Discover the Figures Who Shaped History

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) was the leader of the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) and Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945. He established a totalitarian dictatorship responsible for the Second World War and the Holocaust. His racist, antisemitic, and expansionist ideology caused the deaths of tens of millions of people and left Europe in ruins.

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) reshaped modern physics. His works on special (1905) and general relativity (1915), the photoelectric effect, Brownian motion, mass–energy equivalence (E = mc²), and quantum statistics (Bose–Einstein) transformed science and our concept of nature. Awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics (conferred in 1922) for explaining the photoelectric effect, he was also an engaged public intellectual on peace, civil rights, and scientific responsibility.

Alexander III of Macedon (Alexander the Great) was one of antiquity’s most brilliant commanders. Heir to Philip II and student of Aristotle, he led a decade-long lightning campaign that toppled the Achaemenid Empire, founded cities (notably Alexandria), and projected Hellenic culture from the Mediterranean to the Indus.

Charlemagne (747–814), king of the Franks and later Emperor of the West, was the founder of the Carolingian Empire and a central figure in uniting Western Europe. A vigorous conqueror and reformer, he encouraged the Carolingian Renaissance and laid the groundwork for the Holy Roman Empire.

Charles VII (1403–1461), son of Charles VI and Isabeau of Bavaria, ruled France from 1422 to 1461. Initially derided as the “King of Bourges” after the Treaty of Troyes (1420) disinherited him, he restored royal legitimacy through the 1429 turning point—Orléans and the Reims coronation—sparked by Joan of Arc, and by a sequence of military and fiscal reforms (1438–1448) that enabled reconquest and the end of the Hundred Years’ War (Formigny 1450, Castillon 1453).