PEOPLE KNOWN FOR: president
Nigerian entrepreneur and politician
Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola, Nigerian business executive, philanthropist, and politician who is hailed as a figure of democratic change in Nigeria. Abiola was born and raised in poverty but was a...
president of United States
Barack Obama, 44th president of the United States (2009–17) and the first African American to hold the office. Before winning the presidency, Obama represented Illinois in the U.S. Senate (2005–08). He...
president of United States
George Washington, American general and commander in chief of the colonial armies in the American Revolution (1775–83) and subsequently first president of the United States (1789–97). Washington’s father,...
president of United States
Abraham Lincoln, 16th president of the United States (1861–65), who preserved the Union during the American Civil War and brought about the emancipation of enslaved people in the United States. Among American...
president of United States
Thomas Jefferson, draftsman of the Declaration of Independence of the United States and the nation’s first secretary of state (1789–94) and second vice president (1797–1801) and, as the third president...
president of United States
George W. Bush, 43rd president of the United States (2001–09), who led his country’s response to the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001 and initiated the Iraq War in 2003. Narrowly winning the electoral...
president of United States
Franklin D. Roosevelt, 32nd president of the United States (1933–45). The only president elected to the office four times, Roosevelt led the United States through two of the greatest crises of the 20th...
president of United States
Ronald Reagan, 40th president of the United States (1981–89), noted for his conservative Republicanism, his fervent anticommunism, and his appealing personal style, characterized by a jaunty affability...
president of United States
Donald Trump, 45th president of the United States (2017–21). Trump was a real estate developer and businessman who owned, managed, or licensed his name to hotels, casinos, golf courses, resorts, and residential...
president of United States
Richard Nixon, 37th president of the United States (1969–74), who, faced with almost certain impeachment for his role in the Watergate scandal, became the first American president to resign from office....
president of United States
John F. Kennedy, 35th president of the United States (1961–63), who faced a number of foreign crises, especially in Cuba and Berlin, but managed to secure such achievements as the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty...
president of Turkey
Kemal Atatürk, (Turkish: “Kemal, Father of Turks”) soldier, statesman, and reformer who was the founder and first president (1923–38) of the Republic of Turkey. He modernized the country’s legal and educational...
president of United States
Andrew Jackson, military hero and seventh president of the United States (1829–37). He was the first U.S. president to come from the area west of the Appalachians and the first to gain office by a direct...
president of United States
Dwight D. Eisenhower, 34th president of the United States (1953–61), who had been supreme commander of the Allied forces in western Europe during World War II. Eisenhower was the third of seven sons of...
president of United States
John Quincy Adams, sixth president of the United States (1825–29) and eldest son of President John Adams. In his prepresidential years he was one of America’s greatest diplomats (formulating, among other...
president of United States
Lyndon B. Johnson, 36th president of the United States (1963–69). A moderate Democrat and vigorous leader in the United States Senate, Johnson was elected vice president in 1960 and acceded to the presidency...
president of United States
John Adams, an early advocate of American independence from Great Britain, a major figure in the Continental Congress (1774–77), the author of the Massachusetts constitution (1780), a signer of the Treaty...
president of United States
Woodrow Wilson, 28th president of the United States (1913–21), an American scholar and statesman best remembered for his legislative accomplishments and his high-minded idealism. Wilson led his country...
Venezuelan soldier and statesman
Simón Bolívar, Venezuelan soldier and statesman who led the revolutions against Spanish rule in the Viceroyalty of New Granada. He was president of Gran Colombia (1819–30) and dictator of Peru (1823–26)....
president of United States
Theodore Roosevelt, 26th president of the United States (1901–09) and a writer, naturalist, and soldier. He expanded the powers of the presidency and of the federal government in support of the public...
president of United States
Ulysses S. Grant, U.S. general, commander of the Union armies during the late years (1864–65) of the American Civil War, and 18th president of the United States (1869–77). Grant was the son of Jesse Root...
president of United States
Jimmy Carter, 39th president of the United States (1977–81), who served as the country’s chief executive during a time of serious problems at home and abroad. His perceived inability to deal successfully...
president of United States
Bill Clinton, 42nd president of the United States (1993–2001), who oversaw the country’s longest peacetime economic expansion. In 1998 he became the second U.S. president to be impeached; he was acquitted...
president of France
Charles de Gaulle, French soldier, writer, statesman, and architect of France’s Fifth Republic. De Gaulle was the second son of a Roman Catholic, patriotic, and nationalist upper-middle-class family. The...
president of United States
Harry S. Truman, 33rd president of the United States (1945–53), who led his country through the final stages of World War II and through the early years of the Cold War, vigorously opposing Soviet expansionism...
emperor of France
Napoleon III, nephew of Napoleon I, president of the Second Republic of France (1850–52), and then emperor of the French (1852–70). He gave his country two decades of prosperity under a stable, authoritarian...
president of North Vietnam
Ho Chi Minh, founder of the Indochina Communist Party (1930) and its successor, the Viet-Minh (1941), and president from 1945 to 1969 of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam). As the leader...
president of United States
James Madison, fourth president of the United States (1809–17) and one of the Founding Fathers of his country. At the Constitutional Convention (1787), he influenced the planning and ratification of the...
president of Russia
Vladimir Putin, Russian intelligence officer and politician who served as president (1999–2008, 2012– ) of Russia and also was the country’s prime minister (1999, 2008–12). Putin studied law at Leningrad...
president of Venezuela
Hugo Chávez, Venezuelan politician who was president of Venezuela (1999–2013). Chávez styled himself as the leader of the “Bolivarian Revolution,” a socialist political program for much of Latin America,...
president of United States
James Monroe, fifth president of the United States (1817–25), who issued an important contribution to U.S. foreign policy in the Monroe Doctrine, a warning to European nations against intervening in the...
president of Venezuela
Nicolás Maduro , Venezuelan politician and labour leader who won the special election held in April 2013 to choose a president to serve out the remainder of the term of Pres. Hugo Chávez, who had died...
president of Brazil
Dilma Rousseff, Brazilian politician who in 2011 became Brazil’s first female president. She was reelected in 2014 but impeached and removed from office in 2016. Rousseff was raised in an upper-middle-class...
president of United States
Andrew Johnson, 17th president of the United States (1865–69), who took office upon the assassination of Pres. Abraham Lincoln during the closing months of the American Civil War (1861–65). His lenient...
president of United States
Herbert Hoover, 31st president of the United States (1929–33). Hoover’s reputation as a humanitarian—earned during and after World War I as he rescued millions of Europeans from starvation—faded from public...
president of United States
George H.W. Bush, politician and businessman who was vice president of the United States (1981–89) and the 41st president of the United States (1989–93). As president, Bush assembled a multinational force...
president of Yugoslavia
Josip Broz Tito, Yugoslav revolutionary and statesman. He was secretary-general (later president) of the Communist Party (League of Communists) of Yugoslavia (1939–80), supreme commander of the Yugoslav...
Chinese leader
Sun Yat-sen, leader of the Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang [Pinyin: Guomindang]), known as the father of modern China. Influential in overthrowing the Qing (Manchu) dynasty (1911/12), he served as...
political leader of Cuba
Fidel Castro, political leader of Cuba (1959–2008) who transformed his country into the first communist state in the Western Hemisphere. Castro became a symbol of communist revolution in Latin America....
president of United States
James K. Polk, 11th president of the United States (1845–49). Under his leadership the United States fought the Mexican War (1846–48) and acquired vast territories along the Pacific coast and in the Southwest....
president of United States
Grover Cleveland, 22nd and 24th president of the United States (1885–89 and 1893–97) and the only president ever to serve two discontinuous terms. Cleveland distinguished himself as one of the few truly...
president of Zimbabwe
Robert Mugabe, the first prime minister (1980–87) of the reconstituted state of Zimbabwe, formerly Rhodesia. A Black nationalist of Marxist persuasion, he eventually established one-party rule in his country,...
president of South Africa
Jacob Zuma, politician who served as president of South Africa from 2009 until he resigned under pressure in 2018. He also had served as the country’s deputy president (1999–2005) and as deputy president...
president of United States
James A. Garfield, 20th president of the United States (March 4–September 19, 1881), who had the second shortest tenure in U.S. presidential history. When he was shot and incapacitated, serious constitutional...
president of Soviet Union
Mikhail Gorbachev, Soviet official, general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) from 1985 to 1991 and president of the Soviet Union in 1990–91. His efforts to democratize his country’s...
president of United States
Calvin Coolidge, 30th president of the United States (1923–29). Coolidge acceded to the presidency after the death in office of Warren G. Harding, just as the Harding scandals were coming to light. He...
president and chief justice of United States
William Howard Taft, 27th president of the United States (1909–13) and 10th chief justice of the United States (1921–30). As the choice of Pres. Theodore Roosevelt to succeed him and carry on the progressive...
president of United States
William McKinley, 25th president of the United States (1897–1901). Under McKinley’s leadership, the United States went to war against Spain in 1898 and thereby acquired a global empire, which included...
president of Colombia
Juan Manuel Santos, Colombian politician who cofounded (2005) the Social Party of National Unity (Partido Social de Unidad Nacional, or Partido de la U), later served as president of Colombia (2010–18),...
president of Tunisia
Habib Bourguiba, architect of Tunisia’s independence and first president of Tunisia (1957–87), one of the major voices of moderation and gradualism in the Arab world. Bourguiba was born the seventh child...
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