Nachman Kohen Krochmal (1785-1840) was the first Jewish historian to treat Jewish history as an integral part of all human history. When Nachman Krochmal was born at Brody, Galicia, Poland, on Feb. 17, 1785, the Age of Enlightenment was re...

Nadine Gordimer (born 1923) was the Nobel Prize-winning author of short stories and novels reflecting the disintegration of South African society. While her early works were in the tradition of liberal South African whites opposed to apart...

The Hungarian admiral and statesman Nicholas Horthy de Nagybánya (1868-1957) was regent of Hungary from 1920 to 1944. He led Hungary during a troubled period which began with a Communist revolution and ended with German and then Rus...

Koji Nakanishi believes in conventional values, like devotion to family and respect for authority. Yet, his career and life have been anything but conventional. In his autobiography, A Wandering Natural Products Chemist, Nakanishi describe...

American-born Nancy Langhorne Astor (1879-1964) became the first woman to serve as a member of the British Parliament, a position she held from 1919 to 1945. Born in Danville, Virginia, on May 19, 1879, Nancy Langhorne grew up in the strai...

Psychologist Nancy Wexler (born 1945) researches Huntington's disease. She developed a presymptomatic test for the condition and identified the genes responsible for the disease. Nancy Wexler's research on Huntington's disease has led to t...

Narciso López (1798-1851) was a Venezuelan military leader in the Spanish colonial service but later led filibustering expeditions against Spanish power in Cuba. Narciso López was born in Venezuela on Sept. 13, 1798. At an ea...

Nathaniel Turner (1800-1831) was a black American who organized and led the most successful slave revolt in the United States. Nat Turner was born a slave on Oct. 2, 1800, in Southampton County, Va. As a child, he exhibited notable leaders...

For nine years (1977-86), Anatoly Shcharansky (born 1948) personified the desperate plight of many Soviet Jews. Caught in the vice of great power politics, Shcharansky suffered a prolonged and difficult imprisonment because of his wish to ...

A Confederate general in the American Civil War, Nathan Bedford Forrest (1821-1877) ranks as a near genius of war. He was a daring and successful cavalry leader who had few peers. Nathan Bedford Forrest, eldest son of his family, was born ...

Nathan Glazer was born in New York City on February 25, 1923, the youngest of seven children. According to his autobiographical contribution to Authors of Their Own Lives (1990), his parents, Louis (a tailor) and Tillie (Zacharevich) Glaze...

American Revolutionary War general Nathanael Greene (1742-1786) was considered "the greatest military genius of the war." His chief contribution to the American victory lay in his brilliant southern campaign. Nathanael Greene was born in P...

Nathaniel Bacon (1647-1676) was an American colonial leader in Virginia and the leader of Bacon's Rebellion in 1676. The period of American colonial history which followed the restoration of the Stuart monarchy in England (1660) was an era...

A member of the famous artistic family, Nathaniel Wyeth stood out by becoming an engineer and inventor. Born in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, Nat was the son of famed illustrator N. C. Wyeth, who constantly encouraged his children to develop ...

Nathaniel Brown Palmer (1799-1877), American sea captain, sighted the part of the Antarctic Peninsula that came to be known as Palmer Land. In later life he engaged in designing and sailing clipper ships for the China trade. Nathaniel Palm...

The Japanese novelist and essayist Soseki Natsume (1867-1916) was one of the greatest Japanese novelists of the modern period. In his fiction and essays he displays keen psychological insight into the personality of man undergoing the tran...

The Russian sculptor and designer Naum Gabo (1890-1977) was a pioneer of the constructivist art movement in Russia after the Revolution. He demonstrated in his work the potentialities of plastics and threaded constructions. Naum Gabo chang...

The Moslem thinker and theologian Ibrahim ibn Sayyar al-Nazzam (died ca. 840) was one of the major figures of the school of thought in Islam known as the Mutazila. Al-Nazzam was educated in Basra and spent most of his active life (apparent...

Ne Win (born 1911) was a Burmese general and political leader who twice seized power from elected premier U Nu and ruled Burma (now Myanmar) as a repressive and isolationist socialist government until he resigned in 1988. Born in 1911, Ne ...

Neal Dow (1804-1897) was an American temperance reformer. His long, successful career, together with his reputation as father of the "Maine Law," made him a national figure. Born in Portland, Maine, on March 20, 1804, Dow was raised in a w...

Ned Rorem (born 1923) was widely regarded as the leading American composer of art songs. He was also well known as a diarist and essayist. Ned Rorem was born in Richmond, Indiana, on October 23, 1923. He received his early music training i...

Nefertiti (1390 BC-ca. 1360 BC) was an Egyptian queen who still remains a mystery to scholars today. One of the most famous women in antiquity, Nefertiti remains somewhat of a puzzlement to scholars because of her mysterious ancestry and h...

Neil Bartlett has been called "the foremost fluorine chemist in the world" by a colleague, as reported in Chemical and Engineering News. In 1962 he used his skill with that highly active reagent to produce the first-ever compound of a nobl...

Neil Joseph Smelser has been an influential mind in the study of collective behavior for four decades. In 1956, he published Economy and Society with Talcott Parsons and in 1959, Social Change in the Industrial Revolution, a historically-o...

Harlem Renaissance writer Nella Larsen (1893-1963) received the Guggenheim Award in 1930 to support her continued work on the psychological novel at a time when the novel of social realism overshadowed her genuine literary talent. Nella La...