Tom Stoppard Biography

The second son of a doctor for the Bata shoe manufacturing company, Thomas Straussler (Stoppard) was born on July 3, 1937, in Zlin, Czechoslovakia. The family fell victim to the Nazi racial laws, a wide-ranging set of laws enforced by Germany's radical Nazi Army that were aimed at severely restricting the freedoms of Jews and other minorities.

Harriet Beecher Stowe Biography

The impact created in 1852 by Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel Uncle Tom's Cabin made her one of the most widely known American women writers of the nineteenth century.

Antonio Stradivari Biography

I talian violin maker Antonio Stradivari created instruments that are still considered the finest ever made. The new styles of violins and cellos that he developed were remarkable for their excellent tonal quality and became the basic design for all modern versions of the instruments.

Johann Strauss Biography

Johann Strauss, Vienna's greatest composer of light music, was known for his waltzes (dances) and operettas (light operas with songs and dances). His music seems to capture the height of elegance and refinement of the Hapsburg regime.

Igor Stravinsky Biography

The Russian-born American composer Igor Stravinsky identified himself as an "inventor of music." The novelty, power, and elegance of his works won him worldwide admiration before he was thirty. Throughout his life he continued to surprise admirers with transformations of his style that stimulated controversy.

Barbra Streisand Biography

Barbra Streisand is an award-winning performer on stage, television, and in motion pictures, as well as a recording artist of popular music.

Sun Yat-Sen Biography

Sun Yat-sen was the leader of China's republican revolution. He did much to inspire and organize the movement that overthrew the Manchu dynasty in 1911—a family of rulers that reigned over China for nearly three hundred years.

Maria Tallchief Biography

Maria Tallchief is a world-renowned ballerina and one of the premiere (first-ranking) American ballerinas of all time. She was the first American to dance at the Paris Opera and has danced with the Paris Opera Ballet, the Ballet Russe, and the Balanchine Ballet Society, later renamed the New York City Ballet.

Amy Tan Biography

Amy Tan is known for her lyrically written (using flowing, melodic language) tales of emotional conflict between Chinese American mothers and daughters separated by generational and cultural differences.

Elizabeth Taylor Biography

Elizabeth Taylor is one of film's most famous women, having starred in over fifty films and having won two Academy Awards. She also attracted attention because of her eight marriages and her devotion to raising money for research to fight acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS; a virus that destroys the body's ability to fight off infection).

Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky Biography

Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky was one of the most loved of Russian composers. His music is famous for its strong emotion, and his technical skill and strict work habits helped guarantee its lasting appeal.

Alfred Tennyson Lord Biography

Alfred, Lord Tennyson was regarded by many in his generation as the greatest poet of Victorian England. A superb craftsman in verse, he wrote poetry that ranged from confident assertion to black despair.

Valentina Tereshkova Biography

Valentina Tereshkova was the first woman in space, orbiting the earth forty-eight times in Vostok VI in 1963. She orbited the Earth for almost three days, showing that women have the same ability in space as men.

William Makepeace Thackeray Biography

The English novelist William Makepeace Thackeray created unrivaled panoramas (thorough and complete studies of subjects) of English upper-middle-class life, crowded with memorable characters displaying the realistic mixture of virtue, vanity, and vice.

Twyla Tharp Biography

Dancer and choreographer (one who develops and directs dances) Twyla Tharp is known for developing a unique style that merged ballet and modern dance techniques with various forms of American vernacular (everyday) dance.

Clarence Thomas Biography

President George Bush (1924–) named Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1991.

Dylan Thomas Biography

The Welsh poet Dylan Thomas has been hailed as one of the most important poets of the century. His lyrics rank among the most powerful and captivating of modern poetry.

Henry David Thoreau Biography

Henry David Thoreau was born on July 12, 1817, in Concord, Massachusetts, and lived there most of his life; it became, in fact, his universe. His parents were permanently poor, as his father failed in several business ventures.

Jim Thorpe Biography

American track star and professional football and baseball player Jim Thorpe was the hero of the 1912 Olympic Games in Stockholm, Sweden, but had his gold medals taken from him for his status as a professional athlete.

James Thurber Biography

James Thurber was an American writer and artist. One of the most popular humorists (writers of clever humor) of his time, Thurber celebrated in stories and in cartoons the comic frustrations of eccentric yet ordinary people.

Marshal Tito Biography

The Yugoslav statesman Marshal Tito became president of Yugoslavia in 1953. He directed the rebuilding of a Yugoslavia devastated in World War II and the bringing together of Yugoslavia's different peoples until his death in 1980.

J. R. R Tolkien Biography

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born on January 3, 1892, the son of English-born parents in Bloemfontein, in the Orange Free State of South Africa, where his father worked as a bank manager. To escape the heat and dust of southern Africa and to better guard the delicate health of Ronald (as he was called), Tolkien's mother moved back to a small English village with him and his younger brother when they were very young boys.

Leo Tolstoy Biography

The Russian novelist and moral philosopher (person who studies good and bad in relation to human life) Leo Tolstoy ranks as one of the world's great writers, and his War and Peace has been called the greatest novel ever written.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec Biography

The French painter Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec depicted the Parisian night life of cafés, bars, and brothels (houses of prostitution, where sexual acts are traded for money)—the world that he inhabited at the height of his career.

Eiji Toyoda Biography

Eiji Toyoda is a former chairman of the Toyota Motor Company. His family-run business made revolutionary changes in the way automobiles were made.

Harry S. Truman Biography

Harry S. Truman (1884–1972), thirty-third president of the United States, led America's transition from wartime to peacetime economy, created the Truman doctrine, and made the decision to defend South Korea against communist invasion.

Donald Trump Biography

An American real estate developer, Donald Trump became one of the best known and most controversial businessmen of the 1980s and 1990s.

Sojourner Truth Biography

One of the most famous nineteenth-century black American women, Sojourner Truth was an uneducated former slave who actively opposed slavery. Though she never learned to read or write, she became a moving speaker for black freedom and women's rights.