Famous Librarians

Mao Zedong (December 26, 1893 – September 9, 1976) was a Chinese communist revolutionary. He founded the People's Republic of China (PRC). Mao ruled as Chairman of the Communist Party of China from 1949 until his death in 1976. His theories, military strategies, and political policies are known as Maoism. Mao's father was a prosperous peasant in Shaoshan, Hunan. He developed a Chinese nationalist and anti-imperialist outlook early in life.

Benjamin Franklin was a Founding Father of the United States and a polymath. He served as an author, printer, politician, scientist, inventor, diplomat, and statesman. He founded civic groups like the Library Company, Philadelphia's first fire department, and the University of Pennsylvania. As a scientist, Franklin contributed to the American Enlightenment and physics, specifically electricity. He invented the lightning rod.

Laura Welch Bush (née Laura Lane Welch; born November 4, 1946) is an American educator who was First Lady of the United States during the presidency of her husband, George W. Bush, from 2001 to 2009. Bush previously served as First Lady of Texas from 1995 to 2000. Born in Midland, Texas, Bush graduated from Southern Methodist University in 1968 with a bachelor's degree in education, and took a job as a second grade teacher. After attaining her master's degree in library science at the University of Texas at Austin, she was employed as a librarian. Bush met her future husband, George W. Bush, i

Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust (; French: [maʁsɛl pʁust]; 10 July 1871 – 18 November 1922), known as Marcel Proust, was a French novelist, critic, and essayist best known for his monumental novel À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time; earlier rendered as Remembrance of Things Past), published in seven parts between 1913 and 1927. He is considered by critics and writers to be one of the most influential authors of the 20th century.

Laozi (UK: ; US: ; Chinese: 老子 Mandarin pronunciation: [làu̯.tsɨ]; literally "Old Master"), also rendered as Lao Tzu ( or ) and Lao-Tze (), was an ancient Chinese philosopher and writer. He is the reputed author of the Tao Te Ching, the founder of philosophical Taoism, and a deity in religious Taoism and traditional Chinese religions. A semi-legendary figure, Laozi was usually portrayed as a 6th-century BC contemporary of Confucius, but some modern historians consider him to have lived during the Warring States period of the 4th century BC. A central figure in Chinese culture, Laozi is claimed

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (January 27, 1832 – January 14, 1898), known as Lewis Carroll, wrote famous children's fiction. This includes Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. Dodgson excelled at wordplay, logic, and fantasy. The poems Jabberwocky and The Hunting of the Snark belong to the genre of literary nonsense. He was also a mathematician, photographer, and Anglican deacon. Carroll came from an Anglo-Anglican family and spent time at Christ Church, Oxford.

David Hume (born 7 May 1711 NS – 25 August 1776) was a Scottish Enlightenment philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist, who is best known today for his highly influential system of philosophical empiricism, scepticism, and naturalism. Hume's empiricist approach to philosophy places him with John Locke, George Berkeley, Francis Bacon and Thomas Hobbes as a British Empiricist. Beginning with his A Treatise of Human Nature (1738), Hume strove to create a total naturalistic science of man that examined the psychological basis of human nature. Against philosophical rationalists, Hume held th

Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo (; Spanish: [ˈboɾxes] (listen); 24 August 1899 – 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish-language and universal literature. His best-known books, Ficciones (Fictions) and El Aleph (The Aleph), published in the 1940s, are compilations of short stories interconnected by common themes, including dreams, labyrinths, philosophy, libraries, mirrors, fictional writers, and mythology. Borges' works have contributed to philosophical literature and the fantasy genre, and have been considered

Gottfried Wilhelm (von) Leibniz (sometimes spelled Leibnitz) (; German: [ˈɡɔtfʁiːt ˈvɪlhɛlm fɔn ˈlaɪbnɪts] or [ˈlaɪpnɪts]; French: Godefroi Guillaume Leibnitz; 1 July 1646 [O.S. 21 June] – 14 November 1716) was a prominent German polymath and one of the most important logicians, mathematicians and natural philosophers of the Enlightenment. As a representative of the seventeenth-century tradition of rationalism, Leibniz's most notable accomplishment was conceiving the ideas of differential and integral calculus, independently of Isaac Newton's contemporaneous developments. Mathematical works ha

Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville (25 April 1817 – 26 April 1879) was a French printer, bookseller and inventor who lived in Paris. He invented the earliest known sound recording device, the phonautograph, which was patented in France on 25 March 1857.

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (; German: [ˈlɛsɪŋ]; 22 January 1729 – 15 February 1781) was a German writer, philosopher, dramatist, publicist and art critic, and an outstanding representative of the Enlightenment era. His plays and theoretical writings substantially influenced the development of German literature. He is widely considered by theatre historians to be the first dramaturg in his role at Abel Seyler's Hamburg National Theatre.

Hypatia (born c. 350–370; died 415 AD) was a Hellenistic Neoplatonist philosopher, astronomer, and mathematician. She lived in Alexandria, Egypt, during the Eastern Roman Empire. Hypatia taught philosophy and astronomy at the Neoplatonic school in Alexandria. She is the first female mathematician whose life is well recorded. She was known as a great teacher and wise counselor. Hypatia wrote a commentary on Diophantus's thirteen-volume Arithmetica, which may survive partially after interpolation.

Eratosthenes of Cyrene (c. 276 BC – c. 195/194 BC) was a Greek polymath, including a mathematician, geographer, poet, astronomer, and music theorist. He became the chief librarian at the Library of Alexandria. He invented geography, including modern terminology. Eratosthenes calculated the Earth's circumference by comparing mid-day Sun angles across two locations known to be separated by a North-South distance. His calculation established this fact.

Reinaldo Arenas (July 16, 1943 – December 7, 1990) was a Cuban poet, novelist, and playwright. He sympathized with and later criticized Fidel Castro and the 1959 revolution. Arenas also acted as a rebel against the Cuban government.

John Dee (13 July 1527 – 1608 or 1609) was an English/Welsh mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, and occult philosopher. He served as an advisor to Queen Elizabeth I. Dee studied alchemy, divination, and Hermetic philosophy. He advocated turning England's imperial expansion into a "British Empire," a term he helped coin. His activities bridged magic and modern science.

Audre Lorde (born Audrey Geraldine Lorde; February 18, 1934 – November 17, 1992) was an American writer, feminist, womanist, librarian, and civil rights activist. As a poet, she used her work to express anger over social and civil injustices. Her poems and prose address issues like civil rights, feminism, lesbianism, and black female identity. Lorde stated that those of us who...

Giacomo Girolamo Casanova (2 April 1725 – 4 June 1798) was an Italian adventurer and author from the Republic of Venice. His autobiography, Histoire de ma vie (Story of My Life), is a primary source for 18th-century European social customs. Casanova often used fictitious names, such as baron or count of Farussi (his mother's name) or Chevalier de Seingalt.

Adolfo Bioy Casares (September 15, 1914 – March 8, 1999) was an Argentine fiction writer, journalist, and translator. He collaborated with Jorge Luis Borges. He wrote the fantastic novel The Invention of Morel.

Seyyed Mohammad Khatami (born 14 October 1943) served as Iran's fifth President from August 1997 to August 2005. He also served as Iran's Minister of Culture from 1982 to 1992. Khatami criticized the government of former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He gained global attention during his first presidential election, where he received almost 70% of the vote. Khatami ran on a platform of liberalization and reform.

Arthur Fremont Rider (May 25, 1885 – October 26, 1962) was an American writer, poet, editor, inventor, genealogist, and librarian. He studied under Melvil Dewey and wrote a biography for the ALA. Rider wrote in plays, poetry, short stories, non-fiction, and his own autobiography in the third person. In the early 20th century, he worked as an editor for publications like Publishers Weekly and the Library Journal. In 1933, he became a librarian at Wesleyan University, eventually becoming director of the university.

Archibald MacLeish (May 7, 1892 – April 20, 1982) was an American poet and writer associated with the modernist school. MacLeish studied English at Yale and law at Harvard. He served in the First World War and lived in Paris during the 1920s. After returning to the US, he wrote for Henry Luce's magazine Fortune from 1929 to 1938. MacLeish served as Librarian of Congress for five years, a post accepted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. From 1949 to 1962, he was the Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard.

Beverly Atlee Cleary (April 12, 1916 – March 25, 2021) was an American writer of children's and young adult fiction. She is one of America's most successful living authors. Her books have sold 91 million copies worldwide since her first book appeared in 1950. Cleary created popular characters like Ramona Quimby and Beezus Quimby, Henry Huggins and his dog Ribsy, and Ralph S. Mouse. Most of her books are set in the Grant Park neighborhood of northeast Portland, Oregon, where she grew up.

Isadore Gilbert Mudge was ranked by the magazine American Libraries as one of the top 100 important leaders that libraries have had in the 20th Century. Mudge was a defining influence on what a contemporary reference librarian is and was essential for helping organize and promote reference books for all libraries. She is known both as the foremost reference librarian of her time and an author and editor of various reference books.

Daniel Joseph Boorstin (October 1, 1914 – February 28, 2004) was an American historian at the University of Chicago who wrote on many topics in American and world history. He was appointed the twelfth Librarian of the United States Congress in 1975 and served until 1987. He was instrumental in the creation of the Center for the Book at the Library of Congress. Repudiating his youthful membership in the Communist Party while a Harvard undergraduate (1938–39), Boorstin became a political conservative and a prominent exponent of consensus history. He argued in The Genius of American Politics (195

Andre Alice Norton (born Alice Mary Norton, February 17, 1912 – March 17, 2005) was an American writer of science fiction and fantasy, who also wrote works of historical fiction and contemporary fiction. She wrote primarily under the pen name Andre Norton, but also under Andrew North and Allen Weston. She was the first woman to be Gandalf Grand Master of Fantasy, first woman to be SFWA Grand Master, and first inducted by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame.

Jesse Hauk Shera was an American librarian and information scientist who pioneered the use of information technology in libraries and played a role in the expansion of its use in other areas throughout the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. He was born in Oxford, Ohio on December 8, 1903, the only child of parents Charles, and Jessie Shera. His hometown of Oxford was a farming community and the home of Miami University. Shera went to William McGuffey High School, and graduated in 1921. While attending high school he played the drums in the school band, was a member of the debate team, a cheerleader, and he

Margaret Mahy, ONZ (21 March 1936 – 23 July 2012) was a New Zealand author of children's and young adult books. Many of her story plots have strong supernatural elements but her writing concentrates on the themes of human relationships and growing up. She wrote more than 100 picture books, 40 novels and 20 collections of short stories. At her death she was one of thirty writers to win the biennial, international Hans Christian Andersen Medal for her "lasting contribution to children's literature".Mahy won the annual Carnegie Medal from the Library Association, recognising the year's best child

Frances Clarke Sayers (September 4, 1897 – June 24, 1989) was an American children's librarian, author of children's books, and lecturer on children's literature. In 1999, American Libraries named her one of the "100 Most Important Leaders We Had in the 20th Century".

Sanford Berman is a radical librarian known for promoting alternative viewpoints in librarianship and acting as a pro-active information conduit to other librarians around the world, mostly via public speaking, voluminous correspondence, and unsolicited "care packages" delivered via the U.S. Postal Service. Will Manley, columnist for the ALA publication, American Libraries referred to Berman as a 'bibliographic warrior.'

Seymour Lubetzky (April 28, 1898 – April 5, 2003) was a major cataloging theorist and a prominent librarian.

George Herbert Putnam (September 20, 1861 – August 14, 1955) was an American librarian. He was the eighth (and also the longest-serving) Librarian of Congress from 1899 to 1939. He implemented his vision of a universal collection with strengths in every language, especially from Europe and Latin America.

Julia L. Sauer is a writer.

Arna Wendell Bontemps ( bon-TOM) (October 13, 1902 – June 4, 1973) was an American poet, novelist and librarian, and a noted member of the Harlem Renaissance.

Heinrich Loewe was a German journalist.

Anne Tyler (born October 25, 1941) is an American novelist, short story writer, and literary critic. She has published 22 novels, the best known of which are Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant (1982), The Accidental Tourist (1985), and Breathing Lessons (1988). All three were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction with Breathing Lessons winning the prize in 1989. She has also won the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize, the Ambassador Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 2012 she was awarded The Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence. Tyler's twentieth novel, A Spool of

Sir Henry Ellis was an English librarian and antiquarian, for a long period principal librarian at the British Museum.

Philip Arthur Larkin CH CBE FRSL (9 August 1922 – 2 December 1985) was an English poet, novelist, and librarian. His first book of poetry, The North Ship, was published in 1945, followed by two novels, Jill (1946) and A Girl in Winter (1947), and he came to prominence in 1955 with the publication of his second collection of poems, The Less Deceived, followed by The Whitsun Weddings (1964) and High Windows (1974). He contributed to The Daily Telegraph as its jazz critic from 1961 to 1971, articles gathered in All What Jazz: A Record Diary 1961–71 (1985), and he edited The Oxford Book of Twentie

Sirkazhi Ramamrita Ranganathan (S.R.R.) (listen 12 August 1892 – 27 September 1972) was a mathematician and librarian from India. His most notable contributions to the field were his five laws of library science and the development of the first major faceted classification system, the colon classification. He is considered to be the father of library science, documentation, and information science in India and is widely known throughout the rest of the world for his fundamental thinking in the field. His birthday is observed every year as the National Librarian's Day in India.He was a universi

Philip Pullman is a writer who is known for writing "The Golden Compass," "His Dark Materials," and "The Ruby in the Smoke."

William James "Will" Durant (; November 5, 1885 – November 7, 1981) was an American writer, historian, and philosopher. He became best known for his work The Story of Civilization, 11 volumes written in collaboration with his wife, Ariel Durant, and published between 1935 and 1975. He was earlier noted for The Story of Philosophy (1926), described as "a groundbreaking work that helped to popularize philosophy".He conceived of philosophy as total perspective or seeing things sub specie totius (a phrase inspired by Spinoza's sub specie aeternitatis, which roughly means "from the perspective of t

Linnie Marsh Wolfe is a Pulitzer-prize winning writer.

Georges Albert Maurice Victor Bataille (; French: [ʒɔʁʒ batɑj]; 10 September 1897 – 9 July 1962) was a French intellectual and literary figure working in literature, philosophy, anthropology, consumerism, sociology and history of art. His writing, which included essays, novels, and poetry, explored such subjects as erotism, mysticism, surrealism, petroleum, and transgression. His work would prove influential on subsequent schools of philosophy and social theory, including poststructuralism.

Joanna Cole (August 11, 1944 – July 12, 2020) was an American author of children's books. She was best known as the author of The Magic School Bus series, which sold more than 93 million copies in 13 countries. She wrote over 250 books ranging from her first book Cockroaches to her famous series Magic School Bus, which is illustrated by Bruce Degen.

Stanley Jasspon Kunitz (; July 29, 1905 – May 14, 2006) was an American poet. He was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress twice, first in 1974 and then again in 2000.

James Theodore (Ted) Richmond also known as "Twilight Ted" (May 26, 1890 – December 3, 1975) was an American writer, conservationist, non-denominational preacher, and noted librarian.

Benjamin Peirce (;) FRSFor HFRSE April 4, 1809 – October 6, 1880) was an American mathematician who taught at Harvard University for approximately 50 years. He made contributions to celestial mechanics, statistics, number theory, algebra, and the philosophy of mathematics.

Cynthia Rylant (born 6 June 1954) is an American author and librarian. She has written more than 100 children's books, including works of fiction (picture books, short stories and novels), nonfiction, and poetry. Several of her books have won awards, including her novel Missing May, which won the 1993 Newbery Medal, and A Fine White Dust which was a 1987 Newbery Honor book. Two of her books are Caldecott Honor Books. Many of Rylant's books are about her childhood in Appalachia, her pets, the joys and hardships of family life, and the feelings of loners. Many of her books are written in series.

Dorris Alexander "Dee" Brown (February 29, 1908 – December 12, 2002) was an American novelist, historian, and librarian. His most famous work, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (1970) details the history of American expansionism from the point of view of the Native Americans.

William Kaye Lamb, (May 11, 1904 – August 24, 1999) was a Canadian historian, archivist, librarian, and civil servant.

Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp (; French: [maʁsɛl dyʃɑ̃]; 28 July 1887 – 2 October 1968) was a French-American painter, sculptor, chess player, and writer whose work is associated with Cubism, Dada, and conceptual art. He was careful about his use of the term Dada and was not directly associated with Dada groups. Duchamp is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, as one of the three artists who helped to define the revolutionary developments in the plastic arts in the opening decades of the 20th century, responsible for significant developments in painting and sculpture. Du