That's all. It would be awesome if you would like to add a comment as to why you think the person is interesting but that's totally optional.

I'd like to pick someone that isn't too commonly chosen (I know teachers get bored reading too many papers about the same people).

Here's the (huge) list of options:

Middle Ages Thomas Becket, Thomas Aquinas, Joan of Arc, Peter Abelard, Johannes Gutenberg, Geoffrey Chaucer, Simon de Montfort, Saladin, Marco Polo, Petrarch, Roger Bacon, William Wallace, Perkin Warbeck, Eleanor of Aquitaine, El Cid, Lambert Simnel

Absolutism Cardinal Richelieu, Louis XIV, Robert Walpole, William Pitt the Younger, John Wilkes, Frederick William I, Frederick II, Maria Theresa, Joseph II, Catherine the Great, Cardinal Mazarin, Ivan IV, William of Orange, Peter the Great, Oliver Cromwell, Thomas Hobbes

Renaissance Donato di Donatello, Jan Van Eyck, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Boccaccio, Raphael, Rembrandt, Lorenzo de Medici, Niccolo Machiavelli, Catherine de Medici, Cosimo de Medici, Isabella d'Este, Cesare Borgia, Marsilio Ficino, Mirandola, Albrecht Durer, Scientific Revolution, Galileo Galilei, Nicolaus Copernicus, Robert Boyle, Rene Descartes, Johannes Kepler, Vesalius, Isaac Newton, Nostradamus, Francis Bacon, Tyco Brahe, Paracelsus, William Harvey, Antoine Lavoisier, Cesare Beccaria, Margaret Cavendish, Maria Merian

Reformation Henry VIII, John Calvin, Catherine of Aragon, Sir Thomas More, Martin Luther, Anne Boleyn, Elizabeth I, Mary I, Erasmus, Ulrich Zwingli, Cardinal Wolsey, Jane Seymour, St. Teresa of Avila, St. Ignatius, Francis Xavier, Paul III

Enlightenment John Locke, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Baruch Spinoza, Denis Diderot, Francois Quesnay, Immanuel Kant, Adam Smith, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Mary Wollstonecraft, Franz Joseph Haydn, Pierre Bayle, Marie-Jean de Condorcet, Mozart, John Wesley, Antoine Watteau

European Exploration Pedro Cabral, Ferdinand Magellan, Jacques Cartier, Francisco Pizarro, Juan Ponce de Leon, Vasco da Gama, Prince Henry the Navigator, Bartholomeu Dias, John Cabot, Vasco de Balboa, Hernan Cortes, Samuel de Champlain, Henry Hudson, Juana Ines de la Cruz, Amerigo Vespucci, Hernando de Soto

*Edited to add commas