from the time of her marriage to the Prince of Wales in 1981 until her death in a car accident in Paris in 1997, Diana, Princess of Wales was one of the world's most high-profile, most photographed, and most iconic celebrities.
Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington British general and politician. Commander of British troops during the Peninsular War (1808–1814), he defeated Napoleon at Waterloo (1815), thus ending the Napoleonic Wars. As prime minister (1828–1830) he passed the Catholic Emancipation Act (1829).
Queen Elizabeth I The daughter of King Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, Queen Elizabeth 1 reigned England from 1558–1603. Her reign was marked by several plots to overthrow her, the execution of Mary Queen of Scots (1587), the defeat of the Spanish Armada (1588), and domestic prosperity and literary achievement.
King Alfred the Great King of the West Saxons (871–899), scholar, and lawmaker who repelled the Danes and helped consolidate England into a unified kingdom.
Queen Victoria Victoria's nearly 64-year reign was the longest in British history.
King Henry VIII Henry VIII is one of the most famous and controversial kings of England. His divorce from Catherine of Aragon, his first wife, compelled him to break from the Catholic Church by the Act of Supremacy (1534).
Queen Elizabeth II Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II (Elizabeth Alexandra Mary), is the Queen regnant and Head of State of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and fifteen other Commonwealth countries.
List of the monarchs of the Kingdom of England:
Alfred the Great, (849?-899), King of the Anglo-Saxons.
Queen Anne, (1665-1714), also Queen of Scotland, then Queen of Great Britain after 1707
Charles II, (1660-1685), also King of Scotland
Edward I, (1272-1307), English monarch
Edward II, (1307-1327), English monarch
Edward III, (1327-1377), English monarch
Edward IV, (1461-1470 and 1471-1483), English monarch
Edward V, (1470-1483?), English monarch
Edward VI, (1547-1553), first English Protestant monarch
Edward VII, (1841-1910)
Edward VIII, (1894-1972), (formerly Edward VIII)
Elizabeth I, (1558-1603), Protestant queen and first Supreme Governor of the Church of England
Elizabeth II, (1926-2007) reigning British monarch
George III, (1801-1820), British monarch
George IV, (1762-1830)
George V, (1910-1936), British monarch
George VI, (1895-1952), British monarch
Henry III, (1207-1272), English monarch
Henry IV, (1367-1413), English monarch
Henry VI, (1421-1471), English monarch
Henry VIII, (1491-1547), separated English Catholicism from link with the Roman Catholic Church
Mary I, (1553-1558), Roman Catholic queen
Mary II, (1662-1694)
Richard III, (1483-1485). Last Plantagenet King, and last British monarch to die in Battle.
Queen Victoria, (1819-1901)
William the Conqueror, (1066-1087)
William IV, (1765-1837)
Science
Sir Isaac Newton, (1642-1727) English physicist and mathematician, founder of modern physics, invented differential calculus and formulated the theory of universal gravitation, a theory about the nature of light, and three laws of motion.
Kelvin (of Largs) Baron (1824-1907) British physicist
helped develop the second law of thermodynamics, and invented the absolute temperature scale named after him (see absolute zero).
Francis Bacon (1561-1626) British statesman and philosopher, father of modern scientific method.
James Prescott Joule, (1818 – 1889) who worked extensively in thermodynamics and is often credited with the discovery of the principle of conservation of energy;
James Watt (1736–1819) was a Scottish inventor and engineer whose improvements to the steam engine were fundamental to the changes wrought by the Industrial Revolution.
Maxwell James Clerk (1831-1879) Scottish physicist
originated the concept of electromagnetic radiation. He established the nature of Saturn's rings, did important work on color perception, and produced the kinetic theory of gases. His ideas formed the basis for quantum mechanics and ultimately for the modern theory of the structure of atoms and molecules.
Earnest Rutherford (1871-1937) New Zealand-British physicist.
discovered and named two types of radioactivity; formulated the transformation theory of radioactivity and so on. In 1908 he was awarded the Nobel Prize.
Charles Darwin (1809-1882) British naturalist, founder of The Theory of Evolution. This theory forms the basis for the modern life sciences. Darwin's most famous books are The Origin of Species and The Descent of Man.
Michael Faraday, (1791-1867),
British physicist and chemist who discovered electromagnetic induction (1831) and proposed the field theory later developed by Maxwell and Einstein.
Robert Hooke (1635–1703)
was an English polymath who played an important role in the scientific revolution, through both experimental and theoretical work., in 1660, he discovered Hooke's Law of elasticity, Robert Hooke was also an important architect.
Sir Alexander Fleming British bacteriologist who discovered penicillin in 1928, for which he shared a Nobel Prize in 1945.
Sir Alexander Graham Bell Scottish-born American inventor of the telephone.
Architecture
Christopher Wren (1632-1723) British architect, astronomer, and geometrician.
He had a hand in the rebuilding of more than 50 churches destroyed in the Great Fire of London. Meanwhile, he was evolving designs for St. Paul's Cathedral, other works include the classical Trinity College library, Cambridge (1676-84), additions to Hampton Court (begun 1689), and Greenwich Hospital (begun 1696).
Charles Barry, (1795-1860), architect (Houses Of Parliament)
John Nash, (1752-1835), (Regent's Park, St. Jame's Park, Trafalgar Square)
Joseph Paxton, (1801-1865), (Great Exhibition Building, London)
August Pugin, (1812-1852), architect (Houses Of Parliament)
Gilbert Scott, (1880-1960), Waterloo Bridge, also supervised rebuilding of House Of Commons, London)
Alfred Waterhouse, (1830-1905), (National History Museum, London)
William Wilkins, (1778-1839), (National Gallery, London) architect
Arts
John Constable, (1776-1837) one of the greatest 19th-century British landscape painters.
Thomas Gainsborough, (1727-1788), one of the greatest portrait painter.
Sir Joshua Reynolds, (1723-1792) British portrait painter.
J.M.W. Turner, (1775-1851) is a landscape and marine artist
Poets and playwrights
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
British poet and playwright, often considered the greatest writer in world literature.
His company performed at the GlobeTheatre from 1599. His plays include the comedies A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Merchant of Venice, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Much Ado About Nothing; history plays Henry VI, Richard III, and Richard II; and the tragedy Romeo and Juliet, as well as the great tragedies Hamlet (probably begun in 1599), Othello, Macbeth, and King Lear. He is the author of 154 sonnets.
Marlowe Christopher (1564-1593)
British poet and playwright.
he wrote plays for the London theaters, among them are The Jew of Malta, Tamburlaine, the Dido, Queen of Carthage, Edward II. Tragical History of Doctor Faustus is one of the most admired English dramas of all time. His brilliant short career makes him William Shakespeare's most important contemporary in English drama.
Milton John (1608-1674)
English poet, the author of Paradise Lost, his epic masterpiece on the Fall of Man written in blank verse, considered second only to William Shakespeare in the history of English-language poetry,
Byron George (Gordon) Baron
known as Lord Byron; (1788-1824)
British Romantic poet and satirist.His most famous works are Childe Harold's Pilgrimage and his greatest poem, Don Juan Among his numerous other works are verse tales and poetic dramas. He died of fever in Greece while aiding the struggle for independence, making him a Greek national hero.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772 –1834)
was an English poet, critic, and philosopher who was, one of the founders of the Romantic Movement in England and one of the Lake Poets. He is probably best known for his poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan, as well as his major prose work Biographia Literaria.
Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888 – 1965)
was a poet, dramatist and literary critic. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1948. He wrote the poems "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", The Waste Land, "The Hollow Men", "Ash Wednesday", and Four Quartets; the plays Murder in the Cathedral and The Cocktail Party; and the essay "Tradition and the Individual Talent". Eliot was born an American, moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 (at the age of 25), and became a British subject in 1927 at the age of 39.
William Blake (1757 – 1827)
was an English poet, visionary, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognized during his lifetime, Blake's work is today considered seminal and significant in the history of both poetry and the visual arts.
Robert Burns (1759 – 1796)
was a poet and a lyricist. He is widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland, and is celebrated worldwide. Burns is regarded as a pioneer of the Romantic movement Burns also collected folk songs from across Scotland, often revising or adapting them. His poem (and song) "Auld Lang Syne" is often sung at Hogmanay (New Year), and "Scots Wha Hae" served for a long time as an unofficial national anthem of the country. Other poems and songs of Burns that remain well-known across the world today, include "A Red, Red Rose", "A Man's A Man for A' That", "To a Louse", "To a Mouse”.
