identify its cause?
... that the Lieutenant Governor of Kentucky, Jacqueline Coleman, is a basketball coach and the granddaughter of a National Basketball Association player?
... that the Redoute in Bad Godesberg, which opened in 1792 when Beethoven played in the orchestra, was used for receptions of the President of Germany?
... that during contract bidding for structural steel for New York City's New Lots Line, all three bids were rejected partly because the chief engineer was banking on steel prices falling?

General images

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

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

Need help?

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.

Get involved

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

Selected portrait

Enrico Caruso
Photo: Bain News Service; Restoration: Michel Vuijlsteke
Enrico Caruso (1873–1921) was an Italian tenor who was one of the most famous male opera singers in history. He sang to great acclaim at major opera houses around the world, and spent 18 consecutive seasons as the lead tenor at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. He was one of the first major classical vocalists to make numerous recordings (more than 260), and his 1902 recording of "Vesti la giubba" was the first to sell over a million copies. His records sold so well that the Collector's Guide to Victor Records asks, "Did the phonograph make Caruso, or did Caruso make the phonograph?"
More selected portraits
Alexz Johnson
Photo: Epitome Pictures
Alexz Johnson (b. 1986) is a Canadian singer-songwriter and actress, best known for roles as Jude Harrison in the CTV series Instant Star (character shown here), Annie Thelan in the Disney Channel series So Weird, and as Erin Ulmer in the 2006 horror film Final Destination 3. Her album Voodoo was released in 2010.
More selected portraits