Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni, known best as Michelangelo, was an Italian sculptor, painter and poet of the High Renaissance born in the Republic of Florence, who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art. His artistic versatility was of such a high order that he is considered a contender for the title of the archetypal Renaissance man, along with his rival, the fellow Florentine, Leonardo da Vinci. Several scholars have described Michelangelo as the greatest artist of his age and as the greatest artist of all time. A number of Michelangelo's works of painting and architecture rank among the most famous in existence, his output in these fields was prodigious. He sculpted two of the Pietà and David, before the age of thirty. Despite holding a low opinion of painting, he created two of the most influential frescoes in the history of Western art: the scenes from Genesis on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome, The Last Judgment on its altar wall, his design of the Laurentian Library pioneered Mannerist architecture.

At the age of 74, he succeeded Antonio da Sangallo the Younger as the architect of St. Peter's Basilica, he transformed the plan so that the western end was finished to his design, as was the dome, with some modification, after his death. Michelangelo was the first Western artist. In fact, two biographies were published during his lifetime. One of them, by Giorgio Vasari, proposed that Michelangelo's work transcended that of any artist living or dead, was "supreme in not one art alone but in all three". In his lifetime, Michelangelo was called Il Divino, his contemporaries admired his terribilità—his ability to instil a sense of awe. Attempts by subsequent artists to imitate Michelangelo's impassioned personal style resulted in Mannerism, the next major movement in Western art after the High Renaissance. Michelangelo was born on 6 March 1475 in Caprese, known today as Caprese Michelangelo, a small town situated in Valtiberina, near Arezzo, Tuscany. For several generations, his family had been small-scale bankers in Florence.

At the time of Michelangelo's birth, his father was the town's judicial administrator and podestà or local administrator of Chiusi della Verna. Michelangelo's mother was Francesca di Neri del Miniato di Siena; the Buonarrotis claimed to descend from the Countess Mathilde of Canossa—a claim that remains unproven, but which Michelangelo believed. Several months after Michelangelo's birth, the family returned to Florence. During his mother's prolonged illness, after her death in 1481, Michelangelo lived with a nanny and her husband, a stonecutter, in the town of Settignano, where his father owned a marble quarry and a small farm. There he gained his love for marble; as Giorgio Vasari quotes him: "If there is some good in me, it is because I was born in the subtle atmosphere of your country of Arezzo. Along with the milk of my nurse I received the knack of handling chisel and hammer, with which I make my figures." As a young boy, Michelangelo was sent to Florence to study grammar under the Humanist Francesco da Urbino.

However, he showed no interest in his schooling, preferring to copy paintings from churches and seek the company of other painters. The city of Florence was at that time Italy's greatest centre of learning. Art was sponsored by the Signoria, the merchant guilds, wealthy patrons such as the Medici and their banking associates; the Renaissance, a renewal of Classical scholarship and the arts, had its first flowering in Florence. In the early 15th century, the architect Filippo Brunelleschi, having studied the remains of Classical buildings in Rome, had created two churches, San Lorenzo's and Santo Spirito, which embodied the Classical precepts; the sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti had laboured for fifty years to create the bronze doors of the Baptistry, which Michelangelo was to describe as "The Gates of Paradise". The exterior niches of the Church of Orsanmichele contained a gallery of works by the most acclaimed sculptors of Florence: Donatello, Andrea del Verrocchio, Nanni di Banco; the interiors of the older churches were covered with frescos, begun by Giotto and continued by Masaccio in the Brancacci Chapel, both of whose works Michelangelo studied and copied in drawings.

During Michelangelo's childhood, a team of painters had been called from Florence to the Vatican to decorate the walls of the Sistine Chapel. Among them was Domenico Ghirlandaio, a master in fresco painting, figure drawing and portraiture who had the largest workshop in Florence. In 1488, at age 13, Michelangelo was apprenticed to Ghirlandaio; the next year, his father persuaded Ghirlandaio to pay Michelangelo as an artist, rare for someone of fourteen. When in 1489, Lorenzo de' Medici, de facto ruler of Florence, asked Ghirlandaio for his two best pupils, Ghirlandaio sent Michelangelo and Francesco Granacci. From 1490 to 1492, Michelangelo attended the Humanist academy the Medici had founded along Neo-Platonic lines. There his work and outlook were influenced by many of the most prominent philosophers and writers of the day, including Marsilio Ficino, Pico della Mirandola and Poliziano. At this time, Mi

Thomas Craig Nelson is an American businessman, the chairman, CEO and president of National Gypsum, a company wholly owned by the Spangler family, since 1999. He is the son of Mr and Mrs Nels Richard Nelson of Glenview, Illinois, an IBM marketing executive in Chicago, his parents are both immigrants from Sweden. Nelson earned a bachelor's degree in industrial engineering from Stanford University in 1984, an MBA from Harvard Business School in 1988. Nelson was vice chairman and chief financial officer of National Gypsum from 1995 to 1999, has been the chairman, CEO and president since 1999. In 1990, Nelson married Anna Wildy Spangler, a Wellesley College graduate, a fellow 1988 Harvard Business School graduate, a fellow partner in Wakefield Group, a Charlotte, N. C. venture capital firm. She is the daughter of Clemmie Spangler, they have two daughters, live in Charlotte, North Carolina

Richard Rose is an American political scientist, Director of the Centre for the Study of Public Policy and Professor of Politics at the University of Strathclyde, Scotland. He studied as an undergraduate at Johns Hopkins University and completed his doctorate entitled The relation of socialist principles to British Labour foreign policy, 1945-51 at the University of Oxford in 1960, he has conducted research on a wide range of topics, including the Northern Ireland conflict, EU enlargement, democratisation and voting, policy transfer. With the exception of a gap during which he served as Sixth Century Chair in Politics at the University of Aberdeen between 2005 and 2011, Rose has been Professor of Politics at the University of Strathclyde since 1966, he was Lecturer in Government at the University of Manchester, from 1961 to 1966. Rose was made a Foreign Member of the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters in 1985, Honorary Vice President of the Political Studies Association in 1986, a Fellow of the British Academy in 1992, an Honorary Foreign Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1994, a Fellow of the Academy of Learned Societies for the Social Sciences in 2000.

In 2000, he was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Political Studies Association. There is a PSA award named after him, the Richard Rose Prize, awarded annually to scholar under 40 years of age making a distinctive contribution to the study of British politics. Rose was awarded an honorary doctorate by Örebro University, Sweden, in 2005, he was awarded the Lasswell Lifetime Achievement Award, named after Harold Lasswell, by the Policy Studies Organization in 1999. In 2019, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Rose, Richard. Learning About Politics in Time and Space: A Memoir. Colchester: ECPR Press. ISBN 9781907301476. Homepage at the University of Strathclyde Homepage at the Centre for the Study of Public Policy