Famous people

A great number of wonderful people lived and worked there and made this country famous. Among them there are: writers and composers, artists and explorers, a lot of scientists. Many people from Britain took an active part in the exploration of the new lands. These travelers of the past are known to everybody now because we can see their names on the maps when we learn geography.

James CookJames Cook is a well-known English navigator and explorer. In 1755 Cook volunteered for the Royal Navy as a seaman and he was given command of the ship Endeavour, taking on board some famous scientists. Cook became the first European to chart the coast of New Zealand, and the first to discover the eastern coast of Australia. He also sailed south to Antarctica, discovered the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii), explored the Alaskan coast.

David Livingstone

David Livingstone was born in Scotland. He was learning to be a doctor. During his journeys into new lands he decided that the work of a doctor was very important in Africa. He crossed Africa from the West to the East. He described everything he saw and put a lot of places on the map. His books about Africa are full of important information.

Michael Faraday

One of the greatest scientists of Great Britain is Michael Faradey. He studied different subjects but the greatest contribution was in electricity. He saw that electricity could be made by a machine. This was the beginning of all the great machines that make our electricity today. Without them we can have no telephones, no radio, no television.

Joshua Reynolds John Constable

Reynolds painted portraits. He made the whole gallery of portraits of the most famous people of his time-writers, scientists and actors. He was the first President of the Royal Academy of Arts.

Constable devoted himself almost entirely to landscape painting. He chose to show real places under different conditions of light and weather. He caught the movement of clouds, and the drama of storms.

Alexander Fleming

Alexander Fleming is an English discoverer of penicillin. He trained as a doctor at St Mary’s Medical School and became interested in the infections caused by bacteria that resulted in so much disease. He joined researchers looking for vaccines that would kill such bacteria.

Florence Nightingale

Florence Nightingale is an English founder of modern nursing. She always wanted to be a nurse and in 1851 she started work in a small London Hospital. She was so successful that she and 38 other nurses were sent to the Crimean War to take charge of the nursing of wounded British soldiers. Within a month they had 1000 men to look after. She worked 20 hours a day. She was the first woman to be awarded the Order of Merit.

Isaac Newton

Isaac Newton’s first physical experiment was carried out when he was 16 years old. At the age of 22, he began studying the theory of gravitation. Newton performed many experiments with light and found that white light was made up of rays of different colours. He invented a reflecting telescope.

Margaret Thatcher Margaret Thatcher is the “Iron

Lady”. She was a good student and won a scholarship to Oxford to

study chemistry. Some time later she decided to study law. Then she

was involved in politics and was elected to the Parliament.

Margaret Thatcher was Secretary of State for Education. In 1979 she

took office as Prime Minister, Britain’s first woman Prime

Minister.