Short, honest profiles of people whose courage, curiosity and persistence changed the world around them. Read one when you need a reminder of what’s possible.
Arrived in America with less than one hundred dollars and rose to run one of its biggest food companies
She left Chennai for a Yale business degree with almost no money, worked nights to afford a job interview suit, and climbed through strategy roles to…
Found the solid core at the centre of the Earth from paper records, and worked until she was over 100
A seismologist who ran Denmark's earthquake stations single-handed for decades, kept her readings on cards in oatmeal boxes, and in 1936 explained…
Founded IKEA at 17 with a reward from his father for good school grades
A farm boy who sold matches from his bicycle at five, he built the world’s largest furniture retailer on one idea: if you cannot afford the price,…
Pakistani child sold into bonded labour at four who became a symbol against child slavery
Sold by his family to a carpet maker as a small child to repay a debt, he escaped bonded labour at around ten, campaigned internationally against the…
Smuggled some 2,500 children out of the Warsaw Ghetto and buried their names in jars
A Warsaw social worker who carried Jewish children out of the ghetto in ambulances, tool boxes and through the sewers, was tortured by the Gestapo…
The most-capped netballer in the world, who left South Africa to become a New Zealand hero
A primary school teacher and South Africa's captain, she emigrated in 2000 with a young daughter, became a Silver Fern within months and played more…
The sole survivor of a jungle trek, she emerged from the Amazon after twenty years apart from her husband
Separated from her French husband for two decades by colonial politics, she set out down the Amazon to reach him, survived the deaths of her entire…
A Victorian invalid whose doctor prescribed travel, so she rode through the Rockies, Japan, Persia and Tibet
Ill and depressed at home in Britain, she was transformed on the road, wrote a dozen bestselling books, and became the first woman admitted as a…
Nearly drowned in his first tunnel and went on to build railways, bridges and the biggest ships afloat
Almost killed when the Thames Tunnel flooded, he recovered to build the Great Western Railway, the Clifton Suspension Bridge and three steamships…
The 12th-century court engineer who wrote down exactly how to build his machines so that others could
Chief engineer to the Artuqid rulers of Diyarbakir for a quarter of a century, he built water clocks, pumps and automata, and in 1206 finished a book…
Wrote coded novels under one of Europe's harshest dictatorships and defected days before it fell
A novelist who wrote allegorical fiction under Enver Hoxha's isolated Stalinist regime, balancing precariously between official tolerance and…
Paralysed by polio at four, he was told a violinist had to stand, and has played sitting down ever since
A child in Tel Aviv whose legs were left paralysed by polio, he taught himself on a toy fiddle, was refused by a conservatory for being too small,…
Lost three daughters to a tank shell in Gaza and chose, on live television, not to hate
A Gaza-born obstetrician who worked in an Israeli hospital, he was on the phone to an Israeli news anchor in January 2009 when shells hit his home.…
Went totally deaf as an MP at 45, stayed in the Commons and won compensation for thalidomide children
A former labourer and crane driver who lost all his hearing after a routine operation went wrong, he decided against resigning and became the…
Failed his university entrance exam twice and was rejected by KFC before building Alibaba
A schoolteacher from Hangzhou who was turned down for dozens of jobs, including a position at the first KFC in his city, he co-founded Alibaba from…
Broke the colour line in American baseball and was ordered not to fight back
The grandson of an enslaved man, he became the first Black player in modern Major League Baseball in 1947, enduring abuse from crowds and teammates…
Freed from a slave ship as a boy, he helped carry his employer's body a thousand miles home
Rescued from a slave ship as a child and educated at a mission school in India, he joined Livingstone's last expedition and helped carry the…
A car crash ended his flying career, so he went underwater and showed the world what was there
A naval officer who co-invented the aqualung in occupied France, turned a minesweeper into a research ship and made films that taught a generation to…
Piloted a steel ball to the deepest place on Earth and found a fish looking back at him
Using a submersible his father designed, he and a US Navy officer descended nearly eleven kilometres to the deepest known point of the ocean in 1960,…
Told he was too frail to play, he went five and a half years and 555 matches without losing
A sickly boy from Karachi whose older brother and mentor died on court, he became world squash champion at 17 and put together the longest unbeaten…
Freed from slavery by Livingstone, he carried his employer's body a thousand miles to the coast
Freed from a slave gang as a boy by David Livingstone, he became his closest companion and, after Livingstone died, helped carry his preserved body…
Built 5,127 prototypes of a vacuum cleaner before one worked
Every vacuum manufacturer in Britain turned down his bagless design, so after five years and thousands of failed prototypes he built a company to…
Spent a decade making one idea work and set the industrial revolution in motion
A sickly, self-taught instrument maker who was refused a shop by the Glasgow guilds, he saw how to make the steam engine efficient and then spent…
Planned a steel city, a science institute and a hydroelectric scheme for an India that did not yet exist
A Parsi trader’s son in colonial Bombay, he built cotton mills with conditions far ahead of their time and then spent his last years on three schemes…
