Great Thinkers

Meet the great minds whose ideas have shaped the world — philosophers, scientists, artists, leaders, and revolutionaries whose thinking still matters today.

Filter by subject area
Chemistry 2 Physics 1 Mathematics 6 Technology & Engineering 3
Philosophy 14 History 3 Literature 25 Language & Linguistics 3 Arts 9
Anthropology & Culture 1 Sociology 2 Religion 5 Education 4 Politics 6
Economics 3 Business & Management 2
89 thinkers
Clear all filters
Era: Modern × Creative expression × Page 1 of 4
Politics
Ada Lovelace
1815-1852 · England
Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (1815-1852), usually known as Ada Lovelace, was an English mathematician widely regarded as the author of the first published…
Scientific thinking Critical thinking Creative expression Research skills +1
"The Analytical Engine has no pretensions whatever to originate anything. It can do whatever we know how to order it…"
Meet this Thinker →
Arts
Akira Kurosawa
1910-1998 · Japan
Akira Kurosawa (1910-1998) was a Japanese film director, screenwriter, and editor whose thirty completed feature films include some of the most influential works in the…
Creative expression Critical thinking Cultural heritage and identity Ethical thinking +1
"To be an artist means never to avert one's eyes."
Meet this Thinker →
Mathematics
Alan Turing
1912-1954 · United Kingdom
Alan Turing was an English mathematician, codebreaker, and founder of modern computer science. He was born in London on 23 June 1912. His father worked…
Critical thinking Problem solving Scientific thinking Creative expression +1
"We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done."
Meet this Thinker →
Physics
Albert Einstein
1879-1955 · Germany / United States
Albert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist. He is widely seen as the most influential scientist of the twentieth century. He was born on 14…
Scientific thinking Critical thinking Problem solving Creative expression +1
"Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world."
Meet this Thinker →
Politics
Albert Maori Kiki
1931-1993 · Papua New Guinea
Sir Albert Maori Kiki was a Papua New Guinean pathologist, trade unionist, politician, and writer. He was a co-founder of the Pangu Pati (Pangu Party),…
Creative expression Cultural heritage and identity Ethical thinking Problem solving +1
"I have lived ten thousand years in one lifetime."
Meet this Thinker →
Literature
Annie Ernaux
1940-present · France
Annie Ernaux is a French writer. In 2022 she became the first French woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. She was born Annie…
Creative expression Cultural heritage and identity Ethical thinking Emotional intelligence +1
"I shall not say my father, my mother, my sister: I shall name them."
Meet this Thinker →
Literature
Audre Lorde
1934-1992 · United States
Audre Lorde (1934-1992) was an American poet, essayist, teacher, and political activist whose work insisted on the interconnection of race, gender, sexuality, and class in…
Creative expression Ethical thinking Critical thinking Cultural heritage and identity +1
"There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives."
Meet this Thinker →
Philosophy
Bernard Narokobi
c. 1943-2010 · Papua New Guinea
Bernard Mullu Narokobi was a Papua New Guinean philosopher, jurist, parliamentarian, and poet, best known for developing the concept of 'the Melanesian Way' as a…
Ethical thinking Cultural heritage and identity Critical thinking Problem solving +1
"We are a nation of villages."
Meet this Thinker →
Business & Management
C.K. Prahalad
1941-2010 · India / United States
Coimbatore Krishnarao Prahalad (1941-2010) was an Indian-American management scholar whose ideas about corporate strategy, core competence, and the business opportunity at the bottom of the…
Critical thinking Creative expression Ethical thinking Cultural heritage and identity +1
"The roots of competitive advantage are buried deep inside the corporation."
Meet this Thinker →
History
C.L.R. James
1901-1989 · Trinidad and Tobago
Cyril Lionel Robert James was a Trinidadian historian, political thinker, novelist, and cricket writer. He is one of the most important intellectuals the Caribbean has…
Critical thinking Cultural heritage and identity Ethical thinking Creative expression +1
"What do they know of cricket who only cricket know?"
Meet this Thinker →
Literature
Christopher Hitchens
1949 - 2011 · United Kingdom (later United States)
Christopher Hitchens was a British-American journalist, essayist, and writer. He was one of the most famous public intellectuals of the late 20th and early 21st…
Creative expression Critical thinking Ethical thinking Research skills +1
"What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence."
Meet this Thinker →
Mathematics
Claude Shannon
1916 - 2001 · United States
Claude Shannon was an American mathematician and engineer. He invented the field of information theory. His work made the digital age possible. Almost every technology…
Scientific thinking Problem solving Creative expression Research skills +1
"Information is the resolution of uncertainty."
Meet this Thinker →
Language & Linguistics
David Crystal
born 1941 · United Kingdom
David Crystal is a British linguist. A linguist is a person who studies language in a careful, scientific way. Crystal was born in 1941 in…
Critical thinking Creative expression Research skills Cultural heritage and identity +1
"Language change is normal, continuous, and not something to be feared."
Meet this Thinker →
Religion
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
1906-1945 · Germany
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German Lutheran pastor, theologian, and resister against Hitler. He was born in 1906 in Breslau, then in Germany, now Wrocław in…
Ethical thinking Critical thinking Creative expression Emotional intelligence +1
"Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our church. We are fighting today for costly grace."
Meet this Thinker →
Chemistry
Dmitri Mendeleev
1834-1907 · Russia
Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev (1834-1907) was a Russian chemist who devised the periodic table of the elements, one of the most important organising schemes in the…
Scientific thinking Critical thinking Research skills Cultural heritage and identity +1
"The elements, if arranged according to their atomic weights, exhibit an evident periodicity of properties."
Meet this Thinker →
Chemistry
Dorothy Hodgkin
1910-1994 · United Kingdom
Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin was an English chemist. She remains the only British woman ever to win a Nobel Prize in any of the sciences. She…
Scientific thinking Problem solving Research skills Ethical thinking +1
"I was captured for life by chemistry and by crystals."
Meet this Thinker →
Philosophy
Edmund Husserl
1859-1938 · Austria-Hungary / Germany
Edmund Husserl was a German philosopher. He is the founder of phenomenology, one of the most important schools of twentieth-century thought. He was born on…
Critical thinking Research skills Creative expression Ethical thinking +1
"To the things themselves."
Meet this Thinker →
Literature
Edward Said
1935-2003 · Palestine / United States
Edward Wadie Said was a Palestinian-American literary critic, public intellectual, and music critic. He was one of the founders of postcolonial studies. He was born…
Critical thinking Cultural heritage and identity Ethical thinking Research skills +1
"The Orient was almost a European invention, and had been since antiquity a place of romance, exotic beings, haunting memories…"
Meet this Thinker →
Mathematics
Emmy Noether
1882-1935 · Germany (later United States)
Emmy Noether was a German mathematician who changed how we understand algebra and physics. She was born in 1882 in Erlangen, Germany. Her father was…
Scientific thinking Critical thinking Problem solving Creative expression +1
"My methods are really methods of working and thinking; this is why they have crept in everywhere anonymously."
Meet this Thinker →
History
Eric Hobsbawm
1917 - 2012 · Egypt / Austria / United Kingdom
Eric Hobsbawm was a British historian and one of the most influential historians of the 20th century. He wrote about the rise of capitalism, the…
Research skills Critical thinking Creative expression Ethical thinking +1
"The dustbin of history is humanity's largest receptacle."
Meet this Thinker →
Literature
Fatima Ahmed Ibrahim
c. 1933-2017 · Sudan
Fatima Ahmed Ibrahim was a Sudanese feminist, socialist, writer, and political leader. She was the first woman elected to the Sudanese parliament and, according to…
Ethical thinking Critical thinking Cultural heritage and identity Problem solving +1
"We did not want to become another copy of the Western woman. We wanted to be free as Sudanese women,…"
Meet this Thinker →
Technology & Engineering
Fazlur Rahman Khan
1929-1982 · Bangladesh / United States
Fazlur Rahman Khan (1929-1982) was a Bangladeshi-American structural engineer whose innovations transformed how tall buildings are designed and made the modern generation of skyscrapers possible.…
Scientific thinking Creative expression Research skills Critical thinking +1
"The technical man must not be lost in his own technology. He must be able to appreciate life, and life…"
Meet this Thinker →
Arts
Fela Kuti
1938-1997 · Nigeria
Fela Kuti was a Nigerian musician, bandleader, and political activist. He was born in 1938 in Abeokuta, a city in southwest Nigeria. He died in…
Creative expression Ethical thinking Critical thinking Cultural heritage and identity +1
"Music is the weapon of the future."
Meet this Thinker →
Language & Linguistics
Ferdinand de Saussure
1857-1913 · Switzerland
Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) was a Swiss linguist whose ideas about language changed how people study not only language but many other fields as well.…
Critical thinking Scientific thinking Cultural heritage and identity Research skills +1
"In language there are only differences."
Meet this Thinker →