Here is a random selection of six well - known Unitarians or Universalists. The next time you select this page, you will see six different people. Click on the person's name for more information.
Phineas Taylor Barnum (July 5, 1810 – April 7, 1891) was an American showman, businessman, and politician remembered for promoting celebrated hoaxes and founding with James Anthony Bailey the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus.[1] He was also an author, publisher, and philanthropist, although he said of himself: "I am a showman by profession ... and all the gilding shall make nothing else of me."[2] According to Barnum's critics, his personal aim was "to put money in his own coffers."[2] The adage "there's a sucker born every minute" has frequently been attributed to him, although no evidence exists that he had coined the phrase.
Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee (born 8 June 1955),[1] also known as TimBL, is an English computer scientist best known as the inventor of the World Wide Web, the HTML markup language, the URL system, and HTTP. He is a professorial research fellow at the University of Oxford[2] and a professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Jean Margaret Laurence CC (née Wemyss; July 18, 1926 – January 5, 1987) was a Canadian novelist and short story writer, and is one of the major figures in Canadian literature. She was also a founder of the Writers' Trust of Canada, a non-profit literary organization that seeks to encourage Canada's writing community.
Linus Carl Pauling FRS (/ˈpɔːlɪŋ/ PAW-ling; February 28, 1901 – August 19, 1994)[4] was an American chemist, biochemist, chemical engineer, peace activist, author, and educator. He published more than 1,200 papers and books, of which about 850 dealt with scientific topics.[5] New Scientist called him one of the 20 greatest scientists of all time.[6] For his scientific work, Pauling was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1954. For his peace activism, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1962. He is one of five people to have won more than one Nobel Prize (the others being Marie Curie, John Bardeen, Frederick Sanger, and Karl Barry Sharpless).[7] Of these, he is the only person to have been awarded two unshared Nobel Prizes,[8] and one of two people to be awarded Nobel Prizes in different fields, the other being Marie Curie.[7]
Joseph Priestley FRS (/ˈpriːstli/;[3] 24 March 1733 – 6 February 1804) was an English chemist, Unitarian, natural philosopher, separatist theologian, grammarian, multi-subject educator and classical liberal political theorist.[4] He published over 150 works, and conducted experiments in several areas of science.[5][6]
Priestley is credited with his independent discovery of oxygen by the thermal decomposition of mercuric oxide,[7] having isolated it in 1774.[8] During his lifetime, Priestley's considerable scientific reputation rested on his invention of carbonated water, his writings on electricity, and his discovery of several "airs" (gases), the most famous[9] being what Priestley dubbed "dephlogisticated air" (oxygen). Priestley's determination to defend phlogiston theory and to reject what would become the chemical revolution eventually left him isolated within the scientific community.
Priestley's science was integral to his theology, and he consistently tried to fuse Enlightenment rationalism with Christian theism.[10] In his metaphysical texts, Priestley attempted to combine theism, materialism, and determinism, a project that has been called "audacious and original".[11] He believed that a proper understanding of the natural world would promote human progress and eventually bring about the Christian millennium.[11] Priestley, who strongly believed in the free and open exchange of ideas, advocated toleration and equal rights for religious Dissenters, which also led him to help found Unitarianism in England. The controversial nature of Priestley's publications, combined with his outspoken support of the American Revolution and later the French Revolution,[12][13] aroused public and governmental contempt; eventually forcing him to flee in 1791, first to London and then to the United States, after a mob burned down his Birmingham home and church. He spent his last ten years in Northumberland County, Pennsylvania.
Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell (née Stevenson; 29 September 1810 – 12 November 1865), often referred to as Mrs Gaskell, was an English novelist, biographer, and short story writer. Her novels offer a detailed portrait of the lives of many strata of Victorian society, including the very poor. Her first novel, Mary Barton, was published in 1848. Gaskell's The Life of Charlotte Brontë, published in 1857, was the first biography of Charlotte Brontë. In this biography, she wrote only of the moral, sophisticated things in Brontë's life; the rest she omitted, deciding certain, more salacious aspects were better kept hidden. Among Gaskell's best known novels are Cranford (1851–1853), North and South (1854–1855), and Wives and Daughters (1864–1866), all of which were adapted for television by the BBC.