Tutor and fellow of Harvard College, poet, astronomer, and for twenty-four years pastor of the church at Roxbury, Massachusetts, Samuel Danforth was born in Framlingham, Suffolk, England, the second son of Nicholas and Elizabeth Danforth. ...

The American journalist I. F. Stone (1907-1989) published the iconoclastic political newsletter I. F. Stone's Weekly from 1953 to 1971. A critic of the Cold War and McCarthyism, his opposition to the Vietnam War helped to change public opi...

Ian Hamilton defined his poems with clarity in the Bulletin of the Poetry Book Society (Summer 1974) when he characterized them as "dramatic lyrics .... the intense climatic moment of a drama," adding that the reader must supply "the prose...

Ian Douglas Smith (born 1919) was the last white prime minister of Rhodesia before it became the independent nation of Zimbabwe. In an effort to resist African majority rule, he led his extremist white government in a unilateral break with...

The Arab physicist, astronomer, and mathematician Abu 'Ali al-Hasan ibn al-Haytham (ca. 966-1039), or Alhazen, established the theory of vision that prevailed till the 17th century. He also defended a theory of the physical reality of Ptol...

Known in the Latin West as Avempace, the ill-fated philosopher Ibn Bajja remains somewhat mysterious. It is not known exactly when and where he was born, and there are gaps in his biography. He had an extensive knowledge of medicine and in...

Abu Muhammad Ali ibn Hazm (994-1064) was a Spanish-born Arab theologian, philosopher, and jurist whose most important work was a book on comparative religious history. Ibn Hazm was born in Cordova. His father, who was chief minister at the...

Abd al-Aziz ibn Saud (1880-1953) was an Arab political leader who founded the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. During his rule, from 1932 to 1953, much of the Arabian peninsula developed from a group of desert sheikhdoms to a politically unified k...

Muhammad ibn Tumart (ca. 1080-1130) was a North African religious revolutionary leader who founded the Almohad movement in North Africa. His organization of Berber tribesmen led to the end of Almoravid rule in North Africa. A Masmuda Berbe...

El Ferik Ibrahim Abboud (1900-1983) was a military leader who instituted the first military government of the independent Sudan, but who yielded to civilian rule when he was unable to solve the country's problems. Ibrahim Abboud was born o...

Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1862-1931), an African American journalist, was an active crusader against lynching and a champion of social and political justice for African Americans. Ida B. Wells was born a slave in Holly Springs, Mississippi, on...

Working with fellow chemist Walter Noddack (her future husband) and X-ray specialist Otto Berg , Ida Tacke discovered element 75 , rhenium, in 1925, thus solving one of the mysteries of the periodic table of elements introduced by Russian ...

His full name was Sidi Muhammad Idris Al-Mahdi As-sanusi (1889-1983). The first and only king of Libya, he reigned as Idris I from 1950 to 1969. Although he led his country to independence, his conservatism finally brought about his overth...

Ignatius Donnelly (1831-1901) was an American politician, reformer, and author. He was an outstanding spokesperson for the political reform movements of the second half of the 19th century that culminated in the Populist revolt. Born in Pe...

The Spanish soldier and ecclesiastic St. Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556) was the founder of the Society of Jesus, or Jesuit order. Ignatius was born in the castle of Loyola in the Basque province of Guipúzcoa. His real name was I&nti...

The Hungarian physician Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis (1818-1865) was a pioneer of antisepsis in obstetrics and demonstrated that many cases of puerperal fever could be prevented. Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis, the son of a prosperous shopkeeper, wa...

The Russian-American aeronautical engineer, aircraft manufacturer, and inventor Igor Sikorsky (1889-1972) designed such famous aircraft as the flying clipper and was the major developer of the helicopter. Igor Sikorsky was born in Kiev, Uk...

Ictinus (active second half of 5th century B.C.) was a Greek architect and the chief designer of the Parthenon. In addition, he is known to have prepared a design for the Telesterion, the great hall of the Mysteries at Eleusis. Of what cit...

Il'ya Mikaylovich Frank was born on October 23, 1908, in Leningrad. He was the second son of Mikhail Luydvigovic Frank, a professor of mathematics, and Yelizaveta Mikhailovna Gratsianova Frank, a physician. Frank earned his bachelor's degr...

Ilya Prigogine was born in Moscow, Russia, in 1917. His father, Roman, was a chemical engineer and his mother, Julia had studied music at the conservatory in Moscow. Although Prigognine eventually elected to study chemistry, his highly phi...

Shinichiro Imaoka (1881-1988) was a living legend in Japan who influenced the development of progressive and liberal religion. Shinichiro Imaoka lived so long and was involved in so many different phases of Japan's emergence in modern life...

Imhotep (fl. ca. 3000 B.C.) was one of world history's most versatile geniuses. Inventor of the pyramid, author of ancient wisdom, architect, high priest, physician, astronomer, and scribe, Imhotep's prodigious talents and vast acquired kn...

Immanuel Maurice Wallerstein is best known for world-systems theory, outlined in his series of books, beginning with The Modern World-System: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century in ...

)Robert Geoffrey Edwards and Patrick Christopher Steptoe (1913-1988) pioneered in vitro fertilization (IVF), making the birth of the first "test-tube baby" possible in 1978. By quickly transferring the oocyte (the egg prior to maturation) ...

Increase Mather (1639-1723), American colonial representative, president of Harvard College, and author, was the most prominent member of the second generation in Massachusetts colony. Born in Dorchester, Mass., where his father was first ...