- Peter Sellars
Peter Sellars (born 1957) is an American theater director, renowned for his modern stagings of classical operas and plays. Sellars is professor of World Arts and Culture at U.C.L.A. where he teaches "Art as Social Action" and "Art as Moral Action". Sellars was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and attended Harvard University, graduating in 1981. As an undergraduate, he performed a puppet version of Wagner's Ring cycle, …
- Renzo Piano
Renzo Piano (September 14 1937) is a world renowned Italian architect and Pritzker Architecture Prize winner
- Karl Jaspers
Karl Theodor Jaspers (February 23, 1883 - February 26, 1969) was a German psychiatrist and philosopher who had a strong influence on modern theology, psychiatry and philosophy.
- Simon Wiesenthal
Simon Wiesenthal, KBE, (Buczacz, December 31, 1908 - Vienna, September 20, 2005) was an Austrian-Jewish architectural engineer who became a Nazi hunter after surviving the Holocaust. Following four and a half years in the concentration camps of Janowska, Plaszow, and Mauthausen during World War II, …
- Adam Michnik
Adam Michnik is the editor-in-chief of Gazeta Wyborcza a major Polish newspaper, where he sometimes writes under the pen-names of Andrzej Zagozda or Andrzej Jagodziński. In 1968-1989 he was one of the leading organizers of the illegal, democratic opposition in Poland. Historian, essayist, political publicist. The laureate of many awards, for example: a Knight of the Legion of Honour.
- Ingmar Bergman
Ernst Ingmar Bergman (born July 14, 1918) is a Swedish stage and film director who is one of the key film auteurs of the 20th century.
- Jan Tinbergen
Jan Tinbergen (The Hague, April 12, 1903 - June 9, 1994 The Hague), Dutch economist, was awarded the first Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel in 1969, which he shared with Ragnar Frisch for having developed and applied dynamic models for the analysis of economic processes. Timbergen was a founding trustee of Economists for Peace and Security
- Martin Buber
Martin Buber was an Austrian-Jewish philosopher, translator, and educator, whose work centered on theistic ideals of religious consciousness, interpersonal relations, and community. Buber's evocative, sometimes poetic writing style has marked the major themes in his work: the retelling of Hasidic tales, Biblical commentary, and metaphysical dialogue. A cultural Zionist, Buber was active in the Jewish and educational communities of Germany and Israel.
- Charlie Chaplin
Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin, Jr. KBE (April 16, 1889 - December 25, 1977), better known as Charlie Chaplin, was an English comedy actor. Chaplin became one of the most famous performers as well as a notable director and musician in the early to mid Hollywood cinema era. He is considered to be one of the finest mimes and clowns ever caught on film and has greatly influenced performers in this field.
- Abdolkarim Soroush
Abdolkarim Soroush or Abdulkarim Soroush (1945 -) is a leading Iranian thinker, philosopher, reformer and Rumi scholar. He is a well-known figure in religious intellectual movement in Iran.
- Václav Havel
Václav Havel, GCB, CC, (born October 5, 1936 in Prague) is a Czech writer and dramatist. He was the ninth and last President of Czechoslovakia (1989-1992) and the first President of the Czech Republic (1993-2003).
- Jacques Delors
Jacques Lucien Jean Delors (born July 20 1925 in Paris) is a French economist and politician, the only person to have served two terms as President of the European Commission (between 1985 and 1995). In the 1940s-1960s, Delors held a series of posts in French banking and state planning. Member of the French Confederation of Christian Workers, he participated in its secularization and the foundation of the French Democratic Confederation of Labour.In 1969, …
- Alexander King
Alexander King CMG, CBE (26 January 1909 - 28 February 2007) was a scientist and pioneer of the sustainable development movement who co-founded the Club of Rome in 1968 with the Italian industrialist Aurelio Peccei. At the time of the Club of Rome's founding, King was a "top international scientific civil servant, Scots by birth, living in Paris."
- Ernst Gombrich
Sir Ernst Hans Josef Gombrich, OM, CBE (30 March 1909 - 3 November 2001) was an Austrian-born art historian, who spent most of his working life in the United Kingdom. He was born in Vienna, Austria-Hungary, into an assimilated bourgeois family of Jewish origin. He was educated at Theresianum secondary school in Vienna and at Vienna University before coming to Britain in 1936 where he took up a post as a research assistant at the Warburg Institute, University of London.
- Alan Davidson
Alan Eaton Davidson was a British diplomat and historian best known for his writing and editing on food and gastronomy. He was the author of the 900-page, encyclopedic "Oxford Companion to Food" (1999). The son of a Scottish tax inspector, Davidson was born in Northern Ireland. He studied classical languages at Oxford. During World War II, he served in the Royal Navy. In 1948, Davidson joined the Foreign Office and served in diplomatic posts in Washington, Tunis, …
- Isaiah Berlin
Sir Isaiah Berlin, OM (June 6 1909 – November 5 1997), was a political philosopher and historian of ideas, regarded as one of the leading liberal thinkers of the 20th century. Born in Riga, then part of the Russian Empire, he was the first Jew to be elected to a prize fellowship at All Souls College, Oxford. From 1957 to 1967, he was Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory at the University of Oxford.
- Gabriel Marcel
Gabriel Honoré Marcel was a French philosopher, a leading Christian existentialist, and the author of about 30 plays. Marcel obtained the "agregation" in philosophy in 1910, at the unusually early age of 21. He taught in secondary schools, was a drama critic for various literary journals, and worked as an editor for Plon, the major French Catholic publisher. Marcel was the son of an atheist, and was himself an atheist until his conversion to Catholicism in 1929.
- Jean Monnet
Jean Omer Marie Gabriel Monnet (November 9, 1888 - March 16, 1979) is regarded by many as the architect of European Unity. Never elected to public office, Monnet worked behind the scenes of American and European governments as a well-connected "pragmatic internationalist".
- Peter Stein
Peter Stein is a critically acclaimed German director who established himself at the Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz, a company he arguably brought to the forefront of German theatre. Born in Berlin, Stein grew up in an era defined by the Nazis. His father Herbert Stein was factory director of Alfred Teves, a motorcycle manufacturing firm that was employed to make automotive parts for the Nazi regime. Herbert was in charge of 250,000 forced laborers.
- Jean Prouvé
Jean Prouvé was a French architect and designer. His main achievement was transferring the manufacturing technology from industry to the architecture, without losing the aesthetic qualities.
- Sadik Al-Azm
Sadik Al-Azm (Arabic,صادق العظم is an Professor Emeritus of Modern European Philosophy at the University of Damascus in Syria. His area of specialization is the Islamic world and its relationship to the West, and he has contributed to the discourse of "Orientalism". He is also known as a human rights advocate and a champion of intellectual freedom.
- Olivier Messiaen
Olivier Messiaen was a French composer, organist, and ornithologist. He entered the Paris Conservatoire at the age of 11, and numbered Paul Dukas, Maurice Emmanuel, Charles-Marie Widor and Marcel Dupré among his teachers. He was appointed organist at the church of La Trinité in Paris in 1931, a post he held until his death. On the fall of France in 1940 Messiaen was made a prisoner of war, …
- Robert Schuman
Robert Schuman (June 29 1886 - September 4 1963) was a noted Luxembourg-born German-French politician, a Christian Democrat (M.R.P.) who is regarded as one of the founders of the European Union.
- Marc Chagall
Marc Chagall (Russian: Марк Захарович Шага́л; Belarusian: Мойша Захаравіч Шагалаў "Mojša Zacharavič Šahałaŭ") (7 July 1887 - 28 March 1985) was a French painter of Russian-Jewish origin who was born in Belarus, then part of the Russian Empire. Among the celebrated painters of the 20th century, he is associated with the modern movements after impressionism.
- Mauricio Kagel
Mauricio Kagel (born Buenos Aires, December 24 1931) is an Argentine composer who has lived in Cologne, Germany since 1957. He is most famous for his interest in developing the theatrical side of musical performance. Many of his pieces give specific theatrical instructions to the performers, such as to adopt certain facial expressions while playing, to make their stage entrances in a particular way, to physically interact with other performers and so on.
- Fatema Mernissi
Fatema Mernissi is a Moroccan feminist writer and sociologist. Born in Fez in 1940, she studied political science at the Sorbonne and at Brandeis University, where she earned her doctorate. She is a notable Islamic feminist. Mernissi is largely concerned with Islam and women's roles in it, analyzing the historical development of Islamic thought and its modern manifestation. Through a detailed investigation of the nature of the succession to Muhammad, …
- Steven Shapin
Steven Shapin is a historian and sociologist of science. He is currently the Franklin L. Ford Professor of the History of Science at Harvard University. Before that, he was a professor of sociology at University of California, San Diego, and at the Science Studies Unit, Edinburgh University. He has written broadly on the history and sociology of science, and is known as a key contributor to the sociology of scientific knowledge.
- Hans van Manen
Hans van Manen (Nieuwer-Amstel, Netherlands, 11 July 1932) is a Dutch ballet dancer, choreographer and photographer. He is a son of a German housemaid. He studied under Sonia Gaskell, Françoise Adret and Nora Kiss. Hans van Manen wrote many ballets. He worked for the Dutch National Ballet from 1973 to 1985. Van Manen was awarded the Erasmus Prize in 2000.
- Oskar Kokoschka
Oskar Kokoschka (March 1, 1886-February 22, 1980) was an Austrian artist and poet of Czech origin, best known for his intense expressionistic portraits and landscapes. Kokoschka's early career was marked by intense portraits of Viennese celebrities. He served in the Austrian army in World War I and was wounded. At the hospital, the doctors decided that he was mentally unstable. Nevertheless, he continued to develop his career as an artist, …
- Paul Delouvrier
Paul Delouvrier was awarded the Erasmus Prize in 1985. Paul Delouvrier is a French man whom many wrongly thought of as being related to the rapper Paul of Wahl in Portland Oregon. Paul had a love for tennis and did many great things for the transportation system in Paris during his term.
- Simon Schaffer
Simon Schaffer (born 1 January 1955) was born in Brighton and was educated at Varndean Grammar School for Boys (now Varndean College). He is a professor of the history and philosophy of science at Cambridge University. He is the co-author, along with Steven Shapin, of the 1985 book "Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life". Schaffer studied at Cambridge and Harvard and previously taught at Imperial College London and UCLA.
- William H. McNeill
William Hardy McNeill (born October 31, 1917, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada) is a universal historian. He is among the world's most respected historians and was Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Chicago. He is retired and, since 2006, a widower. McNeill's most popular work is "The Rise of the West". The book explored world history in terms of the effect of different old world civilizations on one another, …
- Bernard Haitink
Bernard Johan Herman Haitink CH KBE (b. March 4, 1929) is a Dutch conductor, born in Amsterdam, the son of Willem Haitink and Anna Haitink. He studied music at the conservatoire in Amsterdam. He played the violin in orchestras before taking courses in conducting under Ferdinand Leitner in 1954 and 1955. Haitink became second conductor of the Netherlands Radio Union Orchestra in 1955. He took the post of chief conductor of the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic in 1957.
- Nikolaus Harnoncourt
Nikolaus Harnoncourt (born Johann Nicolaus Graf de la Fontaine und d'Harnoncourt-Unverzagt December 6, 1929 in Berlin) is an Austrian conductor, known for his historically informed performances of music from the classical era and earlier. <br> <small>Harnoncourt at the New Year's Concert <br>in Vienna (Musikverein, January 1, 2003)</small>
- Jean Piaget
Jean Piaget (August 9, 1896 - September 16, 1980) was a Swiss philosopher, natural scientist and developmental psychologist, well known for his work studying children and his theory of cognitive development. According to Ernst von Glasersfeld, Jean Piaget is also "the great pioneer of the constructivist theory of knowing"
- Sigmar Polke
Sigmar Polke (born February 13 1941) is a German post-modern painter and photographer.
- Henry Moore
Sir Henry Spencer Moore OM CH FBA, (30 July 1898 - 31 August 1986) was a British artist and sculptor. The son of a mining engineer, born in the Yorkshire town of Castleford, Moore became well known for his larger-scale abstract cast bronze and carved marble sculptures. Substantially supported by the British art establishment, Moore helped to introduce a particular form of modernism into the United Kingdom.
- Mary Robinson
Mary Robinson was the first female President of Ireland, serving from 1990 to 1997, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, from 1997 to 2002. She first rose to prominence as an academic, barrister, campaigner and member of the Irish senate (1969–1989). She defeated "Fianna Fáil's" Brian Lenihan and Fine Gael's Austin Currie in the 1990 presidential election becoming, as an Independent candidate nominated by the Labour Party, …
- Marguerite Yourcenar
Marguerite Yourcenar was the pseudonym of French novelist Marguerite Cleenewerck de Crayencour (June 8, 1903 - December 17, 1987). She was the daughter of Michel de Crayencour and Ferdinande (Fernande) de Cartier de Marchienne. Marguerite Yourcenar was the first woman to be elected to the Académie Française, in 1980.
- Raymond Aron
Raymond-Claude-Ferdinand Aron (March 14, 1905 - October 17, 1983) was a French philosopher, sociologist and political scientist. He was known for his skepticism of French leftist ideology.