It was on this date, March 26, 1913, that Hungarian mathematician and mathematical problem-solver Paul Erdős was born in Budapest, the son of two professional mathematicians. Although born into a Hungarian Jewish family (the original family name was Engländer), neither of his parents were observant Jews – but they did introduce young Paul to mathematics, […]

It was on this date, June 22, 1633, that Florentine-Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei (15 February 1564 to 8 January 1642) was compelled by the Roman Catholic Inquisition to recant the theory he held that the earth travels around the sun. What seems obvious to us today was unscriptural, and therefore by definition untrue, in Galileo's […]

It was on this date, February 19, 1473, that Nicolaus Koppernigk, known to science history by his Latinized name, Nicolaus Copernicus, was born in Toruń, what is now known as Thorn in modern Poland. Copernicus lost his father at age 10 and was taken under the wing of his Uncle Lucas, a free-living Polish cleric, […]

Marquis de Condorcet (1743) It was on this date, September 17, 1743, that French mathematician and political philosopher Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas Caritat, Marquis de Condorcet, was born in Ribemont, Picardy, France. His father died early, so his mother, a very devout woman, had Condorcet educated at Jesuit Colleges in Reims and at the Collège […]

Augustus de Morgan was a Theist with an ethical appreciation of Christianity. He described himself as an "unattached Christian," and refused to join even the Unitarian Church.

“Christian religion ... has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. ... Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear.”