Thomas Carlyle (4 December 1795 – 5 February 1881) was a British essayist, historian, and philosopher from the
Scottish Lowlands. A leading writer of the
Victorian era, he exerted a profound influence on 19th-century art, literature, and philosophy.
Born in
Ecclefechan, Dumfriesshire, Scotland, Carlyle attended the
University of Edinburgh where he excelled in mathematics, inventing the
Carlyle circle. After finishing the arts course, he prepared to become a minister in the
Burgher Church while working as a schoolmaster. He quit these and several other endeavours before settling on literature, writing for the
Edinburgh Encyclopædia and working as a translator. He found initial success as a disseminator of
German literature, then little-known to English readers, through his translations, his
Life of Friedrich Schiller (1825), and his review essays for various journals. His first major work was a novel entitled
Sartor Resartus (1833–34). After relocating to London, he became famous with his
French Revolution (1837), which prompted the collection and reissue of his essays as
Miscellanies. Each of his subsequent works, including
On Heroes (1841),
Past and Present (1843),
Cromwell's Letters (1845),
Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), and
History of Frederick the Great (1858–65), were highly regarded throughout Europe and North America. He founded the
London Library, contributed significantly to the creation of the National Portrait Galleries in
London and
Scotland, was elected
Lord Rector of Edinburgh University in 1865, and received the
Pour le Mérite in 1874, among other honours. (
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![Image 1 Vilfredo Federico Damaso Pareto (UK: /pæˈreɪtoʊ, -ˈriːt-/ parr-AY-toh, -EE-, US: /pəˈreɪtoʊ/ pə-RAY-toh, Italian: [vilˈfreːdo paˈreːto], Ligurian: [paˈɾeːtu]; born Wilfried Fritz Pareto; 15 July 1848 – 19 August 1923) was an Italian polymath (civil engineer, sociologist, economist, political scientist, and philosopher). He made several important contributions to economics, particularly in the study of income distribution and in the analysis of individuals' choices. He was also responsible for popularising the use of the term "elite" in social analysis. He introduced the concept of Pareto efficiency and helped develop the field of microeconomics. He was also the first to discover that income follows a Pareto distribution, which is a power law probability distribution. The Pareto principle was named after him, and it was built on his observations that 80% of the wealth in Italy belonged to about 20% of the population. He also contributed to the fields of sociology and mathematics. (Full article...)](/wiki/File:Blank.png)
