PEOPLE KNOWN FOR: president
John McCain
United States senator
Advertisement
August 29, 1936 -
U.S. senator who was the Republican Party ’s nominee for president in 2008 but was defeated by Barack Obama. McCain represented Arizona in the U.S. House of Representatives (1983–87) before being elected...
Al Gore
vice president of United States
Advertisement
March 31, 1948 -
45th vice president of the United States (1993–2001) in the Democratic administration of President Bill Clinton. In the 2000 presidential election, one of the most controversial elections in American...
John Kerry
United States senator and secretary of state
Advertisement
December 11, 1943 -
U.S. senator (1985–2013) who was the Democratic Party ’s nominee for president in 2004 and who served as secretary of state (2013–17) in the administration of Pres. Barack Obama. Kerry was born in a Denver...
Ross Perot
American businessman
June 27, 1930 -
American businessman and philanthropist who ran as an independent candidate for U.S. president in 1992 and 1996. He was the son of a cotton broker. Perot attended Texarkana Junior College for two years...
Herman Cain
American businessman and politician
December 13, 1945 -
American businessman and conservative political pundit who sought the Republican presidential nomination in 2012. Cain, the elder of two sons, was raised in Atlanta. His father worked as a chauffeur,...
Patrick J. Buchanan
American journalist and politician
November 2, 1938 -
conservative American journalist who held positions in the administrations of three U.S. presidents and who three times sought nomination as a candidate for the presidency of the United States. Buchanan...
Ralph Nader
American lawyer and politician
February 27, 1934 -
American lawyer and consumer advocate who was a four-time candidate for the U.S. presidency (1996, 2000, 2004, and 2008). For coverage of the 2008 election, see United States Presidential Election of...
John Edwards
United States senator
June 10, 1953 -
U.S. senator, who in 2004 was the vice presidential running mate of John Kerry, the Democratic Party ’s nominee for president. He was the son of Wallace Edwards, a textile-mill worker, and Catherine (“Bobbie”)...
Steve Forbes
American publisher and politician
July 18, 1947 -
American publishing executive who twice sought the Republican Party ’s presidential nomination (1996, 2000). Forbes graduated from Princeton University in 1970 with a B.A. degree in American history....
Bob Dole
United States senator
July 22, 1923 -
American politician who served in the U.S. Senate (1969–96) and who was the Republican Party ’s nominee for president in 1996 but lost to Bill Clinton. Dole was born into a working-class family and left...
Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola
Nigerian entrepreneur and politician
August 24, 1937 - July 7, 1998
Nigerian business executive, philanthropist, and politician who is hailed as a figure of democratic change in Nigeria. Abiola was born and raised in poverty but was a hard worker and a bright student....
René Dumont
French agronomist
March 13, 1904 - June 18, 2001
French agronomist who unsuccessfully ran for president of France in 1974 on the nation’s first environmental platform; although he garnered only 1.3% of the vote, his campaign triggered an ecological...
José Francisco Peña Gómez
Dominican politician
March 6, 1937 - May 10, 1998
prominent black Dominican politician whose lack of success in three presidential campaigns was attributed to racism (b. March 6, 1937, Valverde province, Dom.Rep.--d. May 10, 1998, Santo Domingo, Dom.Rep.)....
Barack Obama
president of United States
August 4, 1961 -
44th president of the United States (2009–17) and the first African American to hold the office. Before winning the presidency, Obama represented Illinois in the U.S. Senate (2005–08). He was the third...
George Washington
president of United States
February 22, 1732 - December 14, 1799
American general and commander in chief of the colonial armies in the American Revolution (1775–83) and subsequently first president of the United States (1789–97). (For a discussion of the history and...
Abraham Lincoln
president of United States
February 12, 1809 - April 15, 1865
16th president of the United States (1861–65), who preserved the Union during the American Civil War and brought about the emancipation of the slaves. (For a discussion of the history and nature of the...
Thomas Jefferson
president of United States
April 13, 1743 - July 4, 1826
draftsman of the Declaration of Independence of the United States and the nation’s first secretary of state (1789–94), second vice president (1797–1801), and, as the third president (1801–09), the statesman...
George W. Bush
president of United States
July 6, 1946 -
43rd president of the United States (2001–09), who led his country’s response to the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001 and initiated the Iraq War in 2003. Narrowly winning the electoral college vote...
Franklin D. Roosevelt
president of United States
January 30, 1882 - April 12, 1945
32nd president of the United States (1933–45). The only president elected to the office four times, Roosevelt led the United States through two of the greatest crises of the 20th century: the Great Depression...
Ronald Reagan
president of United States
February 6, 1911 - June 5, 2004
40th president of the United States (1981–89), noted for his conservative Republicanism, his fervent anticommunism, and his appealing personal style, characterized by a jaunty affability and folksy charm....
Richard Nixon
president of United States
January 9, 1913 - April 22, 1994
37th president of the United States (1969–74), who, faced with almost certain impeachment for his role in the Watergate scandal, became the first American president to resign from office. He was also...
John F. Kennedy
president of United States
May 29, 1917 - November 22, 1963
35th president of the United States (1961–63), who faced a number of foreign crises, especially in Cuba and Berlin, but managed to secure such achievements as the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty and the Alliance...
Kemal Atatürk
president of Turkey
1881 - November 10, 1938
Turkish “Kemal, Father of Turks” soldier, statesman, and reformer who was the founder and first president (1923–38) of the Republic of Turkey. He modernized the country’s legal and educational systems...
Andrew Jackson
president of United States
March 15, 1767 - June 8, 1845
military hero and seventh president of the United States (1829–37). He was the first U.S. president to come from the area west of the Appalachians and the first to gain office by a direct appeal to the...
Dwight D. Eisenhower
president of United States
October 14, 1890 - March 28, 1969
34th president of the United States (1953–61), who had been supreme commander of the Allied forces in western Europe during World War II. (For a discussion of the history and nature of the presidency,...
John Quincy Adams
president of United States
July 11, 1767 - February 23, 1848
eldest son of President John Adams and sixth president of the United States (1825–29). In his prepresidential years he was one of America’s greatest diplomats (formulating, among other things, what came...
Lyndon B. Johnson
president of United States
August 27, 1908 - January 22, 1973
36th president of the United States (1963–69). A moderate Democrat and vigorous leader in the United States Senate, Johnson was elected vice president in 1960 and acceded to the presidency in 1963 upon...
John Adams
president of United States
October 30, 1735 - July 4, 1826
early advocate of American independence from Great Britain, major figure in the Continental Congress (1774–77), author of the Massachusetts constitution (1780), signer of the Treaty of Paris (1783), first...
Woodrow Wilson
president of United States
December 28, 1856 - February 3, 1924
28th president of the United States (1913–21), an American scholar and statesman best remembered for his legislative accomplishments and his high-minded idealism. Wilson led his country into World War...
Simón Bolívar
Venezuelan soldier and statesman
July 24, 1783 - December 17, 1830
Venezuelan soldier and statesman who led the revolutions against Spanish rule in the Viceroyalty of New Granada. He was president of Gran Colombia (1819–30) and dictator of Peru (1823–26). Early life...
Theodore Roosevelt
president of United States
October 27, 1858 - January 6, 1919
the 26th president of the United States (1901–09) and a writer, naturalist, and soldier. He expanded the powers of the presidency and of the federal government in support of the public interest in conflicts...
Ulysses S. Grant
president of United States
April 27, 1822 - July 23, 1885
U.S. general, commander of the Union armies during the late years (1864–65) of the American Civil War, and 18th president of the United States (1869–77). (For a discussion of the history and nature of...
Jimmy Carter
president of United States
October 1, 1924 -
39th president of the United States (1977–81), who served as the nation’s chief executive during a time of serious problems at home and abroad. His perceived inability to deal successfully with those...
Bill Clinton
president of United States
August 19, 1946 -
42nd president of the United States (1993–2001), who oversaw the country’s longest peacetime economic expansion. In 1998 he became the second U.S. president to be impeached; he was acquitted by the Senate...
Charles de Gaulle
president of France
November 22, 1890 - November 9, 1970
French soldier, writer, statesman, and architect of France’s Fifth Republic. Education and early career De Gaulle was the second son of a Roman Catholic, patriotic, and nationalist upper-middle-class...
Harry S. Truman
president of United States
May 8, 1884 - December 26, 1972
33rd president of the United States (1945–53), who led his country through the final stages of World War II and through the early years of the Cold War, vigorously opposing Soviet expansionism in Europe...
Napoleon III
emperor of France
April 20, 1808 - January 9, 1873
nephew of Napoleon I, president of the Second Republic of France (1850–52), and then emperor of the French (1852–70). He gave his country two decades of prosperity under a stable, authoritarian government...
Ho Chi Minh
president of North Vietnam
May 19, 1890 - September 2, 1969
founder of the Indochina Communist Party (1930) and its successor, the Viet-Minh (1941), and president from 1945 to 1969 of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam). As the leader of the Vietnamese...
James Madison
president of United States
March 16, 1751 - June 28, 1836
fourth president of the United States (1809–17) and one of the Founding Fathers of his country. At the Constitutional Convention (1787), he influenced the planning and ratification of the U.S. Constitution...
Vladimir Putin
president of Russia
October 7, 1952 -
Russian intelligence officer and politician who served as president (1999–2008, 2012–) of Russia and also was the country’s prime minister (1999, 2008–12). Early career Putin studied law at Leningrad...
Hugo Chávez
president of Venezuela
July 28, 1954 - March 5, 2013
Venezuelan politician who was president of Venezuela (1999–2013). Chávez styled himself as the leader of the “ Bolivarian Revolution,” a socialist political program for much of Latin America, named after...
James Monroe
president of United States
April 28, 1758 - July 4, 1831
fifth president of the United States (1817–25), who issued an important contribution to U.S. foreign policy in the Monroe Doctrine, a warning to European nations against intervening in the Western Hemisphere....
Nicolás Maduro
president of Venezuela
November 23, 1962 -
Venezuelan politician and labour leader who won the special election held in April 2013 to choose a president to serve out the remainder of the term of Pres. Hugo Chávez, who had died in March. After...
Dilma Rousseff
president of Brazil
December 14, 1947 -
Brazilian politician who in 2011 became Brazil ’s first female president. She was reelected in 2014 but impeached and removed from office in 2016. Early life and political career Rousseff was raised in...
Andrew Johnson
president of United States
December 29, 1808 - July 31, 1875
17th president of the United States (1865–69), who took office upon the assassination of Pres. Abraham Lincoln during the closing months of the American Civil War (1861–65). His lenient Reconstruction...
Herbert Hoover
president of United States
August 10, 1874 - October 20, 1964
31st president of the United States (1929–33). Hoover’s reputation as a humanitarian—earned during and after World War I as he rescued millions of Europeans from starvation—faded from public consciousness...
George H.W. Bush
president of United States
June 12, 1924 -
politician and businessman who was vice president of the United States (1981–89) and the 41st president of the United States (1989–93). As president, Bush assembled a multinational force to compel the...
Josip Broz Tito
president of Yugoslavia
May 7, 1892 - May 4, 1980
Yugoslav revolutionary and statesman. He was secretary-general (later president) of the Communist Party (League of Communists) of Yugoslavia (1939–80), supreme commander of the Yugoslav Partisans (1941–45)...
Sun Yat-sen
Chinese leader
November 12, 1866 - March 12, 1925
leader of the Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang [Pinyin: Guomindang]), known as the father of modern China. Influential in overthrowing the Qing (Manchu) dynasty (1911/12), he served as the first...
Fidel Castro
political leader of Cuba
August 13, 1926 - November 25, 2016
political leader of Cuba (1959–2008) who transformed his country into the first communist state in the Western Hemisphere. Castro became a symbol of communist revolution in Latin America. He held the...
- abolitionism
- activism
- advertising
- air force
- anarchism
- army
- banking
- business
- church and state
- civil rights
- civil war
- colonialism
- communism
- coup d'etat
- crime
- criminology
- diplomacy
- economics
- espionage
- fascism
- first lady
- government
- history
- human rights
- independence
- inquisition
- intelligence
- journalism
- labour movement
- law
- marketing
- Marxism
- modeling
- nationalism
- navy
- Nobel Prize (all)
- Nobel Prize - Economics
- Nobel Prize - Peace
- oratory
- organized labour
- pacifism
- philanthropy
- piloting
- pioneer
- political science
- president
- prime minister
- publishing
- reform
- social movement
- social service
- socialism
- sociology
- temperance movement
- terrorism
- women's movement
