Encyclopedists

Ariel Durant (May 10, 1898 – October 25, 1981) was a Russian-born American researcher and writer. She was the coauthor of The Story of Civilization with her husband, Will Durant. They were awarded the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction.

Shri Vyankatesh Bapuji Ketkar (18 January 1854 – 3 August 1930) was a scholar, astronomist and astrologist from Maharashtra, India. This forgotten star from the field of Indian astronomy, the legendary 'Jyotirvid' born in 1854, dedicated his life for the research and purification of Indian almanac system (Pañcānga) of timekeeping. It is a lesser known fact that he predicted the existence of 'Pluto' in 1911; even before its discovery in 1930. He authored a number of books on astronomy, Pañcānga and literature and also published many research papers in European science journals.

Mate Ujević (13 July 1901 – 6 January 1967) was a Croatian poet and encyclopedist.

Paul-Henri Thiry, Baron d'Holbach (8 December 1723 – 21 January 1789), known as d'Holbach, was a French-German philosopher, encyclopedist and writer, who was prominent figure in the French Enlightenment. He was born Paul Heinrich Dietrich in Edesheim, near Landau in the Rhenish Palatinate, but lived and worked mainly in Paris, where he kept a salon. He helped in the dissemination of "Protestant and especially German thought", particularly in the field of the sciences, but was best known for his atheism and for his voluminous writings against religion, the most famous of them being The System of Nature (1770) and The Universal Morality (1776).

Denis Diderot (5 October 1713 – 31 July 1784) was a French philosopher, art critic, and writer, best known for serving as co-founder, chief editor, and contributor to the Encyclopédie along with Jean le Rond d'Alembert. He was a prominent figure during the Age of Enlightenment.

Syed Qasim Mahmood (Urdu: سید قاسم محمود; 17 November 1928 – 31 March 2010) was a Pakistani intellectual and Urdu short story writer, novelist, editor, publisher, translator and foremost encyclopedist of Pakistan. He compiled fifteen encyclopedias and one dictionary and left seven encyclopedias uncompleted, produced three collections of short stories, wrote one novel, one novelette, and five dramas for Radio Pakistan, wrote story of one film, Bagi Spahi (rebel army man), translated masterpieces of international fiction, science & technology, edited nine literary and social magazines and brought forth nine scientific and literary magazines. From his publishing companies, he published 211 Scientific and literary books, wrote many articles on literature, science, politics and sociology in national newspapers and magazines. His lifelong mission was to spread knowledge and literature in his country through writing and publishing books & magazines where literacy rate is below normal. His jihad was against ignorance, illiteracy and fanaticism.

Simon Edward Pulsifer (born September 11, 1981 in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada) is a contributor to the English-language Wikipedia whose prolific participation made him a "minor media celebrity".

Bracha Peli (Hebrew: ברכה פלאי‎) (1892–1986) was the founder and owner of the Israeli publishing house, Massada. She was the driving force behind the publication of Encyclopaedia Hebraica, and is credited with starting Israel's annual Hebrew Book Week.

Alexander Peli (1915–2007) was a Ukrainian-born Israeli encyclopedist, the supervising editor of the Encyclopaedia Hebraica. The project began using his mother's publishing house in 1946 with Peli supervising. The last volume was published in 1996.

Empress Xu (徐皇后) (1362 – July 1407), formally Empress Renxiaowen (仁孝文皇后), was the empress consort to the Yongle Emperor and the third empress of China's Ming dynasty. She was well educated, compiling bibliographies of virtuous women, an activity connected with court politics.