Important Distinction

Our services do not include writing personal biographies for individuals. Such requests are referred to any of several commercial organizations -- including Reed Reference services, which publishes the famous Who's Who series and American Men and Women of Science. Their biographical sketches are available in their published volumes, online, in CD ROMs, and via various vendors of their databases (Dialogue, Lexis-Nexis, OVID, STN, et al).

Rather, we provide surveys and analyses of GROUPS of individuals -- by time segments, geographic locations, specialty fields, society memberships, academic affiliations, honors, gender, and minority status. We are especially prepared to compile lists of individuals (with their career data and references to further biographical sources) who are in any way associated with an organization, who have won specific honors, awards, or prizes, or memberships in honorific societies. We can compare the production from any selected institution with that of comparable institutions and construct an array of relevant rankings. Note that a majority of the cohorts cited above are closed and form statistically valid bases for such comparisons and rankings.

Initial survey reports tallying parameters relevant to any organization can be customized at a modest cost. Inquiries are invited.

About Our Database

Over 450,000 individuals from every century, continent, and field (with over 2300 specialty fields)

Notable alumni, faculty, administrators, and staff of over 3000 colleges and universities worldwide

Winners of over 710 honors, awards, and prizes—a cumulative list of nearly 10,000 notable members of 286 learned societies—over 170,000, active and former

Total memberships for 8 honorific societies, nearing total for 10, and a developing coverage for 40 more (ca 30,000)

All past and present Guggenheim and MacArthur Foundation Fellows, with their full careers, and a steadily growing proportion of the holders of 20 other fellowships.

Presidents of 263 learned societies, and a selection of other officers

All presidents of the United States and their cabinet members. Notable members of the judiciary—national and state

All current and past governors and senators, the majority of representatives to the Congress, prominent ambassadors and diplomatic corps members.

Prominent CEO's of leading corporations, past and present—over 9,000.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

How have the 450,000 persons in the database been assembled?
The quick answer: painstakingly, through fifty years of personal and professional exploration. From a beginning centered on experts in various biomedical fields, it has now expanded to cover people in every field, on every continent, and in every century. We strive to include all winners of over 700 awards, honors, and prizes. We survey 72 honorific societies--including all members of 10 of them, and a large proportion of members for the remainder. We review over 280 learned societies in all fields--their all-time officers, their own awardees, and a large proportion of their most notable members. We have systematically searched through prime histories of all major fields, geographic regions, and time periods. We have checked our holdings with many biographical directories and general encyclopedias. We are continually expanding and intensifying our coverage.

Are these restricted to certain fields?
As explained above, we intend to cover every field of human endeavor. This will be clear from examining the table, The Diversity of Fields We Cover, which uses the Dewey Decimal Classification System as a base. This diversity is also graphically presented in two pie charts (see Sample Reports page) showing distribution through time and space, and a bar graph of specialty fields.

Are there areas of special strengths?
We are most thorough and detailed in our coverage of academic fields, though we clearly include prime figures in the fields of business, government, popular culture, and the military. There is a certain skewing of the coverage towards the fields most richly represented by awards and prizes.

Are there groups so extensively researched that they represent closed cohorts?
Yes. We include every member of certain groups and research out such a detailed record of their lives and careers that they provide a reliable basis for searches, for comparisons with other groups, and for producing rankings of a series of groups--universities, professions, honors or geographic areas. That is, an organization can be assures that if any alumnus, or any faculty member or member of the administration (past or present) has ever won any honor that we have researched thoroughly, we will have recorded it. The reliability of such rankings has been demonstrated by a variety of institutions of higher education, professional societies, foundations, and administrators of geographic regions. Refer to our Recognition page for further details.

What are the costs of these services?
A simple, general rate cannot be given. We are a tax-exempt organization and we do a sizeable portion of our work pro bono. At the other extreme, we have provided surveys for large foundations, government organizations, and large, well-endowed colleges and universities for fees ranging into the tens of thousands of dollars ($11,000 to $85,000). Here, though, are some representative examples of our contracts with numerous small-to-moderate sized colleges and universities--the fees vary with the sizes of the institutions. In the first stage of a survey, we provide an overview and a tally of basic parameters--degrees, academic ranks, professional attainments, honors, awards, and membership in honorific societies (ca. $500--$1000). In the second stage, we provide the names of all persons represented in these categories (ca. $3,000--$5,000). In the third stage we provide comparisons and rankings of elements within an organization and between it and any other organization or organizations (ca. $5,000). These reports have provided useful guides for searches for lost persons and for qualified candidates for academic and administrative positions. We welcome inquiries and can quickly provide some summary statistics on our holdings of all person ever connected with any organization.