Lancashire Pioneers in the Oxford DNB

Welcome to the Lancashire Pioneers page from the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

Below you'll find links to Oxford DNB biographies of 15 people from the Lancashire Pioneers feature—part of the Lancashire Lantern web resource from Lancashire County Library and Information Service. Just click on the names below to read more about people who shaped Lancashire life.

At the bottom of this page you'll also find information on using the Oxford DNB to find more Lancashire lives, as well as thousands of others who shaped British history worldwide.

Architecture

Decimus Burton (1800–1881)

Edmund Sharpe (1809–1877)

Astronomy

Jeremiah Horrocks (1618–1641)

Chemistry

John Mercer (1791–1866)

James Thomson (1779–1850)

Food

Sir Henry Tate, first baronet (1819–1899)

Geology

John Edward Marr (1857–1933)

Glass

Pilkington family ( c.1825–1925), including William Windle Pilkington (1839–1914)

Mathematics, physics, and medicine

Sir James Mackenzie (1853–1925)

Sir Jonas Moore (1617–1679)

Sir Arthur Schuster [formerly Franz Arthur Friedrich] (1851–1934)

Natural history

Sir Richard Owen (1804–1892)

Textiles

Sir Richard Arkwright (1732–1792)

David Whitehead (1790–1865)

Transport

Sir Frank Whittle (1907–1996)

Read on for more Lancashire lives

The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography includes the life stories of 56,000 men and women who shaped British history worldwide from the 4th cent BC to 2004.

The Oxford DNB online is freely available for patrons of Lancashire County Library and Information Service via the Online Reference Library (see under Premium Sources). Library members can access the Dictionary remotely from any computer using their card number as a log-in.

With the Oxford DNB you can look for people by name, or use People Search to find more than 1000 men and women active in Lancashire history.

Free Oxford DNB

Topical history is always available in the ODNB: try our Lives of the Week, online magazine, biography podcast and Open Shelves for free content and ways into the main Dictionary.

> Back to Lancashire Pioneers > Oxford DNB monthly magazine