Curated playlist
English humanists
- George OrwellGeorge Orwell was a pen name, chosen from a shortlist in 1932. He was born Eric Arthur Blair in British India.
- Percy Bysshe ShelleyPoet Percy Bysshe Shelley's body was identified partly by a copy of Keats's Lamia in his jacket.
- Virginia WoolfVirginia Woolf's father let her read whatever she liked in his vast library.
- Francis CrickFrancis Crick was editing a manuscript on his death bed. He co-deciphered the DNA double helix in 1953.
- George EliotGeorge Eliot was a woman who lived openly with a married man. Mary Ann Evans shared a home with him from 1854 to 1878.
- Arthur C. ClarkeArthur C. Clarke never patented his satellite idea. He called a patent "a licence to be sued."
- Stephen HawkingDoctors gave Stephen Hawking two years to live at age 21, but he died at 76.
- Brian Cox (physicist)Brian Cox, the English physicist and musician, once admitted to a chat show host that he did badly in A-level maths. "I got a D... I was really not very good... I found out you need to practise." That grade belongs to a man who now holds…
- A. J. AyerA. J. Ayer once told Mike Tyson to talk like a rational man. The philosopher stepped in at a 1987 party.
- Roger PenroseRoger Penrose received half of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics for showing that the formation of black holes is a robust prediction of Einstein's general theory of relativity. The citation sounds like the summit of a single, tidy career.…