The economist Herbert Cole Coombs (1906-1997) was appointed to a series of public positions which allowed him more influence on the shape of post-war Australia than all except a few prime ministers. Widely respected by all sections of the ...

The English statesman Herbert Henry Asquith, Ist Earl of Oxford and Asquith (1852-1928), was prime minister of Great Britain from 1908 to 1916. His government sponsored significant social legislation, restricted the power of the House of L...

During his lifetime H. L. Mencken was called the Great Iconoclast and the Sage of Baltimore, appellations he gained because of his journalistic writing in newspapers and magazines. However, his contributions to American letters were more e...

H. Rap Brown, known after his conversion to Islam in prison in the mid-1970s as Jamil Abdullah al-Amin, was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on October 4, 1943. As a student at Southern University, Brown joined the civil rights organization...

H. Robert Horvitz identified the genes that play a significant role in programmed cell death and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS); he also discovered a new receptor that responds to serotonin. His pioneering research was performed on th...

Herbert Vere Evatt (1894-1965) was an Australian statesman, judge, and author. He laid the foundations of Australia's foreign policy and played an important part in establishing the United Nations. Herbert Vere Evatt was a noted internatio...

Habib Bourguiba (1903-2000) was president of the Tunisian Republic and played a primordial role in leading his country's nationalist struggle for independence. Habib Bourguiba was born on Aug. 3, 1903, at Monastir into a modest family. He ...

Shams al-Din Hafiz (ca. 1320-1390) was a great Persian mystical poet who, as a professor of Koranic exegesis, composed some of the most sensitive and lyrical poetry ever produced in the Middle East. Hafiz was born in Shiraz, the capital of...

Haile Selassie (1892-1975) was an emperor of Ethiopia whose influence as an African leader far surpassed the confines of his country. Haile Selassie was born on July 23, 1892, the son of Ras Makonnen, a cousin and confidant of Emperor Meni...

Haldan Keffer Hartline was born on December 22, 1903, in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, to Daniel Schollenberger Hartline and Harriet Franklin Hartline. He attended college at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania, graduating with a B.S. in...

Sir Edward Marshall Hall (1858-1927) was the most celebrated legal figure of his era in England as the defense attorney for a large number of sensational murder trials that featured in British tabloids during the Edwardian era. British bar...

Judith Goslin Hall is a professor of Pediatrics and Medical Genetics, and is head of the Department of Pediatrics at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. She is also physician-in-chief of the Children's and Women's Heal...

Hamilcar Barca (ca. 285-ca. 229 BC) was a great Carthaginian general and statesman in the First Punic War who firmly established Carthaginian rule in Spain. Hamilcar Barca was a daring, intelligent young man. He was appointed commander in ...

Hamilton Othanel Smith shared the 1978 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine with fellow biologists Werner Arber and Daniel Nathans for the set of linked discoveries that started off the boom in biotechnology. Because of these discoveries,...

Hannibal Hamlin Garland (1860-1940), American author, augmented local-color writing by the new naturalistic techniques that combined realism with a sense of the individual's overwhelming struggle against a hostile environment. In the late ...

George S. Hammond is noted for creating and developing the field of organic photochemistry, the study of the interaction between light and various organic materials. He is also credited with training many of the important American organic ...

The English historians John Lawrence Le Breton Hammond (1872-1952) and Lucy Barbara Hammond (1873-1961) were joint authors of a number of histories of the English working class. Lawrence Hammond was born at Drighlington, Yorkshire, on July...

The American planter Wade Hampton (ca. 1751-1835) played a major role in the economic and political development of South Carolina and became one of the wealthiest planters in the South. Born in Halifax County, Va., Wade Hampton was a desce...

The Chinese writer Han Yü (768-824) is ranked high as a poet but, more importantly, is revered as a master of prose writing. His writing is characterized by a devotion to classicism both in form and in content. With the early death of...

Douglas Hanahan and his team of researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, used genetically altered mice to study the development of cancerous tumors. Hanahan's research with transgenic mice helped to define the transition...

John Hancock (1737-1793) signed the Declaration of Independence and was a leader of the movement toward revolution in the American colonies. Later prominent in the Continental Congress, he was elected Massachusetts governor for nine terms....

Baroness Enrica von Handel-Mazzetti would be a forgotten author of pious historical works had not her novel Jesse und Mari: Ein Roman aus dem Donaulandea (1906; translated as Jesse and Maria, 1931) become the focal point in the bitter figh...

Seneca prophet Handsome Lake (ca. 1735-1815) played a major role in the revival of his own and other Iroquois League tribes. Handsome Lake, a great leader and prophet, played a major role in the revival of the Senecas and other tribes of t...

Henry Louis (Hank) Aaron (born 1934) was major league baseball's leading homerun hitter with a career total of 755 upon his retirement in 1976. He broke ground for the participation of African Americans in professional sports. Henry (Hank)...

A Jewish refugee from Germany, Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) analyzed major issues of the 20th century and produced a brilliant and original political philosophy. Hannah Arendt was born in 1906 in Hanover, Germany, the only child of middle-cla...