John Tyndall (1820) It was on this date, August 2, 1820, that British physicist John Tyndall was born in County Carlow, Ireland, to English Protestant parents. Tyndall left school at the age of 17, with a grounding in basic mathematics and worked for a time as a surveyor in the Irish Civil Service. Higher education […]

Herman Melville (1819) It was on this date, August 1, 1819, that the American novelist Herman Melville was born in New York, into a family of the Dutch Reformed church, the third of eight children. At age 7, scarlet fever left Melville somewhat visually impaired, and although his father died when he was 12, he […]

Marquis de Lamarck (1744) It was on this date, August 1, 1744, that French botanist, zoologist, and natural philosopher Jean Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet de Lamarck was born in Picardy. The Marquis de Lamarck studied for a time at a Jesuit college, but abandoned that institution when he became a Deist and, after some […]

E. Haldeman-Julius (1889) It was on this date, July 30, 1889, that Emanuel Julius was born in a Philadelphia tenement – later to become known as the book publisher E. Haldeman-Julius. Emanuel left school at age 13 to seek his fortune as a writer in New York and got a job on a Socialist newspaper, […]

Ludwig Andreas von Feuerbach (1804) On this date, July 28, 1804, the German philosopher Ludwig Andreas von Feuerbach was born in Landshut in Bavaria. As a young student of Hegel at Heidelberg, Feuerbach wrote to a friend, "Theology I can bring myself to study no more. I long to take nature to my heart, that […]

Sir Karl Popper (1902) It was on this date, July 28, 1902, that British philosopher Sir Karl Popper was born in Austria. He studied and taught in Vienna until the rise of the Nazis forced this son of Jewish parents to emigrate. He was sympathetic to the Vienna School of philosophy, though he was never […]

Thomas Campbell (1777) It was on this date, July 27, 1777, the Scottish poet Thomas Campbell was born in Glasgow, the youngest of the eleven children. Once destined for the ministry and the law, he studied at Glasgow and Edinburgh and became life-long friends with Walter Scott. In 1799 Campbell published a poem called “Pleasures […]

Alexandre Dumas fils (1834) It was on this date, July 27, 1834, that French novelist and playwright Alexandre Dumas fils, illegitimate son of Alexandre Dumas père – of Three Musketeers and Count of Monte Cristo fame – was born in Paris. He studied at the Collège Bourbon and accompanied his father on many of his […]

Giosuè Carducci (1835) It was on this date, July 27, 1835, that Nobel-winning Italian poet Giosuè Alessandro Michele Carducci was born in Valdicastello, a small town in the Province of Lucca in the northwest corner of the region of Tuscany. He studied philosophy at the University of Pisa, was professor of literature at Bologna University, […]

George Bernard Shaw (1856) It was on this date, July 26, 1856, that playwright George Bernard Shaw was born to Protestant parents in Dublin, Ireland. It is said the young Shaw attended a revival service by Dwight Moody and Ira Sankey in Dublin, and in one of his first critical notes wrote, "if this sort […]