The Americans who mattered, briefly.
Presidents and pamphleteers, chemists and center fielders, organizers and con artists — each life in a few hundred words, placed in its era and linked to the rest. 468 published, 973 on the roster.
◷ Browse the timeline All 45 presidentsPresidents, lawmakers, judges, diplomats and commanders — the people who ran the country and argued about how.
Abolitionists, suffragists, organizers and advocates who changed what Americans were entitled to.
Researchers, physicians and mathematicians who worked out how the world and the body behave.
Inventors, engineers and architects who built the machines, networks and skylines.
Founders and financiers on one side, organizers and union leaders on the other — and the fights between them.
Novelists, poets, musicians, actors, directors and designers who made the country's culture.
Journalists, publishers, scholars, teachers and preachers who shaped what Americans knew and believed.
Explorers, aviators, astronauts and athletes — Americans who went furthest, fastest or highest.
Assassins, demagogues, gangsters and frauds. Influence is not the same as merit, and this corpus records both.
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Michael Jordan b. 1963Frontier & SportWidely regarded as the greatest basketball player of all time, who became a global marketing phenomenon.
Kurt Gödel 1906–1978Science & MedicineProved the incompleteness theorems and spent his later career at the Institute for Advanced Study.
Ulysses S. Grant 1822–1885Government & Politics18th President and Union Army general whose leadership was decisive in winning the Civil War.
John Lewis 1940–2020Reform & RightsFreedom Rider and congressman whose activism was central to the civil-rights movement and voting-rights legislation.
Neil Armstrong 1930–2012Frontier & SportAstronaut who commanded Apollo 11 and became the first person to set foot on the lunar surface.
John Brown 1800–1859Reform & RightsMilitant abolitionist whose raid on Harpers Ferry sharpened sectional conflict preceding the Civil War.Recently added
William Westmoreland 1914–2005Government & PoliticsCommander in Vietnam whose attrition strategy and optimistic troop estimates collided with the Tet Offensive.
Bob Dole 1923–2021Government & PoliticsWounded veteran and Senate leader who helped write the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Ross Perot 1930–2019Government & PoliticsData-processing billionaire whose 1992 independent run won nearly a fifth of the vote.
Alger Hiss 1904–1996Crime & NotorietyState Department official whose perjury conviction made Richard Nixon's career and split American opinion for decades.
Leon Czolgosz 1873–1901Crime & NotorietyAnarchist whose assassination of William McKinley put Theodore Roosevelt in the White House.
John Hay 1838–1905Government & PoliticsLincoln's young secretary who lived to run American foreign policy and write the Open Door notes.