Who Is Kylian Mbappé?

1. Bondy: a football childhood

Kylian Mbappé Lottin was born on 20 December 1998 in Bondy, a town in the north-eastern suburbs of Paris. His father, Wilfrid Mbappé, was born in Cameroon and came to France as a young man, where he became a football coach at the local club, AS Bondy. His mother, Fayza Lamari, was born in Algeria and played handball at a high level. Kylian grew up in a household where sport was a way of life: his father coached, his mother played, and his younger brother Ethan also became a footballer. He joined AS Bondy as a small child, and his father coached him, along with the other children of the town. Bondy is not a wealthy place, and the football club was a centre of the community, a place where children from many backgrounds played together and where talent was spotted early.

Mbappé was recognised as exceptional from a very young age. At six he was playing with children several years older than him, and at eleven he was invited to train at Clairefontaine, the French national football academy, which takes the best young players in the country. He also attracted the attention of clubs across Europe: he had trials with Chelsea in England and was watched by Real Madrid, whose former player Zinedine Zidane invited him to visit the club's training ground when he was fourteen. He chose to stay in France, joining the academy of Monaco in 2013, a club known for developing young players. It was a decision that showed the judgement of his family, who wanted him to develop at his own pace rather than being rushed into the spotlight.

At Monaco he progressed quickly. He made his first-team debut in December 2015, at the age of sixteen, becoming the youngest player to play for Monaco in the league, and he scored his first goal in February 2016, becoming the club's youngest goalscorer. He was still a teenager, and he was playing alongside players ten years older than him, but he did not look out of place. He was fast, direct and confident, and he scored goals with a composure that seemed beyond his years. His rise was not a surprise to those who had watched him at Bondy and at Clairefontaine: they had expected it, and they had waited for it. What surprised them was how quickly it happened, and how little he seemed to be affected by it.

2. Monaco and the breakthrough season

The 2016-17 season was Mbappé's breakthrough. Under the manager Leonardo Jardim, Monaco played an attacking, high-energy style of football, and Mbappé, still eighteen, became a central part of it. He formed a partnership with the Colombian striker Radamel Falcao, and he scored 26 goals in all competitions, including six in the Champions League, where Monaco reached the semi-finals, beating Manchester City and Borussia Dortmund on the way. In the league, Monaco won the title, ending the dominance of Paris Saint-Germain, who had won the previous four championships. It was the first league title of Mbappé's career, and it was won by a young team that played with a freedom and an attacking intent that made them popular across Europe.

His performances in the Champions League made him famous. He scored against Manchester City in both legs of their tie, he scored against Borussia Dortmund, and he scored against Juventus in the semi-final. He was quick, he was direct, and he was not afraid to take on defenders. He was also mature: he made good decisions, he passed when he should pass, and he did not try to do too much. Clubs across Europe wanted to sign him, and in the summer of 2017 the question was not whether he would leave Monaco but where he would go. Real Madrid wanted him, and he had dreamed of playing for them since childhood, but he chose Paris Saint-Germain, the club of his home city, which offered him the chance to play in France, to be close to his family, and to be the face of a project that aimed to win the Champions League.

The move to Paris Saint-Germain was completed in August 2017, initially on loan and then permanently. It was one of the most expensive transfers in football history, and it made Mbappé, at eighteen, one of the most valuable players in the world. The fee was not the point: the point was that a teenager from Bondy had become the most sought-after player in Europe, and that he had chosen to come home to Paris. It was the beginning of a seven-year spell at the club that would define the first part of his career, and that would end with him as the club's greatest ever goalscorer.

3. Paris Saint-Germain: records and frustration

Mbappé spent seven seasons at Paris Saint-Germain, from 2017 to 2024, and he became the club's all-time top scorer, with 256 goals in 308 games. He won the French league six times with the club, along with the French cup and the French league cup, and he was the top scorer in the league in six consecutive seasons. He played alongside Neymar and Lionel Messi, in a forward line that was the most famous in world football, and he scored goals of every kind: with his right foot, his left foot and his head, from inside the box and from outside it, on the counter-attack and in tight spaces. He was the fastest player in the league, and one of the fastest in the world, and his speed, combined with his finishing, made him almost impossible to defend against when he was in space.

But his time in Paris was also marked by frustration, because the prize the club wanted most, the Champions League, eluded them. Paris Saint-Germain reached the final in 2020, losing to Bayern Munich, and reached the semi-finals in 2021, but they never won the competition, despite spending more money on players than almost any other club in Europe. Mbappé himself played well in the Champions League, scoring many goals, including a hat-trick against Barcelona in 2021, but the team as a whole did not achieve what its owners and supporters expected. There were also tensions within the club, including disagreements about his role, his contract and the direction of the team, and in 2022 he signed a new contract after a long negotiation in which Real Madrid tried to sign him. He stayed for two more seasons, and then, in the summer of 2024, he left on a free transfer to join Real Madrid, the club he had dreamed of playing for since he was a boy.

His departure from Paris was the end of an era, and it was handled with the difficulty that often accompanies the departure of a great player. He left as the club's record goalscorer, as a six-time league champion, and as a player who had given the club its greatest moments. He also left with the sense that he had not achieved everything he wanted in Paris, and that the Champions League would have to be won elsewhere. Paris Saint-Germain went on to win the Champions League in 2025, the season after he left, a fact that was noted by many commentators and that added a note of irony to his departure. But his record in Paris stands on its own: 256 goals in 308 games is a return that no other player in the club's history has matched, and it is unlikely to be matched for many years.

4. The World Cup of 2018: a star at nineteen

Mbappé made his debut for France in March 2017, at the age of eighteen, and he was selected for the World Cup in Russia in 2018. He was the youngest French player to play at a World Cup, and he quickly showed why he had been chosen. In the round of sixteen against Argentina, he won a penalty, scored two goals, and ran at a speed that was measured at more than thirty-six kilometres an hour, in a match that France won 4-3. It was one of the great individual performances of the tournament, and it announced him to the world. He scored again in the semi-final against Belgium and in the final against Croatia, which France won 4-2, becoming only the second teenager, after Pele in 1958, to score in a World Cup final. He finished the tournament with four goals, and he was named the Best Young Player of the tournament.

The 2018 World Cup made Mbappé a global star. He was nineteen, he had won the biggest prize in football, and he had done it with a style that was joyful and fearless. He donated his entire World Cup earnings to a charity that gives children the chance to play sport, a gesture that was widely praised. He returned to Paris as a hero, and he was expected to dominate world football for the next decade. The expectations were enormous, and they were not always easy to carry: he was compared to Pele, to Ronaldo and to Messi, and every performance was judged against the standard he had set in Russia. He handled the attention with a maturity that surprised many, and he continued to score goals for club and country, but the World Cup of 2018 remained the high point of his early career, the tournament that defined him.

France's victory in 2018 was also the beginning of a period in which the national team was one of the strongest in the world, built around a core of players who had come through the French academy system. Mbappé was the youngest of them and the most talented, and he became the player the team was built around. The manager, Didier Deschamps, used him as a central striker and as a wide forward, and he gave him the freedom to move into space and to attack defenders. The team's success depended on many players, but Mbappé was the one who could change a match on his own, and he was the one the opposition feared most. It was a responsibility that he carried well, and it prepared him for the role he would later take on as captain.

5. The 2022 final and the hat-trick

The World Cup in Qatar in 2022 was the most dramatic tournament of Mbappé's career. France reached the final against Argentina, in a match that is now regarded as one of the greatest finals in the history of the competition. Argentina led 2-0 with ten minutes remaining, and the match seemed over, but Mbappé scored twice in two minutes, first from a penalty and then from a volley, to take the game to extra time. In extra time, Lionel Messi scored for Argentina, and Mbappé scored again from a penalty, completing his hat-trick and taking the match to a penalty shoot-out. He became only the second player in history to score a hat-trick in a World Cup final, after Geoff Hurst of England in 1966, and he finished the tournament as the top scorer, with eight goals, winning the Golden Boot. France lost the shoot-out, and Argentina won the World Cup, but Mbappé's performance was the defining image of the tournament.

The final also marked a passing of the torch. Messi, who was thirty-five, won the trophy that had eluded him, and Mbappé, who was twenty-three, showed that he was ready to take over as the best player in the world. The two players were teammates at Paris Saint-Germain, and their rivalry was friendly, but it was also real: they were the two best forwards in the world, and the final was a contest between them. Mbappé's hat-trick, in a losing cause, was one of the great individual performances in a final, and it is already regarded as one of the most famous performances in World Cup history. He also became the first player to score four goals in World Cup finals, across the finals of 2018 and 2022, a record that had never been achieved before.

After the 2022 World Cup, Mbappé's position in world football was clear: he was the outstanding forward of his generation, and the player most likely to dominate the next decade. He was still only twenty-three, and he had already scored twelve World Cup goals, more than most great players score in their entire careers. He had also become the captain of France, taking over from Hugo Lloris in March 2023, and he had taken on the responsibility of leading the national team. The question was no longer whether he was a great player but how great he would become, and whether he could win the trophies that would confirm his place among the best players in history.

6. The 2026 World Cup: the record falls

The 2026 World Cup, held in Canada, Mexico and the United States, was the tournament in which Mbappé made history. He scored twice in France's opening match against Senegal, passing Olivier Giroud as France's all-time top scorer, and he went on to score ten goals in the tournament, winning the Golden Boot for the second time in a row, the first player to win the award at two consecutive World Cups. France reached the semi-finals, where they lost to Spain, and then lost the third-place play-off to England 6-4, a match in which Mbappé scored twice. His ten goals in the tournament took his career World Cup total to 22 goals in 22 matches, making him the all-time top scorer in the history of the competition, ahead of Lionel Messi on 21 goals and Miroslav Klose, whose record of 16 goals had stood since 2014. It was a record that had seemed unbreakable, and Mbappé broke it at the age of twenty-seven, with at least one more World Cup ahead of him.

The record was the result of extraordinary consistency across three World Cups: four goals in 2018, eight in 2022, and ten in 2026, an average of one goal per match. No other player has scored so many goals in so few matches, and no other player has improved his tally at each tournament. The record also put Mbappé ahead of Messi in the all-time list, a symbolic moment in the rivalry between the two players, and it made him the first player to hold the record while still in his twenties. The achievement was widely reported, and Mbappé himself said that being the all-time top scorer in World Cup history, overtaking the great players who had held the record before him, was something that stood out among all his achievements. It was a measure of how far he had come since his debut in Russia, and of how much further he could go.

France's fourth-place finish in 2026 was a disappointment for the team, which had hoped to win the tournament, but Mbappé's individual performance was the story of the World Cup. He finished as the top scorer in the tournament, he became the all-time top scorer in its history, and he became France's all-time top scorer, all in the same month. As of October 2026, he had scored 67 goals in 107 appearances for France, and he was the captain of the national team and its most important player. The record will be his to extend: he will be thirty-one at the next World Cup in 2030, and if he stays fit he could add to his total and put the record beyond the reach of any other player. It is a prospect that excites French supporters and that worries the rest of the world.

7. Real Madrid and the career in progress

Mbappé joined Real Madrid in the summer of 2024, after his contract with Paris Saint-Germain expired, and he signed as a free transfer, the move he had wanted since he was a boy. In his first season, 2024-25, he was the top scorer in La Liga with 31 goals, and he won the European Golden Shoe as the top scorer in Europe's leagues. In his second season, 2025-26, he was the top scorer in La Liga again, with 25 goals, and the top scorer in the Champions League, with 15 goals, scoring 42 goals in 44 appearances in all competitions for the club. It was an outstanding individual season, but Real Madrid won no trophy, losing in the quarter-finals of the Champions League and finishing behind Barcelona in the league. The contrast between his personal success and the team's failure was the story of his first two seasons in Madrid, and it raised the question of whether individual records were enough.

His time at Real Madrid has also shown his versatility. He has played as a central striker, as a left-sided forward, and as a second striker, and he has adapted to the demands of a club where the expectations are higher than anywhere else in football. He has scored goals in the Clasico against Barcelona, in the Champions League, and in the league, and he has become the player the team looks to when it needs a goal. He has also taken on a leadership role, as one of the senior players in the squad and as the captain of France, and he has spoken about his ambition to win the Champions League with Madrid, the trophy that eluded him in Paris and that is the club's defining competition. As of November 2026, he has not yet won it, and it remains the main gap in his record.

Mbappé's career is still in progress, and it is too early to say where he will rank among the great players of all time. He has already achieved more than most players achieve in a lifetime: a World Cup, two Golden Boots, the all-time World Cup scoring record, the record as France's top scorer, and the record as Paris Saint-Germain's top scorer. He has also been the top scorer in La Liga and in the Champions League, and he has won league titles in France and individual awards in Spain. What he has not yet won is the Champions League, and what he has not yet done is to lead France to a second World Cup as captain. If he achieves those things, and if he continues to score at the rate he has scored so far, he will be remembered as one of the greatest players in the history of the game. If he does not, he will still be remembered as the player who broke the World Cup scoring record and who defined his generation. Either way, his story is not finished, and the next chapters will be written on the field.

Frequently asked questions

Sources and further reading

• Encyclopaedia Britannica — Kylian Mbappé
• Wikipedia — Kylian Mbappé
• Real Madrid — Kylian Mbappé profile

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• Who Is Tom Cruise? — Tom Cruise is an American actor and producer whose four-decade career runs from Top Gun to Mission: Impossible, built on real stunts and the big screen.
• Who Is Usain Bolt? — Usain Bolt is the fastest man in history, holder of the 100m (9.58s) and 200m (19.19s) world records and winner of eight Olympic gold medals.
• Who Is Virat Kohli? — Virat Kohli is India's modern batting great, the record holder for ODI centuries and a World Cup winner, still active in one-day cricket in 2026.
• Who Is Vladimir Putin? — Vladimir Putin has led Russia since 2000 — as president and, for four years, as prime minister. This explains his rise, his rule and his role in the world.
• Who Is Warren Buffett? — Warren Buffett built Berkshire Hathaway from a struggling textile mill into a vast conglomerate, and his letters taught generations value investing.
• Who Is Wasim Akram? — Wasim Akram is Pakistan's greatest fast bowler, the first to 500 ODI wickets and hero of the 1992 World Cup final, famed as the master of swing.
• Who Is Xi Jinping? — Xi Jinping has led China since 2012 as general secretary of the Communist Party and since 2013 as president, shaping its policies and vision.
• Who Is Zinedine Zidane? — Zinedine Zidane won the World Cup as a player and three Champions Leagues as a manager, and in July 2026 was appointed head coach of France.
• Who Was A. P. J. Abdul Kalam? — A. P. J. Abdul Kalam rose from a poor boyhood in Rameswaram to lead India's space and missile programmes, then served as the country's 11th president.
• Who Was Abdul Sattar Edhi? — Abdul Sattar Edhi built Pakistan's largest welfare network from a single free dispensary. This explains his life, his foundation and his legacy.
• Who Was Abdus Salam? — Abdus Salam won the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics for unifying two forces of nature. This explains his science, his institutions and his contested legacy.
• Who Was Abraham Lincoln? — Abraham Lincoln preserved the Union through the Civil War and ended slavery. This explains his rise, his presidency and his contested legacy.
• Who Was Ada Lovelace? — Ada Lovelace published the first program for a programmable machine in 1843. This explains her notes, her vision of computing and the debate over her role.
• Who Was Adolf Hitler? — Adolf Hitler led the Nazi Party and ruled Germany as dictator from 1933 to 1945, started the Second World War in Europe and was central to the Holocaust.
• Who Was Alan Turing? — Alan Turing defined modern computing, broke German naval Enigma and proposed the Turing test. This explains his science, his war work and his tragic end.
• Who Was Albert Einstein? — Albert Einstein rewrote physics with relativity and won the Nobel Prize for the photoelectric effect. This explains his ideas, his life and his legacy.
• Who Was Alexander Graham Bell? — Alexander Graham Bell patented the first practical telephone in 1876. This explains his work with the deaf, the patent fight and his wider inventions.
• Who Was Alexander the Great? — Alexander the Great built one of history's largest empires before dying at 32. This explains his conquests, his cities and the debate over his legacy.
• Who Was Alfred Nobel? — Alfred Nobel invented dynamite, held 355 patents and founded the Nobel Prizes. This explains his explosives empire, his will and the prizes' legacy.
• Who Was Allama Iqbal? — Allama Iqbal was Pakistan's national poet, whose ideas shaped the case for Pakistan. This explains his poetry, his philosophy and his legacy.
• Who Was Benazir Bhutto? — Benazir Bhutto was the first woman to lead a Muslim-majority country, serving as prime minister of Pakistan in 1988-90 and 1993-96.
• Who Was Bob Marley? — Bob Marley took reggae from Jamaica to the world and became a symbol of peace, resistance and unity. This explains his life, his music and his legacy.
• Who Was Bruce Lee? — Bruce Lee was the martial artist and actor who carried Hong Kong action cinema to the world and founded Jeet Kune Do, leaving a lasting influence.
• Who Was Charles Darwin? — Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection, published in On the Origin of Species in 1859, became the foundation of modern biology.
• Who Was Charles Dickens? — Charles Dickens was the greatest novelist of the Victorian era, whose serialised novels mixed comedy, social criticism and unforgettable characters.
• Who Was Charlie Chaplin? — Charlie Chaplin created the Little Tramp, the most famous screen character of the silent era, and directed classics City Lights and The Great Dictator.
• Who Was Cleopatra? — Cleopatra VII was the last ruler of Ptolemaic Egypt, a multilingual stateswoman who kept her kingdom independent for 21 years before Rome annexed it.
• Who Was Diego Maradona? — Diego Maradona was an Argentine footballer who captained Argentina to the 1986 World Cup and is widely regarded as one of the greatest players in history.
• Who Was Don Bradman? — Don Bradman was an Australian cricketer who averaged 99.94 in Test cricket, a record so far ahead of any other batsman that it remains famous in sport.
• Who Was Elvis Presley? — Elvis Presley took gospel, country and rhythm and blues and turned them into rock and roll, becoming the most famous singer of his century.
• Who Was Emily Dickinson? — Emily Dickinson was an American poet who wrote nearly 1,800 poems in private in Amherst, Massachusetts, and was barely published in her lifetime.
• Who Was Faiz Ahmed Faiz? — Faiz Ahmed Faiz was Pakistan's most celebrated modern Urdu poet, whose verse joined romantic lyricism with resistance to injustice.
• Who Was Franz Beckenbauer? — Franz Beckenbauer was a German footballer known as Der Kaiser, who won the World Cup as captain in 1974 and as manager in 1990.
• Who Was Freddie Mercury? — Freddie Mercury was the lead singer of Queen, a four-octave voice and fearless showman who wrote Bohemian Rhapsody and We Are the Champions.
• Who Was Frida Kahlo? — Frida Kahlo was a Mexican painter known for uncompromising, brilliantly coloured self-portraits exploring identity, the body and death.
• Who Was Galileo Galilei? — Galileo Galilei reshaped astronomy with his telescopic discoveries of 1610, defended a Sun-centred universe, and was tried by the Inquisition in 1633.
• Who Was Genghis Khan? — Genghis Khan united the Mongol tribes and built the largest contiguous land empire in history, a conqueror and lawgiver whose legacy is still argued over.
• Who Was George Washington? — George Washington won American independence, presided over the Constitutional Convention, and as first president defined the office — then walked away.
• Who Was Guglielmo Marconi? — Guglielmo Marconi was an Italian inventor who built the first practical wireless telegraph and sent the first transatlantic radio signal in 1901.
• Who Was Henry Ford? — Henry Ford was an American industrialist who founded the Ford Motor Company, built the Model T and perfected the moving assembly line.
• Who Was Isaac Newton? — Isaac Newton wrote the laws of motion and universal gravitation, invented calculus and transformed optics, leaving a lasting legacy in science.
• Who Was James Watt? — James Watt did not invent the steam engine, but his separate condenser of 1765 made it efficient enough to power the Industrial Revolution.
• Who Was Jane Austen? — Jane Austen published six novels in her lifetime, anonymously, and died at 41. This explains her life, her novels, her irony and her growing reputation.
• Who Was Jesus Christ? — Jesus of Nazareth is the central figure of Christianity, the world's largest religion. This explains his life in the Gospels, his teachings and his legacy.
• Who Was Johan Cruyff? — Johan Cruyff was the star of Total Football, won three Ballon d'Or awards, and as a manager built the Barcelona team that shaped modern football.
• Who Was Johannes Gutenberg? — Johannes Gutenberg built the first mechanised printing press in Europe and printed the Gutenberg Bible around 1455, changing how the world shared ideas.
• Who Was John Keats? — John Keats died of tuberculosis in Rome at 25, having written his six great odes in a single year. This explains his short life, his poetry and his fame.
• Who Was Joseph Stalin? — Joseph Stalin led the Soviet Union from the 1920s until 1953, industrialised the country and led it through the Second World War, ruling through terror.
• Who Was Julius Caesar? — Julius Caesar conquered Gaul, crossed the Rubicon and remade Rome's calendar and government, and was murdered by senators who feared he would be king.
• Who Was Kobe Bryant? — Kobe Bryant won five NBA championships with the Los Angeles Lakers and became known for the Mamba Mentality, on and off the court.
• Who Was Leo Tolstoy? — Leo Tolstoy wrote War and Peace and Anna Karenina, then abandoned literary fame for a radical moral philosophy that influenced Gandhi and the world.
• Who Was Leonardo da Vinci? — Leonardo da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper and filled notebooks with anatomy and engineering, becoming the symbol of the Renaissance.
• Who Was Ludwig van Beethoven? — Ludwig van Beethoven wrote nine symphonies, 32 piano sonatas and the Missa Solemnis, much of it while deaf. This explains his life and legacy.
• Who Was Mahatma Gandhi? — Mahatma Gandhi led India to independence through nonviolent resistance, and his ideas shaped civil-rights movements worldwide.
• Who Was Mao Zedong? — Mao Zedong founded the People's Republic of China in 1949 and led it until 1976, bringing unification and the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution.
• Who Was Margaret Thatcher? — Margaret Thatcher was the first woman to serve as British prime minister, leading the UK from 1979 to 1990 through reform, the Falklands War and division.
• Who Was Marie Curie? — Marie Curie discovered polonium and radium and remains the only person to win Nobel Prizes in two different sciences, a pioneer of radioactivity research.
• Who Was Marilyn Monroe? — Marilyn Monroe was the biggest star of the 1950s, the blonde bombshell of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Some Like It Hot, who fought the studio system.
• Who Was Mark Twain? — Mark Twain, born Samuel Langhorne Clemens, wrote Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn and became America's most famous humorist.
• Who Was Maya Angelou? — Maya Angelou was a poet, memoirist and civil rights activist whose autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings made her widely read.
• Who Was Michael Jackson? — Michael Jackson, the King of Pop, made Thriller, the best-selling album in history, and changed music video, dance and pop stardom.
• Who Was Mirza Ghalib? — Mirza Ghalib (1797-1869) is the pre-eminent Urdu and Persian poet of the last Mughal era, whose ghazals on love, loss and doubt are still recited.
• Who Was Muhammad Ali Jinnah? — Muhammad Ali Jinnah was the barrister and statesman who led the All-India Muslim League and became Pakistan's first Governor-General in 1947.
• Who Was Muhammad Ali? — Muhammad Ali was the three-time heavyweight champion who called himself The Greatest, and the most famous athlete of the twentieth century.
• Who Was Napoleon Bonaparte? — Napoleon Bonaparte rose from Corsica to Emperor of the French, redrew the map of Europe, and left a legal code that still shapes law across the world.
• Who Was Nelson Mandela? — Nelson Mandela spent 27 years in prison under apartheid, then became South Africa's first democratically elected president and a Nobel Peace laureate.
• Who Was Nikola Tesla? — Nikola Tesla developed the alternating-current power system, the induction motor and the Tesla coil, making long-distance electric power practical.
• Who Was Osama bin Laden? — Osama bin Laden founded al-Qaeda in 1988 and organised the September 11, 2001 attacks, in which nearly 3,000 people were killed.
• Who Was Pablo Neruda? — Pablo Neruda was Chile's great poet, a Nobel laureate, a communist senator and a diplomat. This explains his poetry, his politics and his death.
• Who Was Pablo Picasso? — Pablo Picasso co-founded Cubism, painted Guernica, and spent 75 years breaking the rules of art — the most influential artist of the twentieth century.
• Who Was Pelé? — Pele is the only footballer to win three World Cups, the youngest winner, and the game's first global icon. This is his life, his goals and his legacy.
• Who Was Pope Francis? The People's Pope — Pope Francis, the first pope from the Americas and the first Jesuit pope, led the Catholic Church from 2013 to 2025 with an emphasis on mercy and the poor.
• Who Was Prophet Muhammad? — The Prophet Muhammad is the founder of Islam, the world's second-largest religion. This explains his life, his teachings and his legacy.
• Who Was Queen Elizabeth II? — Queen Elizabeth II reigned for 70 years, from 1952 to 2022 — the longest reign in British history. This explains her life, her reign and her legacy.
• Who Was Rabindranath Tagore? — Rabindranath Tagore was the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, and the author of the national anthems of India and Bangladesh.
• Who Was Rosa Parks? — Rosa Parks was not a tired seamstress who acted on impulse. She was a trained activist and NAACP secretary whose bus refusal was a deliberate act.
• Who Was Rosalind Franklin? — Rosalind Franklin's X-ray image, Photograph 51, gave Watson and Crick the key evidence for the double helix. This is her life and the credit debate.
• Who Was Rumi? — Rumi, the thirteenth-century Persian poet of Konya, wrote the Masnavi and the Divan-e Shams, and became the most widely read poet in the world.
• Who Was Shane Warne? — Shane Warne took 708 Test wickets, bowled the Ball of the Century in 1993 and won the 1999 World Cup with Australia. This explains his career.
• Who Was Stephen Hawking? — Stephen Hawking was a theoretical physicist who showed that black holes emit radiation and wrote A Brief History of Time. He died in 2018, aged 76.
• Who Was Steve Jobs? — Steve Jobs co-founded Apple in 1976, was forced out in 1985, built Pixar, and returned to launch the iMac, iPod, iPhone and iPad. He died in 2011, aged 56.
• Who Was Thomas Edison? — Thomas Edison held 1,093 US patents, invented the phonograph and the practical incandescent lamp, and built the first commercial electric power system.
• Who Was Vincent van Gogh? — Vincent van Gogh produced about 2,100 artworks in a single decade, including The Starry Night and Sunflowers, and became famous only after his death at 37.
• Who Was William Shakespeare? — William Shakespeare is the most performed playwright in history, yet almost nothing is reliably known about his private life.
• Who Was William Wordsworth? — William Wordsworth launched English Romanticism with Lyrical Ballads and wrote The Prelude, the great autobiographical poem. This explains his life.
• Who Was Winston Churchill? — Winston Churchill led Britain through the Second World War and won the Nobel Prize in Literature, and his record on empire is still debated.
• Who Was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart? — Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a child prodigy who composed more than 600 works before his death at 35, defining the Classical era.
• Why Van Gogh Became Famous After Death — Vincent van Gogh died in 1890 almost unknown, and within a few decades his paintings were among the most loved in the world.