People on Great-britain's street signs

Elizabeth II

415 Elizabeth II was Queen of the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth realms from 6 February 1952 until her death in 2022. She was queen regnant of 32 sovereign states during her lifetime and was the...

Queen Victoria

351 Victoria was Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until her death in 1901. Her reign of 63 years and 216 days, which was longer than those of any of her...

John the Apostle

243 John the Apostle, also known as Saint John the Beloved and, in Eastern Orthodox Christianity, Saint John the Theologian, was one of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus according to the New Testament....

George III

188 George III was King of Great Britain and Ireland from 25 October 1760 until his death in 1820. The Acts of Union 1800 unified Great Britain and Ireland into the United Kingdom of Great Britain and...

Mary, mother of Jesus

176 Mary was a first-century Jewish woman of Nazareth, the wife of Joseph and the mother of Jesus. She is an important figure of Christianity, venerated under various titles such as virgin or queen, many...

Edward VII

159 Edward VII was King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Emperor of India, from 22 January 1901 until his death in 1910.

Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington

157 Field Marshal Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington was a British Army officer and statesman who was one of the leading military and political figures in Britain during the early 19th century,...

James the Great

148 James the Great was one of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus. According to the New Testament, he was the second of the apostles to die, after Judas Iscariot, and the first to be martyred. Saint James is...

Saint Peter

116 Saint Peter, also known as Peter the Apostle, Simon Peter, Simeon, Simon, or Cephas, was one of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus and one of the first leaders of the early Christian Church. He appears...

Edward Smith-Stanley, 14th Earl of Derby

116 Edward George Geoffrey Smith-Stanley, 14th Earl of Derby, known as Lord Stanley from 1834 to 1851, was a British statesman and Conservative politician who served three times as Prime Minister of the...

Princess Alexandra (born 1936)

115 Princess Alexandra, The Honourable Lady Ogilvy, is a member of the British royal family. She is the only daughter of Prince George, Duke of Kent, and Princess Marina of Greece and Denmark, the only...

Andrew the Apostle

105 Andrew the Apostle was an apostle of Jesus. According to the New Testament, he was a fisherman and one of the Twelve Apostles chosen by Jesus.

John Milton

92 John Milton was an English poet, polemicist, and civil servant. His 1667 epic poem Paradise Lost was written in blank verse and included 12 books, written in a time of immense religious flux and...

Isaac Newton

90 Sir Isaac Newton was an English polymath who was a mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian, author and inventor. He was a key figure in the Scientific Revolution and the...

Charles George Gordon

90 Major General Charles George Gordon CB, also known as Chinese Gordon, Gordon Pasha, Gordon of Khartoum and General Gordon, was a British Army officer and administrator. He saw action in the Crimean...

Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson

89 Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson, 1st Duke of Bronte was a British Royal Navy officer whose leadership, grasp of strategy and unconventional tactics led to multiple decisive British naval...

Michael (archangel)

85 Michael, also called Archangel Michael or Michael the Taxiarch, is an archangel and the warrior of God in Christianity, Judaism, and Islam while additionally being a saint in Christianity. The...

Martin of Tours

84 Martin of Tours was the third bishop of Tours. He is the patron saint of many communities and organizations across Europe, including France's Third Republic. A native of Pannonia, he converted to...

Oliver Cromwell

81 Oliver Cromwell was an English statesman, farmer and soldier, widely regarded as one of the most important figures in British history. He came to prominence during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms,...

Thomas the Apostle

81 Thomas the Apostle also known as Didymus, was one of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus according to the New Testament. Thomas is commonly known as "doubting Thomas" because he initially doubted the...

Edward VIII

75 Edward VIII, later known as the Duke of Windsor, was King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Emperor of India, from 20 January 1936 until his abdication in December of the same year.

Winston Churchill

74 Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill was a British statesman, military officer, and writer who was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945, during the Second World War, and again from...

Paul the Apostle

73 Paul, commonly known as Paul the Apostle or Saint Paul, was a Christian apostle who spread the teachings of Jesus in the first-century AD. For his contributions towards the New Testament, he is...

Bertrand Russell

71 Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, was an English philosopher, logician, mathematician, and public intellectual. He influenced mathematics, logic, set theory, and various areas of...

Abraham Lincoln

70 Abraham Lincoln was the 16th president of the United States, serving from 1861 until his assassination in 1865. He led the United States through the American Civil War, defeating the Confederate...

Saint George

69 Saint George, also George of Lydda, was an early Christian martyr who is venerated as a saint in Christianity. According to holy tradition, he was a soldier in the Roman army. Of Cappadocian Greek...

Tudors of Penmynydd

67 The Tudors of Penmynydd were a noble and aristocratic family, connected with the village of Penmynydd in Anglesey, North Wales, who were very influential in Welsh politics. From this family arose Sir...

Robert Falcon Scott

65 Captain Robert Falcon Scott was a British Royal Navy officer and explorer who led two expeditions to the Antarctic regions: the Discovery expedition of 1901–04 and the Terra Nova expedition of...

Henry Cavendish

62 Henry Cavendish was an English experimental and theoretical chemist and physicist. He is noted for his discovery of hydrogen, which he termed "inflammable air". He described the density of...

Saint Nicholas

60 Saint Nicholas of Myra, also known as Nicholas of Bari, was an early Christian bishop of Greek descent from the maritime city of Patara in Anatolia during the time of the Roman Empire. Because of the...

Harold Wilson

58 James Harold Wilson, Baron Wilson of Rievaulx, was a British politician who twice served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, from 1964 to 1970 and from 1974 to 1976. He was Leader of the Labour...

Richard Burton

57 Richard Walter Burton was a Welsh actor.                                                           

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

56 Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson was an English poet. He was Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom during much of Queen Victoria's reign. In 1829 he was awarded the Chancellor's Gold Medal at...

Saint David

56 David was a Welsh Christian prelate who served as Bishop of Mynyw during the 6th century. He is the patron saint of Wales.

Saint Margaret of Scotland

56 Saint Margaret of Scotland, also known as Margaret of Wessex, was Queen of Alba from 1070 to 1093 as the wife of King Malcolm III. Margaret was sometimes called "The Pearl of Scotland". She was a...

Saint Stephen

54 Stephen is traditionally venerated as the protomartyr or first martyr of Christianity. According to the Acts of the Apostles, he was a deacon in the early church at Jerusalem who angered members of...

Florence Nightingale

54 Florence Nightingale was an English social reformer, statistician and the founder of modern nursing. Nightingale came to prominence while serving as a manager and trainer of nurses during the Crimean...

Catherine of Alexandria

54 Catherine of Alexandria, also spelled Katherine, was, according to tradition, a Christian saint and virgin, who was martyred in the early 4th century at the hands of the emperor Maxentius. According...

Francis of Assisi

52 Giovanni di Pietro di Bernardone, known as Francis of Assisi, was an Italian mystic, poet and Catholic friar who founded the religious order of the Franciscans. Inspired to lead a Christian life of...

Lord Byron

52 George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, was a British poet. He was one of the major figures of the Romantic movement, and is regarded as being among the greatest British poets. Among his best-known...

John Wesley

49 John Wesley was an English cleric, theologian, and evangelist who was a principal leader of a revival movement within the Church of England known as Methodism. The societies he founded became the...

John Peel

47 John Robert Parker Ravenscroft, better known as John Peel, was an English radio presenter and journalist. He was the longest-serving of the original disc jockeys on BBC Radio 1, broadcasting...

Leonard of Noblac

46 Leonard of Noblac is a Frankish saint closely associated with the town and abbey of Saint-Léonard-de-Noblat, in Haute-Vienne, in the Limousin region of France. He was converted to Christianity along...

William Shakespeare

46 William Shakespeare was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's...

T. E. Lawrence

44 Thomas Edward Lawrence was a British Army officer, archaeologist, diplomat and writer known for his role during the Arab Revolt and Sinai and Palestine campaign against the Ottoman Empire in the...

King Arthur

44 King Arthur was a legendary king of Britain. He is a folk hero and a central figure in the medieval literary tradition known as the Matter of Britain.

Alfred the Great

42 Alfred the Great was King of the West Saxons from 871 to 886, and King of the Anglo-Saxons from 886 until his death in 899. He was the youngest son of King Æthelwulf and Æthelwulf's first wife...

Isambard Kingdom Brunel

40 Isambard Kingdom Brunel was an English civil engineer and mechanical engineer who is considered "one of the most ingenious and prolific figures in engineering history", "one of the 19th-century...

Mark the Evangelist

40 Mark the Evangelist, also known as John Mark or Saint Mark, was a Libyan who is traditionally ascribed to be the author of the Gospel of Mark. Most modern scholars agree that the Gospel of Mark is...

Donald Campbell

40 Donald Malcolm Campbell, was a British speed record breaker who broke eight absolute world speed records on water and on land in the 1950s and 1960s. He remains the only person to set both world land...

Luke the Evangelist

40 Luke the Evangelist was one of the Four Evangelists—the four traditionally ascribed authors of the canonical gospels. The Early Church Fathers ascribed to him authorship of both the Gospel of Luke...

Adam Smith

39 Adam Smith was a Scottish economist and philosopher who was a pioneer in the field of political economy and key figure during the Scottish Enlightenment. Seen by many as the "father of economics", or...

Henry VIII

38 Henry VIII was King of England from 22 April 1509 until his death in 1547. After the pope refused to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, Henry passed legislation that severed England and...

Saint Alban

36 Saint Alban is venerated as the first-recorded British Christian martyr, for which reason he is considered to be the protomartyr of Britain. Along with fellow Saints Julius and Aaron, Alban is one of...

Helena, mother of Constantine I

36 Flavia Julia Helena, also known as Helena of Constantinople and in Christianity as Saint Helena, was a Greek Augusta of the Roman Empire and mother of Emperor Constantine the Great as well as a...

John Harrison

34 John Harrison was an English carpenter and clockmaker who invented the marine chronometer, a long-sought-after device for solving the problem of how to calculate longitude while at sea.

Saint Anne

34 According to Christian tradition, Saint Anne was the mother of Mary, the wife of Joachim and the maternal grandmother of Jesus. Mary's mother is not named in the Bible's canonical gospels. In...

William Booth

34 William Booth was an English Methodist preacher who, along with his wife, Catherine, founded the Salvation Army and became its first General (1878–1912). This Christian movement, founded in 1865, has...

John F. Kennedy

33 John Fitzgerald Kennedy, also known as JFK, was the 35th president of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963. He was the youngest person elected president, at 43 years,...

Thomas Gainsborough

33 Thomas Gainsborough was an English portrait and landscape painter, draughtsman, and printmaker. Along with his rival Sir Joshua Reynolds, he is considered one of the most important British artists of...

Geoffrey Chaucer

33 Geoffrey Chaucer was an English poet, writer and civil servant best known for The Canterbury Tales. He has been called the 'father of English literature', or alternatively, the 'father of English...

Michael Crawford

32 Michael Patrick Smith, known professionally as Michael Crawford, is an English actor, comedian and singer.

Bernard Montgomery

32 Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery, 1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein,, nicknamed "Monty", was a senior British Army officer who served in the First World War, the Irish War of Independence and...

David Livingstone

32 David Livingstone was a Scottish doctor, Congregationalist, pioneer Christian missionary with the London Missionary Society, and an explorer in Africa. Livingstone was married to Mary Moffat...

Kathleen Lonsdale

32 Dame Kathleen Lonsdale was an Irish crystallographer, pacifist, and prison reform activist. She proved, in 1929, that the benzene ring is flat by using X-ray diffraction methods to elucidate the...

Saint Lawrence

30 Saint Lawrence or Laurence was one of the seven deacons of the city of Rome under Pope Sixtus II who were martyred in the persecution of the Christians that the Roman emperor Valerian ordered in 258.

George Washington

30 George Washington was a Founding Father and the first president of the United States, serving from 1789 to 1797. As commander of the Continental Army, Washington led Patriot forces to victory in the...

George Stephenson

29 George Stephenson was a British civil engineer and mechanical engineer. Renowned as the "Father of Railways", Stephenson was considered by the Victorians as a great example of diligent application...

G. H. Hardy

29 Godfrey Harold Hardy was an English mathematician, known for his achievements in number theory and mathematical analysis. In biology, he is known for the Hardy–Weinberg principle, a basic principle...

Francis Drake

29 Sir Francis Drake was an English explorer and privateer best known for making the second circumnavigation of the world in a single expedition between 1577 and 1580. He is also known for participating...

William Blake

28 William Blake was an English poet, painter and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his life, Blake has become a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual art of the Romantic Age....

James Cook

28 Captain James Cook was a British Royal Navy officer, explorer, and cartographer who led three voyages of exploration to the Pacific and Southern Oceans between 1768 and 1779. He completed the first...

Alexander Fleming

27 Sir Alexander Fleming was a Scottish physician and microbiologist. He shared the 1945 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Howard Florey and Ernst Chain "for the discovery of penicillin and its...

Edmund the Martyr

27 Edmund the Martyr was king of East Anglia from about 855 until his death.                           

Saint Giles

26 Saint Giles, also known as Giles the Hermit, was a hermit or monk active in the lower Rhône most likely in the 7th century. Revered as a saint, his cult became widely diffused but his hagiography is...

Cuthbert

26 Cuthbert was a saint of the early Northumbrian church in the Celtic tradition. He was a monk, bishop and hermit, associated with the monasteries of Melrose and Lindisfarne in the Kingdom of...

David Lloyd George

26 David Lloyd George, 1st Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1916 to 1922. A Liberal Party politician from Wales, he was known for leading the United Kingdom...

Michael Faraday

26 Michael Faraday was an English chemist and physicist who contributed vastly to the study of electrochemistry and electromagnetism. His main discoveries include the principles underlying...

Neil Armstrong

26 Neil Alden Armstrong was an American astronaut and aeronautical engineer who, as the commander of the 1969 Apollo 11 mission, became the first person to walk on the Moon. He was also a naval aviator,...

Arthur Henderson

25 Arthur Henderson was a British iron moulder and Labour politician. He was the first Labour cabinet minister, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1934 and, uniquely, served three separate terms as Leader of...

Rosalind Franklin

25 Rosalind Elsie Franklin was an English chemist and X-ray crystallographer. Her work was central to the understanding of the molecular structures of DNA, RNA, viruses, coal, and graphite. Although her...

Philip the Apostle

25 Philip the Apostle was one of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus according to the New Testament. Later Christian traditions describe Philip as the apostle who preached in Carthage, Greece, Syria, and...

Richard III of England

25 Richard III was King of England from 26 June 1483 until his death in 1485. He was the last king of the Plantagenet dynasty and its cadet branch the House of York. His defeat and death at the Battle...

Charles Darwin

24 Charles Robert Darwin was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have descended from a...

William Caxton

24 William Caxton was an English merchant, diplomat and writer. He is thought to be the first person to introduce a printing press into England in 1476, and as a printer to be the first English retailer...

James Clerk Maxwell

23 James Clerk Maxwell was a Scottish physicist and mathematician who was responsible for the classical theory of electromagnetic radiation, which was the first theory to describe electricity, magnetism...

Lord Kelvin

23 William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin, was a British mathematician, mathematical physicist and engineer. Born in Belfast, he was for 53 years the professor of Natural Philosophy at the University of...

William Morris

23 William Morris was an English textile designer, poet, artist, writer, and socialist activist associated with the British Arts and Crafts movement. He was a major contributor to the revival of...

John Dalton

23 John Dalton was an English chemist, physicist, and meteorologist whose work laid the foundations of modern atomic theory and stoichiometric chemistry. Building on earlier ideas about the...

Charles Dickens

23 Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English writer and journalist. He created some of literature's best-known fictional characters, and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian...

William Wallace

22 Sir William Wallace was a Scottish knight who became one of the main leaders during the First War of Scottish Independence.

Oswald of Northumbria

22 Oswald was King of Northumbria from 634 until his death, and is venerated as a saint, of whom there was a particular cult in the Middle Ages.

Robert Baden-Powell, 1st Baron Baden-Powell

22 Lieutenant-General Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell, 1st Baron Baden-Powell, was a British Army officer, writer, founder of The Boy Scouts Association and its first Chief Scout, and founder, with...

Walter Raleigh

21 Sir Walter Raleigh was an English statesman, soldier, writer and explorer. One of the most notable figures of the Elizabethan era, he played a leading part in English colonisation of North America,...

Augustine of Canterbury

20 Augustine of Canterbury was a Christian monk who became the first archbishop of Canterbury in the year 597.

Bobby Moore

20 Robert Frederick Chelsea Moore was an English professional footballer. He captained West Ham United for more than ten years, and was the captain of the England national team that won the 1966 FIFA...

Joseph Lister

20 Joseph Lister, 1st Baron Lister, was an English surgeon, medical scientist, experimental pathologist and pioneer of antiseptic surgery and preventive healthcare. Lister revolutionised the craft of...

Leonard Cheshire

20 Geoffrey Leonard Cheshire, Baron Cheshire,, was a British Royal Air Force pilot, officer and philanthropist.

Robert the Bruce

20 Robert I, popularly known as Robert the Bruce, was King of Scots from 1306 until his death in 1329. Robert led Scotland during the First War of Scottish Independence against England. He fought...

J. J. Thomson

20 Sir Joseph John Thomson was a British physicist. He received the 1906 Nobel Prize in Physics "in recognition of the great merits of his theoretical and experimental investigations on the conduction...

James Chadwick

19 Sir James Chadwick was a British experimental physicist who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1935 for his discovery of the neutron. In 1941, he wrote the final draft of the MAUD Report, which...

Clement of Rome

18 Clement of Rome, also known as Pope Clement I, was the Bishop of Rome in the late first century. He is considered to be the first of the Apostolic Fathers of the Church.

George Orwell

18 Eric Arthur Blair was an English novelist, poet, essayist, journalist, and critic who wrote under the pen name of George Orwell. His work is characterised by lucid prose, social criticism, opposition...

Robert Louis Stevenson

17 Robert Louis Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, essayist, poet and travel writer. He is best known for the novels Treasure Island (1883), Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), and Kidnapped...

Barnes Wallis

17 Sir Barnes Neville Wallis was an English engineer and inventor. He is best known for inventing the bouncing bomb used by the Royal Air Force in Operation Chastise to attack the dams of the Ruhr...

Bartholomew the Apostle

16 Bartholomew was one of the twelve apostles of Jesus according to the New Testament. Most scholars today identify Bartholomew as Nathanael, who appears in the Gospel of John.

Barnabas

16 Barnabas, born Joseph (Ἰωσήφ) or Joses (Ἰωσής), was a prominent Christian disciple, identified as an apostle in Acts 14:14. According to Acts 4:36, he was a Cypriot Levite. He undertook missionary...

Jane Austen

16 Jane Austen was an English writer known primarily for her six novels, which implicitly interpret, critique, and comment on the English landed gentry at the end of the 18th century.

Frank Barlow (historian)

15 Frank Barlow was an English historian, known particularly for biographies of medieval figures. His subjects included Edward the Confessor, Thomas Becket, and William Rufus.

Chad of Mercia

15 Chad was a prominent 7th-century Anglo-Saxon monk. He was an abbot, Bishop of the Northumbrians and then Bishop of the Mercians and Lindsey People. After his death he was known as a saint.

Saint Christopher

15 Saint Christopher is venerated by several Christian denominations. According to these traditions, he was a martyr killed in the reign of the 3rd-century Roman emperor Decius, or alternatively under...

Robin Hood

15 Robin Hood is a legendary heroic outlaw originally depicted in English folklore and subsequently featured in literature, theatre, and cinema. According to legend, he was a highly skilled archer and...

Ernest Rutherford

14 Ernest Rutherford, 1st Baron Rutherford of Nelson, was a New Zealand physicist and chemist who was a pioneering researcher in both atomic and nuclear physics. He has been described as "the father of...

Hilda of Whitby

14 Hilda of Whitby was a saint of the early Church in Britain. She was the founder and first abbess of the monastery at Whitby which was chosen as the venue for the Synod of Whitby in 664. An important...

Frank Whittle

14 Air Commodore Sir Frank Whittle, was an English engineer, inventor and Royal Air Force (RAF) air officer. He is credited with co-creating the turbojet engine. A patent was submitted by Maxime...

Matthew the Apostle

14 Matthew the Apostle was one of the twelve apostles of Jesus. According to Christian traditions, he was also one of the four Evangelists as author of the Gospel of Matthew, and thus is also known as...

Joseph Priestley

14 Joseph Priestley was an English chemist, Unitarian, natural philosopher, separatist theologian, grammarian, multi-subject educator and classical liberal political theorist. He published over 150...

Hadrian

14 Hadrian was Roman emperor from 117 to 138. Hadrian was born in Italica, in the present-day Andalusian province of Seville in southern Spain, an Italic settlement in Hispania Baetica; his gens Aelia...

Roger Penrose

13 Sir Roger Penrose is an English mathematician, mathematical physicist, and philosopher of science. He is Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford, an emeritus fellow...

Agnes of Rome

13 Agnes of Rome was a Roman Christian adolescent who was executed for her faith in the 4th century. She is venerated as a virgin martyr and as a saint in the Catholic Church, Oriental Orthodox Church...

Anthony of Padua

13 Anthony of Padua, OFM, or Anthony of Lisbon; born Fernando Martins de Bulhões was a Portuguese Catholic priest and member of the Order of Friars Minor.

William Wilberforce

13 William Wilberforce was a British politician, philanthropist, and a leader of the movement to abolish the Atlantic slave trade. A native of Kingston upon Hull, Yorkshire, he began his political...

Thomas Edison

13 Thomas Alva Edison was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices in fields such as electric power generation, sound recording, and motion pictures. These inventions, which...

Aneurin Bevan

13 Aneurin "Nye" Bevan PC was a Welsh Labour Party politician, noted for spearheading the creation of the British National Health Service during his tenure as Minister of Health in Clement Attlee's...

Saint Patrick

12 Saint Patrick was a fifth-century Romano-British Christian missionary and bishop in Ireland. Known as the "Apostle of Ireland", he is the primary patron saint of Ireland, the other patron saints...

Simon de Montfort, 6th Earl of Leicester

12 Simon de Montfort, 6th Earl of Leicester, 1st Earl of Chester, also known as Simon V de Montfort, was an English nobleman of French origin and a member of the English peerage, who led the baronial...

Ernest Shackleton

12 Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton was an Anglo-Irish Antarctic explorer who led three British expeditions to the Antarctic. He was one of the principal figures of the period known as the Heroic Age of...

Edward Elgar

11 Sir Edward William Elgar, 1st Baronet, was an English composer, many of whose works have entered the British and international classical concert repertoire. Among his best-known compositions are...

Henry Moseley

11 Henry Gwyn Jeffreys Moseley was an English physicist, whose contribution to the science of physics was the justification from physical laws of the previous empirical and chemical concept of the...

Augustus

11 Augustus, also known as Octavian, was the founder of the Roman Empire and the first Roman emperor from 27 BC until his death in AD 14. The reign of Augustus initiated an imperial cult and an era of...

John Logie Baird

11 John Logie Baird was a Scottish inventor, electrical engineer and innovator who demonstrated the world's first mechanical television system on 26 January 1926. He went on to invent the first publicly...

Benedict of Nursia

11 Benedict of Nursia, often known as Saint Benedict, was a Christian monk. He is famed in the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Lutheran Churches, the Anglican Communion, and Old...

James Prescott Joule

11 James Prescott Joule was an English physicist. Joule studied the nature of heat and discovered its relationship to mechanical work. This led to the law of conservation of energy, which in turn led to...

William IV

10 William IV was King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and King of Hanover from 26 June 1830 until his death in 1837. The third son of George III, William succeeded his elder brother...

Edward Gibbon

10 Edward Gibbon was a British essayist, historian and minor politician. His most important and influential work, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, was published in six volumes...

Edith Cavell

10 Edith Louisa Cavell was a British nurse. She is celebrated for treating wounded soldiers from both sides without discrimination during the First World War and for helping some 200 Allied soldiers...

Edward Jenner

10 Edward Jenner was an English physician and scientist who pioneered the concept of vaccines and created the smallpox vaccine, the world's first vaccine. The terms vaccine and vaccination are derived...

Brigid of Kildare

9 Saint Brigid of Kildare or Saint Brigid of Ireland is the patroness saint of Ireland, and one of its three national saints along with Patrick and Columba. According to medieval Irish hagiographies,...

Charlie Chaplin

9 Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin Jr. was an English comic actor, filmmaker, film editor and composer who rose to fame in the era of silent film. He became a worldwide icon through his screen persona, the...

Lady Jane Grey

9 Lady Jane Grey, also known as Lady Jane Dudley after her marriage, and nicknamed as the "Nine Days Queen", was an English noblewoman who was proclaimed Queen of England and Ireland on 10 July 1553...

Rembrandt

9 Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, mononymously known as Rembrandt, was a Dutch Golden Age painter, printmaker, and draughtsman. He is generally considered one of the greatest visual artists in the...

Ella Fitzgerald

8 Ella Jane Fitzgerald was an American singer, songwriter and composer, sometimes referred to as the "First Lady of Song", "Queen of Jazz", and "Lady Ella". She was noted for her purity of tone,...

Freddie Mercury

8 Freddie Mercury was a British singer and songwriter who achieved global fame as the lead vocalist and pianist of the rock band Queen. Regarded as one of the greatest singers in the history of rock...

Guglielmo Marconi

8 Guglielmo Giovanni Maria Marconi, 1st Marquess, was an Italian radio-frequency engineer, inventor, and politician known for his creation of a practical radio wave-based wireless telegraph system....

Saint Joseph

8 According to the canonical Gospels, Joseph was a 1st-century Jewish man of Nazareth who was married to Mary, the mother of Jesus, and was the legal father of Jesus.

Aidan of Lindisfarne

8 Aidan of Lindisfarne was an Irish monk and missionary credited with converting the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity in Northumbria. He founded a ministry cathedral on the island of Lindisfarne, known as...

Peter Paul Rubens

8 Sir Peter Paul Rubens was a Flemish artist and diplomat. He is considered the most influential artist of the Flemish Baroque tradition. Rubens's highly charged compositions reference erudite aspects...

Jude Thaddeus the Apostle

7 Jude the Apostle was one of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus according to the New Testament. He is generally identified as Thaddeus and is also variously called Judas Thaddaeus, Jude Thaddaeus, Jude of...

Franklin D. Roosevelt

7 Franklin Delano Roosevelt, also known as FDR, was the 32nd president of the US, serving from 1933 until his death in 1945. He is the longest-serving US president and the only one to have served more...

Homer

7 Homer was an ancient Greek poet who is widely credited as the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, two epic poems that are foundational works of ancient Greek literature. Although his life and...

Constantine the Great

7 Constantine I, also known as Constantine the Great, was a Roman emperor from AD 306 to 337 and the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity. He played a pivotal role in elevating the status of...

Robert H. Goddard

7 Robert Hutchings Goddard was an American physicist, inventor, and engineer credited with creating and building the world's first liquid-fueled rocket, which was successfully launched on March 16,...

Eric Morecambe

7 John Eric Bartholomew, known by his stage name Eric Morecambe, was an English comedian who together with Ernie Wise formed the double act Morecambe and Wise. The partnership lasted from 1941 until...

Aldous Huxley

7 Aldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and philosopher. His bibliography spans nearly 50 books, including non-fiction works, as well as essays, narratives and poems.

Maria Fitzherbert

6 Maria Anne Fitzherbert was a longtime companion of George, Prince of Wales. In 1785, they married secretly in a ceremony that was invalid under English civil law because his father, King George III,...

Ada Lovelace

6 Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace, also known as Ada Lovelace, was an English mathematician and writer chiefly known for work on Charles Babbage's proposed mechanical general-purpose computer,...

Gottlieb Daimler

6 Gottlieb Wilhelm Daimler was a German engineer, industrial designer and industrialist. He was a pioneer of internal-combustion engines and automobile development. He invented the high-speed liquid...

Fridtjof Nansen

6 Fridtjof Wedel-Jarlsberg Nansen was a Norwegian polymath and Nobel Peace Prize laureate. He gained prominence at various points in his life as an explorer, a scientist, a diplomat, a humanitarian,...

William Tyndale

6 William Tyndale was an English Biblical scholar and linguist who became a leading figure in the Protestant Reformation in the years leading up to his execution. He translated much of the Bible into...

Francis Bacon

6 Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Alban was an English philosopher and statesman who served as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England under King James I. Bacon argued for the importance of...

Douglas Bader

6 Group Captain Sir Douglas Robert Steuart Bader, was a Royal Air Force flying ace during the Second World War, who achieved great success despite loss of the lower part of both his legs after a 1931...

Lady Margaret Beaufort

5 Lady Margaret Beaufort was a major figure in the Wars of the Roses of the late 15th century, and mother of Henry VII of England, the first Tudor monarch. She was also a second cousin of Henry VI,...

Lancelot

5 Lancelot du Lac, alternatively written as Launcelot and other variants, is a popular character in the Arthurian legend's chivalric romance tradition. He is typically depicted as King Arthur's close...

Margaret of Anjou

5 Margaret of Anjou was Queen of England by marriage to King Henry VI from 1445 to 1461 and again from 1470 to 1471. Through marriage, she was also nominally Queen of France from 1445 to 1453. Born in...

Louis Pasteur

5 Louis Pasteur was a French chemist, pharmacist, and microbiologist renowned for his discoveries of the principles of vaccination, microbial fermentation, and pasteurization, the last of which was...

Pancras of Rome

4 Pancras was a Roman citizen who converted to Christianity and was beheaded for his faith at the age of fourteen, around the year 304. His name is Greek, meaning 'all-powerful'.

Alfred Nobel

4 Alfred Bernhard Nobel was a Swedish chemist, inventor, engineer, and businessman. He is known for inventing dynamite, as well as having bequeathed his fortune to establish the Nobel Prizes. He also...

Julius Caesar

4 Gaius Julius Caesar was a Roman general, statesman, and author who was the dictator of the Roman Republic almost continuously from 49 BC until his assassination in 44 BC. A member of the First...

Hercules

4 Hercules is the Roman equivalent of the Greek divine hero Heracles, son of Jupiter and the mortal Alcmena. In classical mythology, Hercules is famous for his strength and for his numerous far-ranging...

Erasmus

4 Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus, commonly known in English as Erasmus of Rotterdam or simply Erasmus, was a Dutch humanist, Christian theologian, and pioneering philologist and educationalist. He was,...

Robert Boyle

4 Robert Boyle was an Anglo-Irish natural philosopher, chemist, physicist, alchemist and inventor. Boyle is largely regarded today as the first modern chemist, and therefore one of the founders of...

Marie Curie

4 Maria Salomea Skłodowska Curie, better known as Marie Curie, was a Polish and naturalised-French physicist and chemist. She shared the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics with her husband Pierre Curie "for...

Charles Babbage

4 Charles Babbage was an English polymath. A mathematician, philosopher, inventor and mechanical engineer, Babbage originated the concept of a digital programmable computer.

Arthur Eddington

4 Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington, was an English astrophysicist and mathematician. The Eddington limit, the natural limit to the luminosity of stars, or the radiation generated by accretion onto a...

Saint Dominic

4 Saint Dominic, also known as Dominic de Guzmán, was a Castilian Catholic priest and the founder of the Dominican Order. He is the patron saint of astronomers and natural scientists, and he and his...

James Watt

4 James Watt was a Scottish inventor, engineer and chemist who improved on Thomas Newcomen's 1712 Newcomen steam engine with his Watt steam engine in 1776, which was fundamental to the changes brought...

Edward the Confessor

4 Edward the Confessor was King of the English from 1042 until his death in 1066. He was the last reigning monarch of the House of Wessex.

Saint Neot (monk)

4 Neot was an English monk. Born in the first half of the ninth century, he lived as a monk at Glastonbury Abbey. He preferred to perform his religious devotions privately, and he later went to live an...

Nelson Mandela

4 Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was a South African anti-apartheid activist and statesman who was the first president of South Africa from 1994 to 1999. He was the country's first Black head of state and...

Raphael

4 Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, now generally known in English as Raphael, was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form, ease of composition,...

Amy Johnson

4 Amy Johnson was a pioneering English pilot who was the first woman to fly solo from London to Australia.

W. B. Yeats

4 William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet, dramatist, writer and literary critic who was one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival...

Margaret Thatcher

4 Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, was a British stateswoman who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and Leader of the Conservative Party from 1975 to 1990. She...

Ernest Hemingway

3 Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American novelist, short-story writer and journalist. Known for an economical, understated style that influenced later 20th-century writers, he has been romanticized...

Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon

3 Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon, was the younger daughter of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, and the only sibling of Queen Elizabeth II. Born when her parents were the...

Botolph of Thorney

3 Botolph of Thorney was an English abbot and saint. He is regarded as the patron saint of boundaries, and by extension, of trade and travel, as well as various aspects of farming. His feast day is...

Joseph Haydn

3 Franz Joseph Haydn was an Austrian composer of the Classical period. He was pivotal in the evolution of chamber music forms like the string quartet and piano trio. His contributions to musical form...

Steve Redgrave

3 Sir Steven Geoffrey Redgrave is a British retired rower who won gold medals at five consecutive Olympic Games from 1984 to 2000. He has also won three Commonwealth Games gold medals and nine World...

Anne McLaren

3 Dame Anne Laura Dorinthea McLaren, was a British scientist who was a leading figure in developmental biology. She paved the way for women in science and her work helped lead to human in vitro...

Robert Adam

3 Robert Adam was a British neoclassical architect, interior designer and furniture designer. He was the son of William Adam (1689–1748), Scotland's foremost architect of the time, and trained under...

Aleister Crowley

3 Aleister Crowley was an English occultist, ceremonial magician, poet, novelist, mountaineer, and painter. He founded the religion of Thelema, identifying himself as the prophet entrusted with guiding...

Thomas More

3 Sir Thomas More, venerated in the Catholic Church as a martyr and saint, was an English lawyer, judge, social philosopher, author, statesman, theologian and noted Renaissance humanist. He also served...

Gabriel

3 In Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and other Abrahamic religions, Gabriel or even Cebrail (Djebraïl) in some cultures, is an archangel with the power to announce God's will to humankind as the...

Charles Lindbergh

3 Charles Augustus Lindbergh was an American aviator, military officer, and author. On May 20–21, 1927, he made the first nonstop flight from New York to Paris, a distance of 3,600 miles (5,800 km),...

Owain Glyndŵr

3 Owain ap Gruffudd Fychan or Owain Glyndŵr was a Welsh aristocrat, soldier and military commander in the late Middle Ages, who led a 15-year-long Welsh revolt with the aim of ending English rule in...

Guy Fawkes

3 Guy Fawkes, also known as Guido Fawkes while fighting for the Spanish, was a member of a group of provincial English Catholics involved in the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605. He was born and educated...

Edmond Halley

3 Edmond Halley was an English astronomer, mathematician and physicist. He was the second Astronomer Royal in Britain, succeeding John Flamsteed in 1720.

Ælfheah of Canterbury

3 Ælfheah, more commonly known today as Alphege, was an Anglo-Saxon Bishop of Winchester, later Archbishop of Canterbury from 1006 to 1012. He became an anchorite before being elected abbot of Bath...

Horace

3 Quintus Horatius Flaccus, commonly known in the English-speaking world as Horace, was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus. The rhetorician Quintilian regarded his Odes as the...

David Attenborough

3 Sir David Frederick Attenborough is an English broadcaster, natural historian and writer. His presenting career began as host of Zoo Quest in 1954, and has spanned eight decades; it includes the nine...

Stanley Matthews

3 Sir Stanley Matthews was an English footballer who played as an outside right. Often regarded as one of the greatest players of the British game and one of the greatest players of all time, he is the...

George V

3 George V was King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Emperor of India, from 6 May 1910 until his death in 1936.

Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor

3 Andrew Albert Christian Edward Mountbatten-Windsor, formerly Prince Andrew, Duke of York, is the third child and second son of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, and a younger...

Paul Dirac

3 Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac was a British theoretical physicist who is considered to be one of the founders of quantum mechanics. Dirac laid the foundations for both quantum electrodynamics and quantum...

Francis Crick

3 Francis Harry Compton Crick was an English molecular biologist, biophysicist, and neuroscientist. He, James Watson, Rosalind Franklin, and Maurice Wilkins played crucial roles in deciphering the...

Claude Monet

3 Oscar-Claude Monet was a French painter and founder of Impressionism who is seen as a key precursor to modernism, especially in his attempts to paint nature as he perceived it. During his long...

Ferdinand Magellan

3 Ferdinand Magellan was a Portuguese explorer best known for planning and leading the 1519–22 Spanish expedition to the East Indies. During this expedition, he discovered the Strait of Magellan,...

Saint Olaf

3 Saint Olaf, also called Olaf the Holy, Olaf II, Olaf Haraldsson, and Olaf the Stout or "Large", was King of Norway from 1015 to 1028. Son of Harald Grenske, a petty king in Vestfold, Norway, he was...

Cenydd

3 Saint Cenydd, sometimes anglicised as Saint Kenneth, was a Christian hermit on the Gower Peninsula in Wales, where he is credited with the foundation of the church at Llangennith.

Alan Turing

3 Alan Mathison Turing was an English mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher and theoretical biologist. He was highly influential in the development of theoretical...

Dogmael

3 Saint Dogmael was a 6th-century Welsh monk and preacher who is considered a saint. His feast day is 14 June.

Emmeline Pankhurst

3 Emmeline Pankhurst was a British political activist who organised the British suffragette movement and helped women to win the right to vote in Great Britain and Ireland in 1918. In 1999, Time named...

William Barefoot

3 William Barefoot was a notable local politician in south-east London during the early part of the 20th century.