Famous People in History

Some individuals rise in stature and change the course of history through their extraordinary efforts. These are people who followed their heart and believed in their own genius. In this article, I present a list of such famous people in history that changed the world, challenged established thought, broke the shackles of conformity and dared to be themselves. If you are looking for inspiration, it can be found in the biographies of these great men and women who have influenced generations with their thinking.

I choose to present the names of these famous personalities in world history according to the field of human culture to which they contributed or the role they played in shaping history. It is singularly impossible for me to present even short biographies of these great men and women. I only provide a listing of the most famous people in history and ask you to 'Google' for more knowledge regarding the life and times of these extraordinary men and women.

Famous People in History Who Changed the World
Here is a list of some of the most famous people in history who broke all rules of conformity and created new paradigms of thought. These personalities have been listed together according to their fields of contribution.

Famous People: Great Leaders of Men

• Alexander the Great
• Genghis Khan
• Julius Ceaser
• Emperor Ashoka
• Saladin
• Catherine the Great of Russia
• Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt
• Emperor Qin Shi Huang
• Attila the Hun
• Queen Elizabeth I
• Queen Victoria
• Peter I of Russia
• Horatio Nelson
• Oliver Cromwell
• Mahatma Gandhi
• Winston Churchill
• Napoleon Bonaparte
• Franklin.D.Roosevelt
• Abraham Lincoln
• Indira Gandhi
• Ho Chi Minh
• John F Kennedy
• Nelson Mandela
• Queen Elizabeth II
• Theodore Roosevelt
• Vladimir Lenin
• Benjamin Franklin
• Ariel Sharon
• Henri La Fontaine
• Jacques Chirac
• Thomas Jefferson
• Aung San Suu Kyi
• Fidel Castro
• Kofi Annan
• Henry Kissinger
• Yasser Arafat
• George Washington

Famous People: Religious Figures

• Jesus Christ
• Buddha
• Lord Krishna
• Moses
• Prophet Muhammad
• Confucius
• Martin Luther
• John The Baptist
• Mother Teresa
• Saint Paul
• Sri Aurobindo
• St Francis of Assisi
• Swami Vivekananda
• Ramkrishna Paramhansa
• John Calvin
• Ayatollah Khomeini
• Desmond Tutu
• Zoroaster
• Martin Luther King Jr
• Lao-tzu
• Dalai Lama

Famous People: Mathematicians, Scientists & Inventors

• Nicolaus Copernicus
• Galileo Galilei
• Pythagoras
• Euclid
• Leonardo Da Vinci
• Joseph Louis Lagrange
• Leonhard Euler
• Albert Einstein
• Richard Feynman
• Neils Bohr
• Paul Dirac
• Alexander Graham Bell
• Heinrich Hertz
• Satyendranath Bose
• Thomas Edison
• Tim Berners-Lee
• Archimedes
• Srinivasa Ramanujan Iyengar
• Stefan Banach
• Joseph Fourier
• John von Neumann
• Aryabhatta
• Sir Isaac Newton
• Carl F. Gauss
• Henri Poincaré
• Pierre de Fermat
• David Hilbert
• Pierre-Simon Laplace
• John Bardeen
• Henri Becquerel
• Hans Bethe
• James Chadwick
• Hendrik Casimir
• James Clark Maxwell
• Enrico Fermi
• Robert Boyle
• Wright Brothers
• Roberts Kearns
• Jack Kilby
• Charles Darwin
• Stephen Hawking
• Abdus Salam
• Steven Weinberg

Famous People: Writers, Poets & Philosophers

• Ernest Hemingway
• Hans Christian Anderson
• Dante Alighieri
• Jalalludin Rumi
• Samuel Beckett
• Anton Chekhov
• Ray Bradbury
• Leo Tolstoy
• Fyodor Dostoyevsky
• Isaac Asimov
• H.G.Wells
• Arthur.C.Clarke
• Pearl Buck
• Jeffrey Archer
• George Byron
• Oscar Wilde
• Albert Camus
• Truman Capote
• Lewis Carroll
• Joseph Conrad
• Harper Lee
• T.S.Eliot
• J.R.R.Tolkien
• Salman Rushdie
• V.S.Naipaul
• Paulo Coelho
• Sidney Sheldon
• J.K.Rowling
• W.B.Yeats
• Alfred Tennyson
• Robert Frost
• Rabindranath Tagore
• Khalil Gibran
• Mario Puzo
• Saint Tukaram
• Saint Dnyaneshwar
• Munshi Premchand
• Mark Twain
• P G Wodehouse
• Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Rudyard Kipling
• Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
• Virginia Woolf
• Victor Hugo
• William Shakespeare
• William Maugham
• Walt Whitman
• Sylvia Plath
• Pablo Neruda
• Emily Dickinson
• John Keats
• Robert Louis Stevenson
• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
• Karl Marx
• Friedrich Engels
• Bernanrd Shaw
• Friedrich Nietzsche
• Immanuel Kant
• Jean-Paul Sartre
• David Hume
• Karl Popper
• Adam Smith
• Francis Bacon
• Socrates
• Bertrand Russell
• Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau
• Chānakya
• W.H.Auden

Famous People: Explorers & Adventurers

• Sir Edmund Hillary
• Tenzing Norgay
• George Mallory
• Marco Polo
• David Livingstone
• Ferdinand Magellan
• Amerigo Vespucci
• Christopher Columbus
• Roald Amundsen
• Frederick Cook
• Admiral Zheng He
• James Cook
• Neil Armstrong
• Yuri Gagarin
• Charles Augustus Lindbergh
• Amelia Earhart
• Wiley Post

Famous People: Actors, Actresses & Directors

• Elizabeth Taylor
• Sidney Poitier
• Clark Gable
• Marilyn Monroe
• Marlon Brando
• Anthony Hopkins
• Sean Connery
• Harrison Ford
• Humphrey Bogart
• Ingrid Bergman
• Alfred Hitchcock
• Al Pacino
• Robin Williams
• Robert De Niro
• Tom Hanks
• Steven Spielberg
• Francisco Ford Coppola
• Robert Zemeckis
• Christopher Nolan
• Angelina Jolie
• Cameron Diaz
• Meryl Streep
• Jack Nicholson
• Morgan Freeman
• Jim Carrey
• Rachel Weisz
• Kate Winslet
• Will Smith
• Kevin Costner
• Russell Crowe
• Leonardo Di Caprio
• Jude Law
• Robert Downey Jr.
• Charlie Chaplin
• Cary Grant
• Paul Newman
• Dustin Hoffman
• Richard Burton
• Denzel Washington
• Sean Penn
• Kevin Spacey
• Michael Douglas
• Tom Cruise
• Ben Kingsley

Famous People: Industrialists & Entrepreneurs

• Bill Gates
• Steve Jobs
• Warren Buffet
• Henry Ford
• John D. Rockefeller
• Andrew Carnegie
• Howard Hughes
• George Eastman
• Carlos Slim Helú
• Larry Page & Sergey Brin
• Mark Zuckerberg
• Richard Branson
• Azim Premji
• Dhirubhai Ambani
• J.R.D.Tata
• Lakshmi Mittal

This is a rather representative list of famous people in ancient and recent history. It is simply not possible to list each and every one of the famous personalities as it's endless. I didn't even get started with famous sportsmen, singers and musicians. Every one of these famous people in history symbolize the phenomenal power of the human will and creativity. If you wish to be added to such a list of famous people who changed the world, one day, I say to you, 'Carpe Diem (Seize the Day)' and challenge the impossible!