William Alchesay (1853 - 1928)

He was born May 17, 1853 in a part of the Arizona Territory known as Limestone Canyon. He joined the Indian Scouts at Camp Verde December 2, 1872 and served under General George Crook in actions against an uprising of the Chiricahua Apache in the winter of 1872–1873, holding the rank of Sergeant. He was […]

Lewis Albanese (1946 - 1966)

Louie Albanese (in Italian Luigi) was born in Cornedo Vicentino – Vicenza, Italy, graduated from Franklin High School in Seattle, Washington. He briefly worked for Boeing before joining the Army on 26 October 1965. He received basic training with B Co 1st Bn 11th Inf at Fort Carson, Colorado and was sent to Vietnam in […]

Frederick Aiken (1832 - 1878)

Information on Aiken’s early life is largely unknown; his date of birth, city of birth, and even his full name varies depending on source. His official birth records, as well as the 1840 and 1850 census records, indicate that he was born Frederick Augustus Aiken on September 20, 1832, in Lowell, Massachusetts, to Susan (née […]

Frederick George Abberline (1843 - 1929)

Frederick Abberline was the only son of Edward Abberline, a saddlemaker and Sheriff’s Officer and Clerk of the Market, minor local government positions, and his wife Hannah (née Chinn). Edward Abberline died in 1849, and his widow opened a small shop and brought up her four children, Emily, Harriett, Edward and Frederick, alone. Frederick was […]

Robin Williams (1951 - 2014)

Robin Williams Robin McLaurin Williams was born in Chicago, Illinois, on July 21, 1951. His mother, Laurie McLaurin (c. 1923 – September 4, 2001), was a former model from Jackson, Mississippi, whose own great-grandfather was Mississippi senator and governor Anselm J. McLaurin. His father, Robert Fitzgerald Williams (September 10, 1906 – October 18, 1987), was […]

Albert of Saxony (1828 - 1902)

Albert’s education, as usual with German princes, concentrated to a great extent on military matters, but he attended lectures at the University of Bonn. His first experience of warfare came in 1849, when he served as a captain in the First War of Schleswig against Denmark.  When the Austro-Prussian War broke out in 1866, Albert […]

Albert I of Belgium (1875 - 1934)

Born Albert Léopold Clément Marie Meinrad in Brussels, he was the fifth child and second son of Prince Philippe, Count of Flanders, and his wife, Princess Marie of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen. Prince Philippe was the third (second surviving) son of Leopold I, the first King of the Belgians, and his wife, Marie-Louise of France, and the younger […]

Zein al-Sharaf Talal (1916 - 1994)

She was born in Alexandria, Egypt to Sharif Jamal bin Nasser, Governor of Hauran and Wijdan Hanim. Her father was the nephew of Sharif Hussein bin Ali of Mecca and her mother was the daughter of Shakir Pasha, Governor of Cyprus, grandnephew of Kâmil Pasha.  Queen Zein played a major role in the political development […]

Fahd bin Abdulaziz Al Saud (1921 - 2005)

Fahd bin Abdulaziz was born in Riyadh in 1921. He is the eighth son of Ibn Saud. His mother was Hassa Al Sudairi and he was the eldest member of the Sudairi Seven.  Fahd’s education took place at the Princes’ School in Riyadh, a school established by Ibn Saud specifically for the education of members […]

Afonso VI of Portugal (1643 - 1683)

At the age of three, Afonso suffered an illness that left him paralyzed on the left side of his body, as well as leaving him mentally unstable. His father created him 10th Duke of Braganza.  After the 1653 death of his eldest brother Teodósio, Prince of Brazil, Afonso became the heir-apparent to the throne of […]

Adolph Frederick (1710 - 1771)

His father was Christian Augustus (1673—1726) duke and a younger prince of Schleswig-Holstein-Gottorp, prince-bishop of Lubeck, and administrator, during the Great Northern War, of the duchies of Holstein-Gottorp for his relative Charles Frederick. His mother was Albertina Frederica of Baden-Durlach. On his mother’s side, Adolf Frederick descended from king Gustav I of Sweden and from […]

Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen (1792 - 1849)

Adelaide was born on 13 August 1792 at Meiningen, Thuringia, Germany. Her father was George I, Duke of Saxe-Meiningen; and her mother was Luise Eleonore, daughter of Prince Christian of Hohenlohe-Langenburg. She was titled Princess Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen, Duchess in Saxony with the style Serene Highness from her birth until the Congress of Vienna (1814–15), […]

William Edward Boeing (1881 - 1956)

Boeing was born in Detroit, Michigan, to a wealthy German mining engineer named Wilhelm Böing from Hagen-Hohenlimburg who had made a fortune and who had a sideline as a timber merchant. Anglicizing his name to “William Boeing” after returning from being educated in Switzerland in 1900 to attend Yale University, William Boeing left Yale in […]

Dr. Baruch Blumberg (1925 - 2011)

Blumberg was born in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Ida (Simonoff) and Meyer Blumberg, a lawyer. He first attended the Orthodox Yeshivah of Flatbush for elementary school, where he learned to read and write in Hebrew and to study the Bible and Jewish texts in their original language. (That school also had among its […]

Otto Blathy (1860 - 1939)

He attended schools in Tata and Vienna where he obtained diploma of machinery in 1882. Between 1881-1883 he worked at the machinery workshop of the Hungarian Railways (MAV). Attracted by the successes of Károly Zipernowsky, he joined his team on 1 July 1883. He admitted he has learnt nothing about electrotechnics in university, so he […]

Louis Bleriot (1872 - 1936)

Born at No.17 rue de l’Arbre à Poires (now rue Sadi-Carnot) in Cambrai, Louis was the first of five children born to Clémence and Charles Blériot. At the age of 10, Blériot was sent as a boarder to the Institut Notre Dame in Cambrai, where he frequently won class prizes, including one for drawing. When […]

Alfred Blalock (1899 - 1964)

Born in Culloden, Georgia, Blalock entered Georgia Military Academy, a preparatory school for the University of Georgia, at the age of 14. Blalock attended Georgia as an undergraduate and was a member of the Delta Chapter of the Sigma Chi fraternity. After graduating with an A.B. in 1918 at the age of 19, Blalock entered […]

Emily Blackwell (1826 - 1910)

Blackwell was born on October 8, 1826 in Bristol, England. In 1832 the family emigrated to the US, and in 1837 settled near Cincinnati, Ohio. Inspired by the example of her older sister, Elizabeth, she studied medicine, earning her degree in 1854. In 1857 the Blackwell sisters and Marie Zakrzewska established the New York Infirmary […]

Sir James Black (1924 - 2010)

Black was born on 14 June 1924 in Uddingston, Lanarkshire, the fourth of five sons of a Baptist family which traced its origins to Balquhidder, Perthshire. His father was a mining engineer. He was brought up in Fife, educated at Beath High School, Cowdenbeath, and, at the age of 15, won a scholarship to the […]

Charles H. Black (1852 - 1918)

Black was a native of Hagerstown in Wayne County, Indiana. When he was a child, his family moved to Indianapolis, where he received his education in the city’s public schools. He went on to serve in the Union Army during the American Civil War, as did his younger brother Edward E. Black, who became the […]

Theodor Billroth (1829 - 1894)

Billroth was born at Bergen auf Rügen in the Kingdom of Prussia. He went to school in Greifswald. He was an indifferent student, and spent more time practicing piano than studying. Torn between a career as a musician or as a physician, he acceded to his mother’s wishes and enrolled himself at the University of […]

Wilfred Gordon Bigelow (1913 - 2005)

Wilfred Gordon “Bill” Bigelow, OC FRSC (June 18, 1913 – March 27, 2005) was a Canadian heart surgeon known for his role in developing the artificial pacemaker and the use of hypothermia in open heart surgery.  Born in Brandon, Manitoba, the son of Dr. Wilfred Abram Bigelow, founder of the first private medical clinic in […]

Mary Ann Bickerdyke (1817 - 1901)

Mary Ann Bickerdyke (July 19, 1817 – November 8, 1901), also known as Mother Bickerdyke, was a hospital administrator for Union soldiers during the American Civil War.  She was born in Knox County, Ohio, to Hiram Ball and Annie Rodgers Ball. She later moved to Galesburg, Illinois.  After the outbreak of the Civil War, she […]

Marie François Xavier Bichat (1771 - 1802)

Bichat was born at Thoirette in Jura, France. His father was Jean-Baptise Bichat, a physician who had trained at Montpellier and was Bichat’s first instructor. His mother was Jeanne-Rose Bichat, his father’s wife and cousin. He entered the college of Nantua, and later studied at Lyon. He made rapid progress in mathematics and the physical […]

Dr. Ernest Beutler (1928 - 2008)

Born in Berlin, to a Jewish family, his family home was located on Reichskanzlerplatz, renamed “Adolf Hitler Platz” after Hitler’s ascent to power, and then Theodor Heuss Platz after the Second World War. Both of his parents (Alfred and Kaethe, née Italiener) were physicians. His mother, a pediatrician, was in pre-war times the physician to […]

Daniel Best (1838 - 1923)

In 1839, Daniel Best’s father, John, moved the family to Missouri. There he built a saw mill and proceeded to cut lumber for the local pioneers to use in building their homes. The first nine years of Daniel’s life were spent here and is probably where he received his interest in logging and machines.  In […]

Charles Herbert Best (1899 - 1978)

Born in West Pembroke, Washington County, Maine, he was the son of Luella Fisher and Herbert Huestis Best, Canadians from Nova Scotia.  Best married Margaret Hooper Mahon in Toronto in 1924 and they had two sons. One son, Dr. Henry Best was a well-regarded historian who later became president of Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario. […]

Henry Bessemer (1813 - 1898)

The invention from which Henry Bessemer made his first fortune was a series of six steam-powered machines for making bronze powder, used in the manufacture of gold paint. As he relates in his autobiography, he examined the bronze powder made in Nuremberg which was the only place where it was made at the time. He […]

Jöns Jacob Berzelius (1779 - 1848)

Born at Väversunda in Östergötland in Sweden, Berzelius lost both his parents at an early age. Relatives in Linköping took care of him, and there he attended the school today known as Katedralskolan. He then enrolled at Uppsala University where he learned the profession of medical doctor from 1796 to 1801; Anders Gustaf Ekeberg, the […]

Marcel Alexandre Bertrand (1847 - 1907)

Marcel Alexandre Bertrand (July 2, 1847 – February 13, 1907) was a French geologist born in Paris. He was the son of mathematician Joseph Louis François Bertrand (1822–1900), and son-in-law to physicist Éleuthère Mascart (1837-1908).  He was a student at the École Polytechnique, and beginning in 1869 he attended the Ecole des Mines de Paris. […]