Portal:Biography
The Biography Portal
A biography, or simply bio, is a detailed description of a person's life. It involves more than just basic facts like education, work, relationships, and death; it portrays a person's experience of these life events. Unlike a profile or curriculum vitae (résumé), a biography presents a subject's life story, highlighting various aspects of their life, including intimate details of experience, and may include an analysis of the subject's personality.
Biographical works are usually non-fiction, but fiction can also be used to portray a person's life. One in-depth form of biographical coverage is called legacy writing. Works in diverse media, from literature to film, form the genre known as biography.
An authorized biography is written with the permission, cooperation, and at times, participation of a subject or a subject's heirs. An autobiography is written by the person themselves, sometimes with the assistance of a collaborator or ghostwriter. (Full article...)
Featured biographies –
Featured articles are displayed here, which represent some of the best content on English Wikipedia.
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Ian David Craig OAM (12 June 1935 – 16 November 2014) was an Australian cricketer who represented the Australian national team in 11 Tests between 1953 and 1958. A right-handed batsman, Craig holds the records for being the youngest Australian to make a first-class double century, appear in a Test match, and captain his country in a Test match. Burdened by the public expectation of being the "next Bradman", Craig's career did not fulfil its early promise. In 1957, he was appointed Australian captain, leading a young team as part of a regeneration plan following the decline of the national team in the mid-1950s, but a loss of form and illness forced him out of the team after one season. Craig made a comeback, but work commitments forced him to retire from first-class cricket at only 26 years of age.
A teenage prodigy, Craig made his first-class debut for New South Wales in the last match of the 1951–52 Australian season, aged only 16. The following summer, Craig earned comparisons to Don Bradman, generally regarded as the greatest batsman of all time, after becoming the youngest player to score a first-class double century, an unbeaten 213 against the touring South African team. The innings secured Craig's Test debut in the final match against South Africa, making him the youngest male player to represent Australia in a Test, aged 17 years and 239 days. Craig started his Test career well, scoring 53 and 47 to ensure his selection for the 1953 Ashes tour, making him the youngest Australian player to tour England. Craig's arrival precipitated media comparisons to the arrival and success of Bradman in 1930, but he performed poorly and was not selected for any of the Tests. (Full article...)
Otto Ernst Lindemann (28 March 1894 – 27 May 1941) was a German Kapitän zur See (naval captain). He was the only commander of the battleship Bismarck during its eight months of service in World War II.
Lindemann joined the German Imperial Navy (German: Kaiserliche Marine) in 1913, and after his basic military training, served on a number of warships during World War I as a wireless telegraphy officer. On board SMS Bayern, he participated in Operation Albion in 1917. After World War I, he served in various staff and naval gunnery training positions. One year after the outbreak of World War II, he was appointed commander of the battleship Bismarck, at the time the largest warship in commission anywhere in the world and the pride of the Kriegsmarine (Nazi Germany's navy). (Full article...)
Edmund I or Eadmund I (920/921 – 26 May 946) was King of the English from 27 October 939 until his death in 946. He was the elder son of King Edward the Elder and his third wife, Queen Eadgifu, and a grandson of King Alfred the Great. After Edward died in 924, he was succeeded by his eldest son, Edmund's half-brother Æthelstan. Edmund was crowned after Æthelstan died childless in 939. He had two sons, Eadwig and Edgar, by his first wife Ælfgifu, and none by his second wife Æthelflæd. His sons were young children when he was killed in a brawl with an outlaw at Pucklechurch in Gloucestershire, and he was succeeded by his younger brother Eadred, who died in 955 and was followed by Edmund's sons in succession.
Æthelstan had succeeded as the king of England south of the Humber and he became the first king of all England when he conquered Viking-ruled York in 927, but after his death Anlaf Guthfrithson was accepted as King of York and extended Viking rule to the Five Boroughs of north-east Mercia. Edmund was initially forced to accept the reverse, the first major setback for the West Saxon dynasty since Alfred's reign, but he was able to recover his position following Anlaf's death in 941. In 942, Edmund took back control of the Five Boroughs and in 944 he regained control over the whole of England when he expelled the Viking kings of York. Eadred had to deal with further revolts when he became king, and York was not finally conquered until 954. Æthelstan had achieved a dominant position over other British kings and Edmund maintained this, perhaps apart from Scotland. The north Welsh king Idwal Foel may have allied with the Vikings as he was killed by the English in 942. The British kingdom of Strathclyde may also have sided with the Vikings as Edmund ravaged it in 945 and then ceded it to Malcolm I of Scotland. Edmund also continued his brother's friendly relations with Continental rulers, several of whom were married to his half-sisters. (Full article...)
Ellen Cicely Wilkinson (8 October 1891 – 6 February 1947) was a British Labour Party politician who served as Minister of Education from July 1945 until her death. Earlier in her career, as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Jarrow, she became a national figure when she played a prominent role in the 1936 Jarrow March of the town's unemployed to London to petition for the right to work. Although unsuccessful at that time, the March provided an iconic image for the 1930s and helped to form post-Second World War attitudes to unemployment and social justice.
Wilkinson was born into a poor though ambitious Manchester family and she embraced socialism at an early age. After graduating from the University of Manchester, she worked for a women's suffrage organisation and later as a trade union officer. Inspired by the Russian Revolution of 1917, Wilkinson joined the British Communist Party, and preached revolutionary socialism while seeking constitutional routes to political power through the Labour Party. She was elected Labour MP for Middlesbrough East in 1924, and supported the 1926 General Strike. In the 1929–31 Labour government, she served as Parliamentary Private Secretary to the junior Health Minister. She made a connection with a young female member and activist Jennie Lee. Following her defeat at Middlesbrough in 1931, Wilkinson became a prolific journalist and writer, before returning to parliament as Jarrow's MP in 1935. She was a strong advocate for the Republican government in the Spanish Civil War, and made several visits to the battle zones. (Full article...)
Andrew William "Nicky" Barr, OBE, MC, DFC & Bar (10 December 1915 – 12 June 2006) was a member of the Australian national rugby union team, who became a fighter ace in the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) during World War II. He was credited with 12 aerial victories, all scored flying the Curtiss P-40 fighter. Born in New Zealand, Barr was raised in Victoria and first represented the state in rugby in 1936. Selected to play for Australia in the United Kingdom in 1939, he had just arrived in England when the tour was cancelled following the outbreak of war. He joined the RAAF in 1940 and was posted to North Africa with No. 3 Squadron in September 1941. The squadron's highest-scoring ace, he attained his first three victories in the P-40 Tomahawk and the remainder in the P-40 Kittyhawk.
Barr's achievements as a combat pilot earned him the Distinguished Flying Cross and Bar. Shortly after taking command of No. 3 Squadron in May 1942, he was shot down and captured by Axis forces, and incarcerated in Italy. He escaped and assisted other Allied fugitives to safety, receiving for his efforts the Military Cross, a rare honour for an RAAF pilot. Repatriated to England, he saw action during the invasion of Normandy in June 1944 before returning to Australia as chief instructor with No. 2 Operational Training Unit. After the war he became a company director, and rejoined the RAAF as an active reserve officer from 1951 to 1953. From the early 1960s he was heavily involved in the oilseed industry, for which he was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1983. He died in 2006, aged 90. (Full article...)
Terrance Stanley Fox CC OD (July 28, 1958 – June 28, 1981) was a Canadian athlete, humanitarian, and cancer research activist. In 1980, having had one leg amputated due to cancer, he embarked on a cross-Canada run to raise money and awareness for cancer research. The annual Terry Fox Run, first held in 1981, has grown to involve millions of participants in over 60 countries and is now the world's largest one-day fundraiser for cancer research; over C$850 million has been raised in his name as of September 2022.
Fox was a distance runner and basketball player for his high school, now named after him, and Simon Fraser University. His right leg was amputated in 1977 after he was diagnosed with osteosarcoma, though he continued to run using an artificial leg. He also played wheelchair basketball in Vancouver, winning three national championships. (Full article...)
Robert Earl Kaske (June 1, 1921 – August 8, 1989) was an American professor of medieval literature. He spent most of his career at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, where he was the Avalon Foundation Professor in the Humanities, and where he founded one of the preeminent medieval studies graduate programs in North America. His published output included lengthy interpretations of Beowulf, and of poems and passages by Dante and Chaucer, and frequently constituted leading studies. Kaske particularly enjoyed solving cruxes, with articles on problematic passages in works such as Pearl, Piers Plowman, the Divine Comedy, "The Husband's Message", "The Descent into Hell", and Beowulf.
Born in Cincinnati and a straight-A student in high school, Kaske studied liberal arts at Xavier University and joined a variety of student literary organizations there. He was a four-year member of the Reserve Officers' Training Corps, and was commissioned a second lieutenant before his 1942 graduation; much of the next four years was spent with the Army in the South Pacific during World War II. While there he read a story about a dusk-to-dawn conversation between two professors and, entranced by the prospect of such intellectual discussions, decided on an academic career. Kaske enrolled in the English literature program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) on the back of the G.I. Bill, received his master's in 1947, and his PhD in 1950. (Full article...)
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