M.C. Escher (1898-1972) produced work that remains among the most widely reproduced and popular graphic art of the twentieth century. His brain-teasing prints use interlocking shapes, transforming creatures, and impossible architectures to...

The first popular stage entertainer to incorporate authentic blues in her song repertoire, Ma Rainey (1886-1939) performed during the first three decades of the twentieth century.Known as the "Mother of the Blues," she enjoyed mass popular...

Kamo Mabuchi (1697-1769) was a Japanese writer, poet, and scholar and one of the major figures in the school of National Learning. Kamo Mabuchi was born Masanobu, or Masafuji, the son of the superior (Kannushi) of the Kamo shrine in Totomi...

Well known as an Ottawa literary personality and the first woman president of the Canadian Authors' Association, Madge Hamilton Lyons Macbeth was born in Philadelphia, 6 November 1880, the elder daughter of Bessie Maffit and Hymen Hart Lyo...

Eleanor Josephine Macdonald (born 1906) has been a pioneer in the field of cancer epidemiology. Over the course of forty years, she made several significant contributions to the understanding of cancer and was a strong advocate for early t...

The Australian virologist and physician Sir Frank Macfarlane Burnet (1899-1985) made important contributions to virology, immunology, and human biology. On Sept. 3, 1899, F. Macfarlane Burnet was born in the country town of Traralgon. He w...

The American silent-screen producer and director Mack Sennett (1884-1960) is frequently considered the originator of film comedy. He perfected the art of silent-screen slapstick in his "Keystone" series. Mack Sennett was born Michael Sinno...

William Wellington Mackey's plays address the questions and debates raised by the black nationalism movements of the 1960s. Mackey focuses his attacks on the black middle class and explores the ways in which the various generations, sexes,...

George Maclean (1801-1847) was a Scottish solider and agent of British imperial expansion. As an administrator of the British-owned Gold Coast forts, he was instrumental in extending British influence in the interior of present-day Ghana. ...

Maclyn McCarty is a distinguished bacteriologist who has done important work on the biology of Streptococci and the origins of rheumatic fever, but he is best known for his involvement in early experiments which established the function of...

Madalyn Murry O'Hair (1919-1995) was a staunch atheist whose court cases brought down rulings from the Supreme Court that prayer is not to be required in public schools. Madalyn Murray O'Hair called herself "the most hated woman in America...

A professor and foreign policy expert, Madeleine Korbel Albright (born 1937) was appointed by President Bill Clinton in 1992 to be the U.S. permanent representative to the United Nations and head of the U.S. delegation to that body. Presid...

Influential American educator Madeline Cheek Hunter (1916-1994) developed a model for teaching and learning that was widely adopted by schools during the last quarter of the 20th century. Madeline Hunter was one of two daughters born to Al...

In 1992, Mae C. Jemison (born 1956) became the first African American woman to travel in space. Mae C. Jemison had received two undergraduate degrees and a medical degree, had served two years as a Peace Corps medical officer in West Afric...

Maggie Lena Walker (1867-1934) was an African American entrepreneur and civic leader. She and her associates organized a variety of enterprises that advanced the African American community while expanding the public role of women. Maggie L...

The Indian guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (born ca. 1911) came to the West as a missionary of traditional Indian thought in popular form and founded the Transcendental Meditation Movement, which reached its height of popularity in the 1960s an...

Vardhamana Mahavira (599 BC-527 BC), called the Jina, was an Indian ascetic philosopher and the principal founder of Jainism--one of the major religions of the Indian subcontinent. Vardhamana Mahavira was born in northern India during the ...

Mahlon Hoagland is best known for discovering, in the 1950s, that ribonucleic acid ( RNA) molecules in the cytoplasm retrieve specific amino acids and take them to the ribosomes for assembly into proteins. Hoagland was born in Boston, the ...

The Ottoman sultan Mahmud II (1785-1839) attempted to hold together and rebuild the empire by administrative reforms, but interior instability and foreign wars proved obstacles too great to overcome. Mahmud was born on July 20, 1785, son o...

Marie-Augustine-Adrienne Maillet was born in Montreal on 10 December 1885, the daughter of Ludger Maillet, a lawyer, and Sarah Larose Maillet. As a child she attended the Académie Saint-Léon in Montreal, the Slade School at F...

Roger Mais was born on 11 August 1905 in Kingston, Jamaica, into a "brown," respectable, middle- range-landowning, middle-class family and came to maturity in the 1930s, when these inherited categories were coming under pressure due to the...

His Beatitude, Makarios III (1913-1977), archbishop and ethnarch of the Orthodox Church of Cyprus and the first president of the Republic of Cyprus, 1959-1977, championed the campaign to unite the island politically with Greece for a quart...

Millionaire Malcolm Forbes (1919-1990) was the publisher of Forbes magazine from 1957 to 1990. The entire world knew how old Malcolm Forbes was when he died in 1990; extensive press coverage of his lavish 70th (and last) birthday party thr...

Malcolm III (died 1093), the king of Scotland from 1058 to 1093, established the Canmore dynasty, which ruled Scotland for two centuries. His reign was marked by the introduction into Scotland of English influences. Malcolm was a claimant ...

Arnold Hamilton Maloney began his career planning to be a druggist in his native Trinidad, but his ultimate influence in the field of pharmacology was to be far greater than the local level. Maloney immigrated to the United States in 1909 ...