Anselme Payen

Anselme Payen, the French chemist who discovered the enzyme diastase, and the carbohydrate cellulose.


Original 19th century engraving.

Asa Gray

Asa Gray in 1864. Gray is considered the most important American botanist of the 19th century, and was instrumental in unifying the taxonomic knowledge of the plants of North America, as well as championing his good friend Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. He was a religious man, where Darwin was not, but it was Darwin's correspondence with Gray that, when presented to to the Linnean Society in 1858 along with extracts from an essay, cemented Darwin's reputation, and consigned Alfred Russel Wallace to the sidelines of history.


Original sepia photo.

Salvador Dalí

Salvador Dalí, in 1936, probably in London, where he took part in the London International Surrealist Exhibition. Meanwhile, in his native Spain, a civil war started that year.


Original B&W photo.

Bertrand Russell

A childhood photo of Bertrand Russell, from the late 1870s.


Original B&W photo.

Leonardo da Vinci

This drawing of Leonardo da Vinci, probably from around 1490, is sometimes touted as a self portrait, but this is unlikely. The only picture widely, though not universally, thought to be a self portrait is one in red chalk of Leonardo later in life.


Original drawing.

Montgomery Bus Boycott

Martin Luther King, on December 26th 1956, just six days after the official end of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, sparked by Rosa Parks' refusal to move from her seat on a bus to make way for a white person, and her subsequent arrest. Though iconic, it didn't achieve much in the short term. In fact, things got worse for black people in Montgomery, Alabama and the violent backlash against the victory against segregation soon reversed the fortunes of the black Montgomerians.


Original B&W photo.

Rosa Parks

On December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat in the colored section of a bus to a white passenger, an iconic symbol of the modern Civil Rights Movement.
Today (February 4th) would have been her 101st birthday.


Original B&W photo.

 

Read more about Rosa Parks, starting here.

Emmeline Pankhurst

Emmeline Pankhurst, political activist and leader of the British suffragette movement, was named as one of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th Century by Time Magazine in 1999.
This photo is by British photographer Olive Edis, so was probably taken between 1925, when Pankhurst returned from Canada where she had been living for a few years until she "tired of long Canadian winters", and her death in 1928.


Original sepia-toned platinotype.

 

Christopher Hitchens

Christopher Eric Hitchens, who died two years ago today (15th December), seen here around 1970, when he was a student at Balliol College, Oxford.


Original B&|W photo.

George W. Melville

Rear Admiral George Wallace Melville, US Navy, probably in 1904 or shortly before. (See painting below), entered the U.S. Navy in 1861 and became an officer of the Engineer Corps, and took part in the capture of CSS Florida in 1864.

As well as being an engineer, Arctic exploration and author, Melville reformed the Navy, making it more efficient and more professional.


Original B&W photo.


The 1904 painting by Thomas Eakins from which I took the colours.

Amy Johnson

Amy Johnson, probably in 1930, the year she found fame when she became the first woman pilot, or "aviatrix", to fly solo from England to Australia.


Original B&W photo.

George S. Patton

A young George Smith Patton, Jr. According to the caption accompanying this photo, it was taken in 1903 or 1904, while Patton was attending the Virginia Military Institute. That would make him about 18 years old, but I think he looks much younger here.

Original B&W photo.

Nelson Mandela

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, who died yesterday aged 95, seen here in 1952 during the Defiance Campaign, a joint venture with the ANC and Indian and communist groups. This campaign was one of non-violence which Mandela supported, considering it pragmatic at that time. The woman next to him is Ruth First, a prominent anti-apartheid activist and scholar.


Original B&W photo.

Cornelius Vanderbilt

Cornelius Vanderbilt, in the 1840s or '50s. One of the richest Americans in history, and the patriarch of the Vanderbilt family, who provided the initial gift to found Vanderbilt University, which is named in his honour.


Original daguerreotype.

Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass, around 1874. Born a slave, he first escaped to the north then, while on a lecture tour of Britain and Ireland, he was able to buy his freedom in America, using donations from British supporters. He was also given money for several abolitionist publications back in America. In one, he published a scathing letter to his former owner, Thomas Auld. A few years after this photo was taken, in 1877, Douglass visited Thomas Auld on his deathbed, and the two men were reconciled.

As important as he was in the story of the abolition of slavery, he was also a staunch campaigner for women's rights.


Copy of the original daguerreotype.

Booker T. Washington

Booker Taliaferro Washington, seen here around 1895, was born into slavery in 1859. By the end of his life, in 1915, he had been an educator, an author, an orator, and an advisor to presidents of the United States.

 

 


Original B&W photo.

Sherpa Tenzing

Tenzing Norgay, better known to many as Sherpa Tenzing. He and Edmund Hillary were the first two men known to have climbed to the summit of Mount Everest. Hillary tends to get most of the credit, but that was not the intention of any of the other members of the expedition, and its leader, Colonel Hunt, insisted at the time that "They reached it together, as a team."


Original B&W photo.

Edmund Hillary

Edmund Percival Hillary c1953, the year he climbed Mount Everest as part of a team led by John Hunt. He and Tenzing Norgay were the first men recorded to have reached Everest's summit, on the 29th of May, 1953.


Original B&W photo.

Lawrence Oates

Captain Lawrence Edward Grace Oates during the British Antarctic Expedition of 1910-1913, probably in 1911.

His last words, before he died, in 1912, were recorded by Captain Scott as "I am just going outside and may be some time." Scott added in his diary, "We knew that poor Oates was walking to his death, but though we tried to dissuade him, we knew it was the act of a brave man and an English gentleman."



Original B&W photo.

Scott of the Antarctic

Robert Falcon Scott in 1905, five years before he set off on his last expedition to Antarctica during which, after being beaten to the South Pole by Roald Amundsen's Norwegian expedition, he died in 1912.


Original B&W photo.