Welcome to Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
- Over 60,000 biographies, 72 million words, 11,000 portraits of significant, influential or notorious figures who shaped British history – perform advanced search
- Life of the day now available by email or RSS feed.
- Have questions about how to use the redesigned website? Check out our Help page for a video demo and detailed instructions or read through our FAQs.
What's new
What's new: December 2019
This month’s update adds 13 lives ranging from the thirteenth to the early twenty-first centuries, with a review of the past year’s updates by the dictionary’s General Editor, Sir David Cannadine.
Featured
Sir Jocelyn Field Thorpe (1928–2004)
Three chemical reactions are named after Sir Jocelyn Thorpe, professor of organic chemistry at Imperial College, London from 1913. He made fundamental contributions to his area of science, and his expertise was sought by government and industry.