Yoda

Standing at 66 cm tall, Yoda is one of the smallest members of the Jedi Council and arguably the wisest and most powerful Jedi of all time, even toward his demise, though the toll of his great age is noticeable (896 BBY [1] –4 ABY). Over his lifetime, Yoda trains several notable Jedi, including Count Dooku, Mace Windu, Obi-Wan Kenobi (partially, before Qui-Gon Jinn took over with Obi-Wan's training), Ki-Adi-Mundi and eventually Luke Skywalker. (In between here, during the Clone Wars cartoons, he mentions that he trained another one of the leaders on the Jedi Council, Master Oppo Rancisis.) Before the Great Jedi Purge, he had trained almost every Jedi in the Galaxy since he instructed all younglings in the Jedi Temple before they were assigned to a master (c. 800 BBY to 19 BBY).

George Lucas has intentionally kept the name of Yoda's race a secret. (Yoda, Yaddle, and Vandar Tokare are sometimes erroneously referred to as Whills, despite Lucas' insistence that they are not.) In fact, very little is reported of Yoda's life before the events of The Phantom Menace. It is speculated from the Expanded Universe that he achieved the status of Jedi Knight at the age of 50 and the rank of Jedi Master at 100. Following his training, Yoda is said to have spent 100 years in self-imposed solitude, attempting to attain a higher level of understanding of the Force. He was one of the Jedi Masters who ran the mobile academy aboard the starship Chu'unthor circa 200 BBY, leaving the ship's data tapes in the care of one of the natives when the vessel crashed on Dathomir. A strange note is that Yoda was referred to as 867 years old in previews for episode two, and 900 at the end of the saga.