• Bertrand Russell
    • Russell (5/18/1872- 2/2/1970) Bertrand Arthur William Russell (1872 - 1970), the third Earl Russell, was a philosopher and influential logician, an important political liberal, activist and a popularizer of philosophy...
    • William Somerset Maugham
    • ham ( January 25 , 1874 - December 16 , 1965 ) William Somerset Maugham was a British writer of novels, short stories, and plays. He was orphaned as a child and raised by an uncle. He studied medicine and practiced as ...
    • Romain Rolland (1866-1944)
    • 44) (January 29, 1866-1944) Romain Rolland was born on January 29, 1866, in the district of Nièvre. He studied literature, music, and philosophy, and in 1895 he published two doctoral theses:Les Origines du théâtre lyr...
    • José Mart
    • rtí ( January 28 , 1853 – May 19 , 1895 ) José Julian Martí y Perez was a leader of the Cuban independence movement as well as an esteemed poet , writer and journalist . He is considered by many to be...
    • Johann Gottlieb Fichte
    • te (5/19/1762- 1/27/1814) Johann Gottlieb Fichte has significant importance as one of the progenitors of German idealism and as a follower of Kant . Fichte believed that Kant was mistaken to argue for the exi...
    • Friedrich Wilhelm von Schelling
    • ing  (1/27/1775-8/20/1854) Friedrich Schelling was born in 1775 at Leonberg, a small town of Wurttemberg. At the age of sixteen he entered the theological seminary atTubingen, where he studied theology, philos...
    • Francis Herbert Bradley
    • ey 1/30/1846- 9/18/1924) Bradley was born on 30th January, 1846 in Clapham (then in the county of Surrey, since absorbed into a much expanded London). He was the fourth child and eldest surviving son of Charles Bradle...
    • Emanuel von Swedenborg
    • org ( January 29 , 1688 - March 29 , 1772 ) Emanuel Swedenborg was born Emanuel Swedberg (or Svedberg) in Stockholm, Sweden, on January 29th, 1688 (Julian calendar). He was the third of the nine children of Jesper S...
    • Anton (Pavlovich) Chekhov
    • hov January 29 , 1860 - July 14 / 15 , 1904 Russian playwright, one of the great masters of modern short story. In his work Chekhov combined the dispassionate attitude of a scientist and a doctor with the sensitivi...
    • Stendhal
    • al (January 23, 1783 - March 23, 1842) Marie-Henri Beyle , better known as Stendhal , was a 19th century French writer . Born in Grenoble , France , he had a miserable childhood in stifling provincial France but b...
    • Pierre Gassendi
    • ndi (1/22/1592- 10/24/1655) Pierre Gassendi attended school at Digne from 1599 to 1606 then continued his education at home supervised by his uncle. Then, in 1608, he entered the University of Aix where he studied ph...
    • Charles-Louis de Secondat,
    • t,  Baron de Montesquieu (1/18/1689- 2/10/1755) Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu, was born on January 19th, 1689 at La Brède, near Bordeaux, to a noble and prosperous family. He ...
    • Giambattista Vico
    • ico (6/23/1668- 1/23/1744) Although considered by many contemporaries as a man with ideas that were far ahead of his own time, Giambattista Vico was not at all that well known until recently. This lack of populari...
    • Franz Brentano
    • ano (1/16/1838-3/17/1917) German philosopher generally regarded as the founder ofAct Psychology, or intentionalism, which concerns itself with theacts of the mind rather than with the states of mind or the imp...
    • Francis Bacon
    • con (1/22/1561- 4/9/1626) Francis Bacon was the son of Nicolas Bacon, the Lord Keeper of the Seal of Elisabeth I. He entered Trinity College Cambridge at age 12. Bacon later described his tutors as "Men of shar...
    • Edgar Allan Poe
    • oe ( January 19 , 1809 - October 7 , 1849 ) Edgar Allan Poe is best known for his poems and short fiction. Moreover, he was the father of the modern mystery. Additionally, Poe has had a worldwide influence on litera...
    • August Comte
    • te ( 1/19/1798- 9/5/1857) Auguste Comte -- full name Isidore Marie Auguste François Xavier Comte -- ( February 17 (recorded February 19), 1798 , Montpellier - September 5 , 1857 , Paris) was a founder of the dis...
    • Wolfgang K
    • ng Köhler ( January 21 , 1887 - June 11 , 1967 ) Wolfgang Köhler was born January 21, 1887, in Reval, Estonia.  He received his PhD in 1908 from the University of Berlin.  He then became an assist...
    • Anne Brontë
    • të  ( January 17 , 1820- May 28 , 1849) Anne Bronte (1820-1849), English writer, sister of Charlotte Brontë and Emily Brontë. Anne Brontë is best known for her novelsAgnes Grey(1847) andThe Tenant of Wildfell ...
    • William James
    • es (1/11/1842- 8/26/1910) William James ( January 11 , 1842 , New York - August 26 , 1910 Chocorua , New Hampshire ), philosopher and elder brother of the writer Henry James , was born in New ...
    • Venerable Master Lin Chi
    • Chi Died 867 (January 10 ) Lin-chi I-hsuan was born in the early years of the ninth century in present-day Shantung province. Although the details of his early life are sketchy, it seems that from an early age his ...
    • Isaac Newton
    • on (1/4/1643- 3/31/1727) The English scientist and mathematician, Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727), was born at Woolsthorpe,Lincolnshire, near Grantham. A rather dour man whose relationship with his own family was at b...
    • George Berkeley
    • ley (3/12/1685-1/14/1753) George Berkeley studied divinity and later lectured at Trinity College, Dublin. In 1734 he was appointed bishop at Cloyne, in which office he devoted himself to the social and economic ...
    • Life of Thomas Warton, the Younger
    • ger (9 January 1728-20 May 1790) Judy Niessner Thomas Warton was born onJanuary 9, 1728, and was baptized sixteen days later. He was the younger son of Thomas Warton, the elder, who was the vicar of Basingstroke. His m...
    • Kenichi Fukui
    • kui (October 4, 1918- January, 9 1998)  ( Autobiography) I was born the eldest of three sons of Ryokichi Fukui, a foreign trade merchant and factory manager, and Chie Fukui, inNara, Japan, onOctober 4, 1918....
    • Gabriel Cramer
    • mer ( 31 July 1704 in Geneva, Switzerland-4 Jan 1752 in Bagnols-sur-Cèze, France) Gabriel Cramer 's father was Jean Isaac Cramer, who was a medical doctor in Geneva, while his mother was Anne Mallet. Jean and Anne had...
    • David Fabricius
    • ius ( March 9 , 1564 - May 7 , 1617 ) David Fabricius was a Frisian astronomer who was responsible for two major discoveries in the early days of telescopic astronomy . Born in Esens, Frisia , as an adult D...
    • Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo
    • ugo  (1864-Dec. 31,1936) Spanish author and philosopher, predecessor of Existentialist philosophy with Søren Kierkegaard , educator, whose essays had great influence in early 20th-century Spain. Unamuno ...
    • Johann KEPLER
    • ER (Weil der Stadt, 27 Dec. 1571 - 15 Nov. Regensburg 1630) Johannes Kepler is now chiefly remembered for discovering the three laws of planetary motion that bear his name published in 1609 and 1619). He also did im...
    • Jesus through a Muslim Lens
    • ens By Michael Wolfe  Jesus of Nazareth is the most widely revered religious figure in the world. Not only is he central to Christianity, the largest religion in the world, he is also venerated throughout Isla...
    • Christmas in Iran (Persia)
    • Christmas in Iran is known as the Little Feast. For the first 25 days of December, a great fast is observed, during which no meat, eggs, milk, or cheese is eaten. It is a time of peace and meditation; a time for ...
    • Biography of Andrei Tarkovsky
    • sky (April 4, 1932-Dec. 28 1968) By: Matthew Sanford Czar of Cinematic Spirituality Andrei Tarkovsky was born onApril 4, 1932, the son of famed poet and translator Arsiniy Tarkovsky and talented actress Maria Ivanov...
    • THOMAS GRAHAM
    • HAM ( December 21, 1805 - September 16, 1869 ) Thomas Graham was born inGlasgow, Scotland, on December 21, 1805. His father was a prosperous manufacturer who wanted his son to become a minister of the Church of Scot...
    • Louis Eugene Felix Neel
    • el (22 Dec.1904 - 2000) French physicist, corecipient, with the Swedish astrophysicist Hannes Alfven, of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1970 for his pioneering studies of the magnetic properties of solids. His contrib...
    • Jan Lukasiewicz
    • cz (12/21/1878- 2/13/1956) Jan Lukasiewicz's father, Luke Lukasiewicz, was a captain in the Austrian army. Perhaps before proceeding we should explain why the father in this Polish speaking family, living inLvov w...
    • Gabriel Marcel
    • rcel (12/7/1889- 10/8/1973 ) Gabriel Marcel, generally regarded as the first French existential philosopher, was born in Paris in 1889 and died there in 1973. An only child in an upper-middle class family, Marcel e...
    • Wolfgang Paul
    • aul (Autobiography) (August 10, 1913- December 1993) I was born on August 10, 1913 in Lorenzkirch a small village in Saxony, as the forth child of Theodor and Elisabeth Paul nee Ruppel. All in all we were six c...
    • Noam Chomsky
    • sky (12/7/1928) Noam Avram Chomsky was born inPhiladelphia,Pennsylvania on December 7, 1928. He received his early education at Oak Lane Country Day School and Central High School, Philadelphia. He continued his ed...
    • Kristina Wasa, Queen of Sweden
    • den (12/8/1626- 4/19/1689) "...if we conceive the world in that vast extension you give it, it is impossible that man conserve himself therein in this honorable rank, on the contrary, he shall consider himsel...
    • Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz
    • cz ( 12/12/1890- 4/12/1963) Ajdukiewicz was one ofPoland's most distinguished philosophers and logicians in the present century and he was among the most active members of the Lvov-Warsaw School, founded in 1895 by...
    • John Milton
    • ton ( December 9 , 1608 - November 8 , 1674 ) John was an English poet , most famous for his blank verse epic Paradise Lost . He was the son of a scrivener of strong Puritan tendencies, and was edu...
    • International Mountain Day
    • Day 11 December Whether we live at sea level or the highest elevation, mountains are essential to our health and well-being. The UN General Assembly has designated 11 December, from 2003 onwards, as 'International...
    • The United Nations International Day of Human Rights
    • sp;Rights DECEMBER 10  On10 December 1948, the international community adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights - a common standard of achievement, which recognized the inherent dignity and the equal an...
    • Frantz Fanon
    • non ( 1925- 12/6/1961) Frantz Fanon is perhaps the preeminent thinker of the 20th century on the issue of decolonisation and the psychopathology of colonization . His works have inspired anti-colonial liberation...
    • Mark Twain
    • Twain (Nov. 30, 1835-April 21, 1910) It was in the West that Samuel Clemens became Mark Twain, and although the landscape and characters of frontier life play only a small part in his writings, one can always detect a...
    • Holberg, Ludvig, Baron
    • ron    Related: Scandinavian Literature Biographies (loo´ve bنrōn´ hōl´ber) , 1684-1754, Danish dramatist, essayist, poet, and historian, apostle of the Enlightenment in Scandinavia. Born in Norway, he ...
    • Jonathan Swift
    • Swift  ( November 30 , 1667 - October 19 , 1745 ) Jonathan Swift was born on November 30 , 1667 (after his father's death) by English parents, and educated by his Uncle Godwin. After a not very su...
    • International Day for the Abolition of Slavery
    • ery 2 December 2003 The International Day for the Abolition of Slavery is held on December 2nd to mark the anniversary of the adoption in 1949 of the UN Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons a...