Dame Evelyn Glennie: changing how the world listens
From Aberdeenshire to the London 2012 Olympic stadium, the percussionist built a solo career and made listening itself part of her art.
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Sir Richard Branson
The British entrepreneur built Virgin from a student magazine and mail-order record business into an international group spanning music, transport and spaceflight.
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Sir Ken Follett: bringing history to readers worldwide
From the wartime thriller Eye of the Needle to medieval England in The Pillars of the Earth, Follett has built an international readership through fiction.
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Dame Ellen MacArthur: from solo sailing to a circular economy
The Derbyshire-born sailor set a solo circumnavigation record before turning her attention to how businesses and society use resources.
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Alice Gibbons and the Froebelian approach to early education
Associated with the founding of the Froebel Educational Institute in London, Gibbons helped promote an approach centred on play, children’s development and learning through social and natural experience.
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Bertrand Russell: logic, education and public dissent
The Welsh-born philosopher joined pioneering work in mathematical logic to a lifetime of argument about war, liberty and education.
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Dame Louise Casey: social policy and public service
From work with homeless people to leadership of national programmes, Casey’s career has spanned several areas of British social policy.
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Sir Simon Rattle: a conductor shaped by Birmingham
From Liverpool and the Royal Academy of Music to the CBSO, Berlin and the London Symphony Orchestra, Rattle has combined musical ambition with sustained support for young musicians.
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John Ruskin: art, labour and the life of society
The Victorian critic connected close observation of nature with arguments about art, education, craftsmanship and the treatment of workers.
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James Callaghan: the prime minister who opened the Great Debate
From Portsmouth tax clerk to Downing Street, Callaghan’s career spanned four great offices of state. His 1976 Ruskin College speech brought the purposes and standards of education into public debate.
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Dame Jacqueline Wilson: stories that take children seriously
From Tracy Beaker to her work as Children's Laureate, Wilson has made difficult subjects part of an enduring conversation with young readers.
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Octavia Hill: housing reformer and defender of open space
From managing homes in Marylebone to helping establish the National Trust, Hill linked the quality of urban life to decent housing and access to nature.
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Sir Michael Wilshaw
The London teacher and headteacher who went on to lead Ofsted from 2012 to 2016.
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Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins: the science of nutrition
The Cambridge biochemist helped establish the importance of vitamins and shaped British scientific life as a researcher and Royal Society president.
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Horace Mann and the reach of an educational idea
The American reformer championed universal, non-sectarian schooling. His ideas were presented as part of a wider transatlantic conversation about education.
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Jean Jacques Rousseau and British educational thought
His ideas about childhood and learning travelled across the Channel, reaching British writers and reformers.
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Dame Jenni Murray
The Barnsley-born broadcaster presented BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour for more than three decades, bringing women’s lives and public questions into national conversation.
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Dame Ethel Smyth: composer, suffragette and musical pioneer
Ethel Smyth wrote ambitious music in a culture that judged women composers by unequal standards, and gave the suffrage movement an enduring anthem.
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Sir Andrew Motion: poet, biographer and laureate
From his biography of Philip Larkin to a decade as Poet Laureate, Andrew Motion has joined literary work with a public commitment to poetry.
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Sir Anthony Giddens: sociology, modernity and the Third Way
The Edmonton-born sociologist developed a theory of how people and social structures shape one another, led the LSE and helped frame debates about centre-left politics.
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Thomas Clarkson: the campaigner who carried abolition into public life
From gathering testimony in British ports to addressing an international convention, Clarkson helped turn opposition to the slave trade into a sustained public campaign.
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Sir Tim Brighouse: a career in school improvement
From local education leadership to the London Challenge, Brighouse worked to improve schools and widen the opportunities available to pupils.
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Catherine Gladstone: philanthropy, family and public life
The Welsh-born philanthropist built practical charitable work around a long life alongside one of Victorian Britain’s leading politicians.
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Anthony Seldon: education, history and public life
The British educator and contemporary historian has led schools, written political histories and argued for a broader conception of education.
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Elizabeth Garrett Anderson: opening medicine to women
The first woman to qualify in Britain as a physician and surgeon helped establish a medical school and hospital for women, while campaigning for women’s rights.
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Frances Buss and the case for educating girls
A headmistress, campaigner and teacher of teachers helped make academic schooling a serious possibility for girls in Victorian Britain.
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Dorothy Hodgkin: reading the structures of life
The Oxford chemist used X-ray crystallography to reveal the structures of penicillin, vitamin B12 and insulin, while helping to shape modern structural biology.
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Sir James Paget: The surgeon who made pathology scientific
From a Yarmouth apprenticeship to the microscope-led study of disease, Paget helped shape surgery and medical teaching in Victorian Britain.
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Sir Richard Arkwright
The Lancashire barber whose spinning machinery and mills helped shape the factory system
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David Livingstone: missionary, explorer and anti-slavery campaigner
The Scottish doctor mapped parts of central Africa and argued that Christian missions and legitimate trade could challenge the slave trade.
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Richard Dawkins
The Oxford biologist reshaped popular discussion of evolution and became a prominent, often contested voice in debates about religion and science.
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Angela Burdett-Coutts: philanthropy on a public scale
An heiress who put much of her fortune behind schools, social welfare and practical projects in Britain and overseas.
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Sir Michael Barber
The education reformer who led the Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit and wrote about putting policy into practice.
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Sir Alec Clegg: a child-centred educationist
As West Riding’s chief education officer, Clegg championed children’s learning and helped reshape local education through new schools, teacher development and creative approaches.
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Dame Cicely Saunders
Nurse, social worker and physician whose work at St Christopher’s helped shape modern hospice and palliative care.
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Eglantyne Jebb: from social research to children’s rights
The English reformer helped organise famine relief and drafted the charter that became the Declaration of the Rights of the Child.
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Thomas Henry Huxley: science, evolution and education
The comparative anatomist became one of Victorian Britain’s most forceful advocates for science in public life and the classroom.
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Mary Astell: reason, education and women’s intellectual equality
The English philosopher argued that women were as capable of reason as men, and proposed an institution where they could pursue learning.
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Rabindranath Tagore: education beyond the classroom
The Bengali poet and educator built an experimental school at Santiniketan and worked with Englishman Leonard Elmhirst on rural reconstruction.
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Sir Ken Robinson: making the case for creativity in education
From arts education in England to a globally watched TED talk, Robinson argued that schools should recognise a wider range of talents and ways of learning.
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