Reference Resources: Biographies

Biographical information on people from throughout history, around the world, and across all disciplines and subject areas. Biographies are from multiple Gale reference books, such as Contemporary Authors, Encyclopedia of World Biography, Dictionary of American Biography, and Contemporary Black Biography.

Biographical information on over half a million people from around the world, with articles from biographical reference books published by H. W. Wilson, as well as magazine citations from Biography Index after 1984.

"Portraits of more than 17,400 men and women -- from all eras and walks of life -- whose lives have shaped the nation." Subjects must have died to be included.

Scholarly essays, with bibliographies, on the lives and careers of great scientists, mathematicians, and natural philosophers from all periods, from classical antiquity to modern times.

The foundation of this database as a biographical resource are the Gale publications Dictionary of Literary Biography, containing biocritical essays on authors and their works written by academic scholars, and Contemporary Authors, which covers over 115,000 writers.

A comprehensive source on the African American experience, with articles drawn from four Oxford encyclopedias, Africana, 2d ed., the Encyclopedia of African American History, Black Women in America, 2d ed., and the new African American National Biography, though all of the biographies from this last source haven't been added yet.