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The first wife of Charles, Prince of Wales, Princess Diana was a member of the British royal family. As a princess, she became known for her unconventional approach to charity work. She was celebrated as a style icon and fashionista as well. She divorced Charles in 1996 and died in a tragic car accident the following year.
Born in Massachusetts, Elihu Yale moved with his family to Britain at age 3. An East India Company official, he had been the President of Madras and later started a diamond business in London. He later turned into a generous philanthropist and became the main benefactor of what is now Yale University.
Mechanical engineer Joseph Whitworth is best remembered for devising the British Standard Whitworth system for screw threads. He contributed a lot to the development of Owens College, introduced a scholarship, and left most of his fortunes to the people of Manchester. He was also made a baronet of the U.K.
Charles Booth was not just a shipowner but also a prominent social reformer, best known for his 17-volume Life and Labour of the People in London, which threw a light on the social conditions of the poor in London. He also developed statistical methods to ascertain the social issues of the working class.
Though he initially studied chemistry, Seebohm Rowntree soon joined his family cocoa business. He soon introduced employee-friendly policies, such as the 5-day work week and a pension plan, in the company. His pioneering study of working-class homes in York became an iconic sociological treatise on the poor.
German philanthropist and businessman Maurice de Hirsch was born into an affluent family of bankers and was later associated with Bischoffsheim & Goldschmidt. He is remembered for his remarkable charitable contribution to various educational initiatives and for the settlement of Jewish refugees, the most notable being the fund for Russian Jews.
Born to a well-known merchant and evangelist, Henry Thornton too followed in his father’s footsteps to become part of the evangelical Clapham Sect. A monetory theorist, he later became the first to explain the difference between nominal and real interest rates. The noted economist had also been a parliamentarian.
English physician John Fothergill revolutionized medical science by identifying the hardening of the arteries attached to the heart muscle in a case of angina pectoris. He is also said to have made coffee a popular beverage in England and supported coffee cultivation in the West Indies.
