Famous Educators, Notable Teachers, Posters & Prints “Po...-Pu...-”
educational posters for social studies classrooms, home schools, and theme decor for office.

Henri Poincare
b. 3-29-1854; Nancy, Meurthe-et-Moselle, France
d. 7-17-1912; Paris

Mathematician, theoretical physicist, and philosopher of science Henri Poincare is often described as a polymath, excelling in all fields of the discipline as it existed during his lifetime.

The Poincaré group used in physics and mathematics was named after him. He was also a professor at the Sorbonne.

“It is certain that the combinations which present themselves to the mind in a kind of sudden illumination after a somewhat prolonged period of unconscious work are generally useful and fruitful combinations... all the combinations are formed as a result of the automatic action of the subliminal ego, but those only which are interesting find their way into the field of consciousness... A few only are harmonious, and consequently at once useful and beautiful, and they will be capable of affecting the geometrician's special sensibility I have been speaking of; which, once aroused, will direct our attention upon them, and will thus give them the opportunity of becoming conscious... In the subliminal ego, on the contrary, there reigns what I would call liberty, if one could give this name to the mere absence of discipline and to disorder born of chance.”

• Poincare's Prize: The Hundred-Year Quest to Solve One of Math's Greatest Puzzles

Neil Postman
b. 3-8-1931; NYC
d. 10-5-2003 (lung cancer)

Teacher and author Neil Postman was a culture critic and humanist who believed that human values can never be replaced by technology. Postman coined the word “technopoly” to describe a society that believes “the primary, if not the only, goal of human labor and thought is efficiency, that technical calculation is in all respects superior to human judgment ... and that the affairs of citizens are best guided and conducted by experts.”

Postman, with teacher and education reformer Alan Shapiro, developed the “school without walls” Program for Inquiry, Involvement, and Independent Study.

Pol Pot, née Saloth Sar
b. 5-19-1928; Russia
d. 4-15-1998

Pol Pot, best known as the despotic leader of the Cambodian communist movement, the Khmer Rouge, and Prime Minister of Democratic Kampuchea (1976-1979), was also a teacher of French literature and history at a private college in the late 1950s.

Joseph Priestley
b. 3-13-1733; Birstal, West Riding of Yorkshire, England
d. 2-8-1804; Northumberland, Pennsylvania

Joseph Priestley, a natural philosopher, scientist, theologian, Dissenting clergyman, political theorist, and teacher, is generally considered the discoverer of oxygen gas (Carl Wilhelm Scheele and Antoine Lavoisier are contenders).

Priestley helped found Unitarianism in England, influenced Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, and Herbert Spencer in the development of utilitarianism, and eventually had to flee to the young United States because of his support to the Amercan and French Revolutions.

Thomas Jefferson, in a January 1800 letter, indicated to Priestley that he had been planning the University of Virginia for years.

• Joseph Priestley and the Discovery of Oxygen (Grades 6-8)
• Joseph Priestley, Scientist, Philosopher, and Theologian

Alexander Pushkin
b. 1907; Russia
d. 1970

Dancer Alexander Ivanovich Pushkin is legendary as Rudolf Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov's ballet teacher, as were nearly all the leading male dancers of the Kirov Ballet from the 1940s through the 1960s.