Best Early 20TH
Orville and Wilbur Wright were American aviation pioneers and bicycle manufacturers who developed the first successful sustained and controlled heavier-than-air powered aircraft. On December 17, 1903, they achieved the first powered flights near Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina, using their Wright F...
Alexandre Friedmann was a Russian and Soviet physicist and mathematician who made significant contributions to cosmology. In 1922 and 1924, he published papers outlining the Friedmann equations, which provided exact solutions to Albert Einstein's field equations of general relativity. His work demon...
Marcel Mauss was a French sociologist and anthropologist whose 1925 essay "The Gift" analyzed systems of reciprocal exchange in non-market societies. A nephew and collaborator of Émile Durkheim, Mauss argued that gift-giving creates binding social obligations. His work influenced later anthropologic...
Bronisław Malinowski was a Polish-British anthropologist whose extended fieldwork in the Trobriand Islands between 1914 and 1918 helped establish participant observation as a core anthropological method. His functionalist approach analyzed social institutions in terms of their role in meeting human...
Edward Sapir was an American anthropologist and linguist who played a foundational role in the development of cultural anthropology and structural linguistics in the early 20th century. He conducted extensive fieldwork on Indigenous languages of North America, producing detailed grammars and texts f...
Sir James Jeans (1877–1946) was an English physicist, astronomer, and mathematician who made substantial contributions to the fields of stellar dynamics and cosmogony. He is best known for formulating the Rayleigh-Jeans law and the concept of Jeans instability, which describes the collapse of inters...
Alfred Kroeber was an influential American cultural anthropologist who spent most of his career at the University of California, Berkeley. He is recognized for advancing the concept of the 'superorganic,' which posits that culture operates on a level of reality distinct from individual biology and p...
Edward Charles Pickering (1846–1919) was an American astronomer who served as director of the Harvard College Observatory from 1877 until his death in 1919. He pioneered the use of photographic photometry for measuring stellar brightness and oversaw the creation of the Henry Draper Catalogue, a larg...
Robert H. Lowie (1883–1957) was an Austrian-born American anthropologist who trained under Franz Boas at Columbia University. He conducted extensive ethnographic fieldwork among the Crow (Apsáalooke) and other peoples of the North American Plains, producing detailed studies of social organization, k...
André-Gustave Citroën (1878–1935) was a French industrialist who founded the Citroën automobile company in 1919. He was a pioneer in the implementation of mass production techniques in Europe, modeling his factories after the Fordist system in the United States. His company became one of the world's...
The Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus was a major American traveling circus formed in 1907 through a partnership between Benjamin E. Wallace and German animal importer Carl Hagenbeck. Operating primarily in the early 20th century, it became one of the largest circuses in the United States, distinguished by i...
Paul Radin (1883–1959) was an American cultural anthropologist whose ethnographic work focused primarily on Native American cultures, notably the Winnebago. He argued against the prevailing evolutionary views of his time, emphasizing the philosophical sophistication and individual variation within i...
Christian Hülsmeyer (1881-1957) was a German inventor who received patent 165,546 in 1904 for the Telemobiloscope, an early radio wave detection device. His apparatus could detect metallic objects like ships at sea, representing the first patented precursor to modern radar technology. Though his inv...
Elsie Clews Parsons (1875–1941) was an American anthropologist, sociologist, and folklorist who conducted extensive ethnographic fieldwork among Pueblo communities in the American Southwest. Alongside her anthropological documentation of indigenous cultures and regional folklore, she was a vocal ear...
The Miller Bros. 101 Ranch Wild West was a large traveling western show founded by George, Joe, and Zach Miller. Originating from the historic 101 Ranch in Oklahoma, the operation began touring in the early 20th century. The production featured authentic cowboy skills, trick roping, and rodeo events...
Clark Wissler (1870–1947) was an American anthropologist who spent his career at the American Museum of Natural History, where he served as curator of anthropology. He is best known for formulating the "culture area" concept, a framework used to classify Indigenous peoples of North America based on...
Ruth Leah Bunzel was an American anthropologist who studied under Franz Boas at Columbia University, becoming one of the first women to conduct independent ethnographic fieldwork in the Boasian tradition. Her groundbreaking 1929 study 'The Pueblo Potter' examined the artistic practices and learning...
The Al G. Barnes Circus was an American traveling circus founded by Jason Al G. Barnes in the late 19th century. The operation established its winter headquarters in Venice, California, and became nationally recognized for its vast collection of wild animals. Barnes pioneered the use of large, tente...
The Sells Floto Circus was a prominent American traveling circus that operated extensively in the early 20th century. It was formed through a merger involving the Sells Brothers Circus and promoted in part by Otto Floto, a sports editor for the Denver Post. The show traveled across the United States...
Walter Percy Chrysler was an American automotive industry executive who founded the Chrysler Corporation in 1925. Before establishing his own company, he worked as a turnaround specialist at Buick and Willys-Overland, significantly improving their manufacturing efficiency. In 1928, he expanded his e...
Gene Weltfish (1902–1980) was an American anthropologist who studied under Franz Boas at Columbia University. She co-authored the 1943 pamphlet "The Races of Mankind," which argued against scientific racism and was widely distributed, including by the U.S. Army. Her work focused on cultural anthropo...
Czech-American physical anthropologist who founded the American Journal of Physical Anthropology in 1918 and served as the first curator of physical anthropology at the Smithsonian Institution.
This piece is a vibrant, joyful burst of 20th-century energy. Prokofiev writes with a unique blend of childlike playfulness and sharp, rhythmic complexity. It is immediately engaging, full of memorable motifs, and possesses a bright, almost mischievous quality. It offers a modern alternative to the...
American physical anthropologist at Harvard whose Up from the Ape (1931) popularized the field, though his racial classifications were later widely discredited.
Adriaan van Maanen was a Dutch astronomer who measured the large proper motion of a white dwarf star in 1917, which was later named Van Maanen's Star in recognition of his discovery.
