PEOPLE WITH MENTAL ILLNESS ENRICH OUR LIVES

William Henry Gates III KBE
(born 28 October 1955)
“Bill” Gates Jr. is the chairman of Microsoft, the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential. Microsoft had revenues of US $51.12 billion for the fiscal year ending June 2007, and employs more than 78,000 people in 105 countries and regions.

Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock KBE
(August 13, 1899 – April 29, 1980)
was an iconic and highly influential director and producer who pioneered many techniques in the suspense and thriller genres. He ultimately directed more than fifty feature films in a career spanning six decades, from the silent film era, through the invention of talkies, to the colour era. Hitchcock, achieved greatness during his lifetime, and remains one of the best known directors and most popular of all time.

Sir Isaac Newton FRS
(4 January 1643 – 31 March 1727)
was an English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, theologian, natural philosopher, and alchemist to be the greatest single work in the history of science, described universal gravitation and the three laws of motion, laying the groundwork for classical mechanics, which dominated the scientific view of the physical universe for the next three centuries and is the basis for modern engineering. He showed that the motions of objects on Earth and of celestial bodies are governed by the same set of natural laws by demonstrating the consistency between Kepler’s laws of planetary motion and his theory of gravitation, thus removing the last doubts about heliocentrism and advancing the scientific revolution.

Jane Austen
(16 December 1775 – 18 July 1817)
was a British novelist whose realism, biting social commentary, and masterful use of free indirect speech, burlesque, and irony have earned her a place as one of the most widely-read and best-loved writers in British literature.

Albert Einstein
(March 14, 1879 – April 18, 1955)
was a German-born theoretical physicist. He is best known for his theory of relativity and specifically mass-energy equivalence, E = mc2. Einstein received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics “for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect.

Hans Christian Andersen
(April 2, 1805 – August 4, 1875)
was a Danish author and poet, most famous for his fairy tales. Among his best-known stories “The Snow Queen”, “The Little Mermaid”, “The Emperor’s New Clothes” and “The Ugly Duckling”. During Andersen’s lifetime he was feted by royalty and acclaimed as having brought joy to children across Europe. His fairy tales have been translated into well over a hundred languages and continue to be published in “millions of copies all over the world”.

Charles Robert Darwin
(12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882)
was an English naturalist After becoming eminent among scientists for his field work and inquiries into geology, he proposed and provided scientific evidence that all species of life have evolved over time from one or a few common ancestors through the process of natural selection The fact that evolution occurs became accepted by the scientific community and the general public in his lifetime, while his theory of natural selection came to be widely seen as the primary explanation of the process of evolution in the 1930s, and now forms the basis of modern evolutionary theory. In modified form, Darwin’s scientific discovery remains the foundation of biology, as it provides a unifying logical

Thomas Jefferson
(April 13, 1743 – July 4, 1826)
As a political philosopher, Jefferson was a man of the Enlightenment and knew many intellectual leaders in Britain and France. He idealized the independent yeoman farmer as exemplar of republican virtues, distrusted cities and financiers, and favored states’ rights and a strictly limited federal government. Jefferson supported the separation of church and state and was the author of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom (1779, 1786).

Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni
(March 6, 1475 – February 18, 1564)
commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, poet and engineer. Despite making few forays beyond the arts, his versatility in the disciplines he took up was of such a high order that he is often considered a contender for the title of the archetypal Renaissance man, along with his rival and fellow Italian Leonardo da Vinci.

Wolfgang Mozart
(27 January 1756 – 5 December 1791)
was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. His output of over 600 compositions includes works widely acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music. Mozart is among the most enduringly popular of classical composers, and many of his works are part of the standard concert repertoire.

George Orwell
(25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950)
who was an English writer and journalist well-noted as a novelist, critic, and commentator on politics and culture, George Orwell is one of the most admired English-language essayists of the twentieth century, and most famous for two novels critical of totalitarianism in general (Nineteen Eighty-Four), and Stalinism in particular (Animal Farm), which he wrote and published towards the end of his life

Dan Aykroyd
(July 1, 1952)
is an Academy Award-nominated and Emmy Award-winning Canadian-American comedian, actor, screenwriter, musician, and ufologist. He was an original cast member of Saturday Night Live, an originator of the Blues Brothers (with John Belushi), and has had a long career as a film actor and screenwriter. Some of his well known films are Ghostbusters, The Blue Brothers, My Girl and many many more.

Ludwig Van Beethoven
(December 16, 1770 – March 26, 1827)
was a German composer and virtuoso pianist. He was a crucial figure in the transitional period between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western classical music, and remains one of the most respected and influential composers of all time.

Thomas Edison
(February 11, 1847 – October 18, 1931)
was an American inventor and businessman who developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph and a long lasting light bulb. he was one of the first inventors to apply the principles of mass production to the process of invention, and therefore is often credited with the creation of the first industrial research laboratory.

Woody Allen
(December 1, 1935)
is a three-time Academy Award-winning American film director, writer, actor, jazz musician, comedian and playwright. His large body of work and cerebral film style, mixing satire, wit and humor, have made him one of the most respected and prolific filmmakers in the modern era.Woody has said the following in a interview“I am a neurotic in a more benign way. I mean I have a lot of neurotic habits,” the quirky American director and actor told Reuters Television. “

Michael Jackson
(August 29, 1958 – June 25, 2009)
known as the King of Pop, was an American musician and one of the most commercially successful and influential entertainers of all time. His unique contributions to music and dance, along with a highly publicized personal life, made him a prominent figure in popular culture for over four decades.

Mark Twain
(November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910)
Born Samuel Langhorne Clemens Better known by the pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist. Twain is most noted for his novels Adventures of Huckleberry Finn which has since been called the Great American Novel and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. He is extensively quoted. During his lifetime, Twain became a friend to presidents, artists, industrialists, and European royalty.

Henry Ford
(July 30, 1863 – April 7, 1947)
was the American founder of the Ford Motor Company and father of modern assembly lines used in mass production. His introduction of the Model T automobile revolutionized transportation and American industry. He was a prolific inventor and was awarded 161 U.S. patents. As owner of the Ford Motor Company he became one of the richest and best-known people in the world