Ion Luca Caragiale was a Romanian playwright, short story writer, poet, theater manager, political commentator and journalist. Leaving behind an important cultural legacy, he is considered one of the greatest playwrights in Romanian language and literature, as well as one of its most important writers and a leading representative of local humour. Alongside Mihai Eminescu, Ioan Slavici and Ion Creangă, he is seen as one of the main representatives of Junimea, an influential literary society with which he nonetheless parted during the second half of his life. His work, spanning four decades, covers the ground between Neoclassicism, Realism, and Naturalism, building on an original synthesis of foreign and local influences.
Ion Mihai Pacepa was a Romanian two-star general in the Securitate, the secret police of the Socialist Republic of Romania, who defected to the United States in July 1978 following President Jimmy Carter's approval of his request for political asylum. He was the highest-ranking defector from the former Eastern Bloc, and wrote books and articles on the inner workings of communist intelligence services. His best known works are the books Disinformation and Red Horizons.
Ion Minulescu was a Romanian avant-garde poet, novelist, short story writer, journalist, literary critic, and playwright. Often publishing his works under the pseudonyms I. M. Nirvan and Koh-i-Noor, he journeyed to Paris, where he was heavily influenced by the growing Symbolist movement and Parisian Bohemianism. A herald of Romania's own Symbolist movement, he had a major influence on local modernist literature, and was among the first local poets to use free verse.
Ion Neculce (1672–1745) was a Moldavian chronicler. His main work, Letopisețul Țărâi Moldovei [de la Dabija Vodă până la a doua domnie a lui Constantin Mavrocordat] was meant to extend Miron Costin's narrative, covering events from 1661 to 1743.
Ion I. Nistor was a Romanian historian and politician. He was a titular member of the Romanian Academy from 1915 and a professor at the universities of Cernăuți and Bucharest, while also serving as Minister of State for Bukovina, Minister of Public Works, Minister of Labor, and Minister of Religious Affairs and the Arts with a number of governments from 1918 to 1940.
Ion of Chios was a Greek writer, dramatist, lyric poet and philosopher. He was a contemporary of Aeschylus, Euripides and Sophocles. Of his many plays and poems only a few titles and fragments have survived. He also wrote some prose works, including a Pythagorean text, the Triagmos, of which a few fragments survive.
Ion Vatamanu was a chemist, writer, and politician from Moldova. He served as member of the Parliament of Moldova (1990–1994) and chairman of the Committee on Culture of the Parliament of Moldova.
Ion Vidu, was a Romanian composer and choral conductor. Under his influence the small town of Lugoj, which up until that time had not that much in the way of artistic institutions, became a well-known center of choral music in Romania.
Ion Vinokur was a Ukrainian archaeologist, historian, professor, academician, known for his research of Chernyakhiv (Chernyakhov) culture and the history of the ancient Slavs. Within his academic career he had written around 40 books and over 400 further scientific articles and materials.
Iona Margaret Balfour Opie, and Peter Mason Opie were an English married team of folklorists who applied modern techniques to understanding children's literature and play, in studies such as The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (1951) and The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren (1959). They were also noted anthologists, assembled large collections of children's literature, toys, and games and were regarded as world-famous authorities on children's lore and customs.
