George Gordon Noel Byron

Byron, George Gordon Noel, 6th Baron Byron (1788-1824), known as Lord Byron, English poet, who was one of the most important and versatile writers of the romantic movement (see Romanticism).

Byron was born in London on January 22, 1788, and educated at Harrow School and the University of Cambridge. He succeeded to the title and estates of his granduncle William, 5th Baron Byron, upon William’s death in 1798. Lord Byron adopted the name Noel as his third given name in 1822, in order to receive an inheritance from his mother-in-law.

In 1807 a volume of Byron’s poems, Hours of Idleness, was published. An adverse review of this work in the Edinburgh Review prompted a satirical reply from Byron in heroic couplets, entitled English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (1809). In 1809 Byron took his seat in the House of Lords. Also in 1809 he began two years of travel in Portugal, Spain, and Greece.
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Buffalo Bill

Buffalo Bill, real name William Frederick Cody (1846-1917), American guide, scout, and showman, born in Scott County, Iowa. In 1854 his family moved to Kansas, where his father died a few years later. Cody briefly attended school in 1859. At the age of 14, he became one of the riders of the newly established Pony Express. When the American Civil War began in 1861, Cody served as a scout and guide for the Union Army. In 1863 he enlisted in the Seventh Kansas Cavalry as an army scout. At the close of the war in 1865 he contracted with the Kansas Pacific Railroad to furnish buffalo meat to the workers on the line. His claim of killing more than 4000 buffalo in less than 18 months earned him the nickname “Buffalo Bill.” He served as an army scout again from 1868 to 1872. In 1872 the United States government awarded Cody the Congressional Medal of Honor but revoked it 44 years later because he had not been a member of the military at the time the award was given.
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Buddha

Buddha (563?-483? BC), Indian philosopher and the founder of Buddhism, born in Kapilavastu, India, just inside present-day Nepal. He was the son of the head of the Sakya warrior caste, with the private name of Siddhartha; in later life he was known also as Sakyamuni (Sage of the Sakyas). The name Gautama Buddha is a combination of the family name Gautama and the appellation Buddha, meaning “Enlightened One.”

All the surviving accounts of Buddha’s life were written many years after his death by idealizing followers rather than by objective historians. Consequently, it is difficult to separate facts from the great mass of myth and legend in which they are embedded. From the available evidence, Buddha apparently showed an early inclination to meditation and reflection, displeasing his father, who wanted him to be a warrior and ruler rather than a religious philosopher. Yielding to his father’s wishes, he married at an early age and participated in the worldly life of the court. Buddha found his carefree, self-indulgent existence dull, and after a while he left home and began wandering in search of enlightenment. One day in 533, according to tradition, he encountered an aged man, a sick man, and a corpse, and he suddenly and deeply realized that suffering is the common lot of humankind. He then came upon a mendicant monk, calm and serene, whereupon he determined to adopt his way of life and forsake family, wealth, and power in the quest for truth. This decision, known in Buddhism as the Great Renunciation, is celebrated by Buddhists as a turning point in history. Gautama was then 29 years old, according to tradition.
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Marcus Junius Brutus

Brutus, Marcus Junius (85?-42 BC), Roman political leader, son-in-law of the Roman philosopher Marcus Porcius Cato the Younger, born in Rome, and educated in law. During the civil war between Pompey the Great and Julius Caesar, Brutus supported Pompey. After Caesar’s victory at Pharsalus in 48 BC, Brutus was pardoned and taken into Caesar’s favor. He became governor of Cisalpine Gaul in 46 BC and praetor of Rome two years later. During the spring of 44 BC, however, he joined the Roman general Gaius Cassius Longinus in a conspiracy against Caesar. Together they were the principal assassins of Caesar. Brutus then fled to Macedonia, raised an army among the Greeks, and joined Cassius in Asia Minor to fight for the Roman Republic. At the First Battle of Philippi (42), he was successful, but Cassius was defeated. Twenty days later his army was defeated by troops led by Mark Antony and Caesar’s heir, Octavian, who later became emperor. Brutus committed suicide.

Lucius Junius Brutus

Brutus, Lucius Junius (flourished 6th century BC), one of the founders of the Roman Republic. According to legend, he feigned idiocy in order to escape being put to death by his uncle, the legendary Roman king Lucius Tarquinius Superbus. Brutus and the two sons of Tarquinius, visiting the Delphic oracle, were told that he who first kissed his mother would be the next king of Rome. Back in Italy, Brutus pretended to stumble and kissed “Mother Earth.” He then waited for a favorable opportunity to lead a revolt against the king, and, about 509 BC, found it in the indignation of the people following the rape of Lucretia, wife of the king’s nephew, by Sextus, the king’s son. The Tarquins were driven from Rome, a republican form of government was adopted, and Brutus was elected one of the first two consuls. Legend also has it that Brutus killed his two sons because they conspired to restore the Tarquins.

Louis Braille

Braille, Louis (1809-52), French teacher of the blind, born in Coupvray. He himself was blind from the age of three and in 1818 went as a foundling to the National Institute for the Young Blind in Paris. Soon showing marked ability in both science and music, he became famous in Paris as an organist and violoncellist. In 1828 Braille began teaching the blind in the institute, and the following year he conceived the idea of modifying the Barbier “point writing” system, used for coded army messages, to enable the blind to read. Point writing consists of embossed dots and dashes on cardboard; the Braille system derived from it is used successfully today, in slightly modified form, in many countries.
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Sandro Botticelli

Botticelli, Sandro, real name Alessandro di Mariano Filipepi (1445-1510), one of the leading painters of the Florentine Renaissance. He developed a highly personal style characterized by elegant execution, a sense of melancholy, and a strong emphasis on line; details appear as sumptuous still lifes.

Botticelli was born in Florence, the son of a tanner. His nickname was derived from Botticello (”little barrel”), either the nickname of his elder brother or the name of the goldsmith to whom Sandro was first apprenticed. Later he served an apprenticeship with the painter Fra Filippo Lippi. He worked with the painter and engraver Antonio del Pollaiuolo, from whom he gained his sense of line; he was also influenced by Andrea del Verrocchio.
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Daniel Bernoulli

Bernoulli, Daniel (1700-82), Dutch-born Swiss scientist, who discovered basic principles of fluid behavior. He was the son of Johann Bernoulli and the nephew of Jakob Bernoulli, both of whom made major contributions to the early development of calculus.

Bernoulli was born in Groningen on January 29, 1700, and took an early interest in mathematics. Although he earned a medical degree in 1721, he became a professor of mathematics at the Russian Academy in Saint Petersburg in 1725. He later taught experimental philosophy, anatomy, and botany at the universities of Groningen and Basel, Switzerland.
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Alexander Graham Bell

Bell, Alexander Graham (1847-1922), American inventor and teacher of the deaf, most famous for his invention of the telephone.

Bell was born on March 3, 1847, in Edinburgh, Scotland, and educated at the universities of Edinburgh and London. He immigrated to Canada in 1870 and to the United States in 1871. In the United States he began teaching deaf-mutes, publicizing the system called visible speech. The system, which was developed by his father, the Scottish educator Alexander Melville Bell, shows how the lips, tongue, and throat are used in the articulation of sound. In 1872 Bell founded a school for deaf-mutes in Boston, Massachusetts. The school subsequently became part of Boston University, where Bell was appointed professor of vocal physiology. He became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1882.
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Ludwig van Beethoven

Beethoven, Ludwig van (1770-1827), German composer, generally considered one of the greatest composers in the Western tradition. Born in Bonn, Beethoven was reared in stimulating, although unhappy, surroundings. His early signs of musical talent were subjected to the capricious discipline of his father, a singer in the court chapel. In 1789, because of his father’s alcoholism, the young Beethoven became a court musician in order to support his family. His early compositions under the tutelage of German composer Christian Gottlob Neefe-particularly the funeral cantata on the death of Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II in 1790-signaled an important talent, and it was planned that Beethoven study in Vienna, Austria, with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Although Mozart’s death in 1791 prevented this, Beethoven went to Vienna in 1792 and became a pupil of Austrian composer Joseph Haydn.

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