David Hayes Agnew (1818 - 1892)

David Hayes Agnew He was born on November 24, 1818 in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. He graduated from the medical department of the University of Pennsylvania in 1838, and a few years later set up in practice at Philadelphia and became a lecturer at the Philadelphia School of Anatomy. He married Margaret Irwin in 1841. He […]

Louis Agassiz (1807 - 1873)

Louis Agassiz was born in Môtier (now part of Haut-Vully) in the canton of Fribourg, Switzerland. Educated first at home, then spending four years of secondary school in Bienne, he completed his elementary studies in Lausanne. Having adopted medicine as his profession, he studied successively at the universities of Zürich, Heidelberg and Munich; while there […]

Elizabeth Cary Agassiz (1822 - 1907)

Elizabeth Cary Agassiz Elizabeth Cary was born in 1822 into a Boston Brahmin family of New England Ancestry. She was born on December 5, 1822 in Boston, Massachusetts at the house of her grandfather, Colonel Perkins, on Pearl Street. She was born to Mary Ann Cushing Perkins Cary and Thomas Graves Cary (who was a […]

Charles Adler Jr. (1899 - 1980)

Charles Adler, Jr. (June 20, 1899 – October 23, 1980) was an American inventor. An engineer, he invented a number of safety signals, some of which are still in common usage.  Charles Adler, Jr. was a lifelong resident of Baltimore, Maryland. At age 14, he formally started his career as an inventor when he received […]

Thomas Addison (1793 - 1860)

Thomas Addison was born in April 1793, but his exact birthdate is not known. He was born in Longbenton, near Newcastle upon Tyne, the son of Sarah and Joseph Addison, a grocer and flour dealer in Long Benton. He attended the local Thomas rutter school and then went to the Royal Free Grammar School in […]

Joy Adamson (1910 - 1980)

Adamson was born to Victor and Traute Gessner in Troppau, Silesia, Austria-Hungary (now Opava, Czech Republic), the second of three girls. Her parents divorced when she was 10, and she went to live with her grandmother. In her autobiography The Searching Spirit, Adamson wrote about her grandmother, saying, “It is to her I owe anything […]

John Couch Adams (1819 - 1892)

John Couch Adams Adams was born at Lidcot, a farm at Laneast, near Launceston, Cornwall, the eldest of seven children. His parents were Thomas Adams (1788–1859), a poor tenant farmer, and his wife, Tabitha Knill Grylls (1796–1866). The family were devout Wesleyans who enjoyed music and among John’s brothers, Thomas became a missionary, George a […]

Rudolph Ackermann (1764 - 1834)

He attended the Latin school in Stollberg, but his wish to study at the university was made impossible by lack of financial means, and he therefore became a saddler like his father.  He worked as a saddler and coach-builder in different German cities, then moved to Paris, and then London, where in 1795 he established […]

Dr Franz Carl Achard (1753 - 1821)

Achard was born in Berlin, the son of preacher Max Guillaume Achard, descendant of Huguenot refugees and his wife Marguerite Elisabeth (Rouppert). He studied physics and chemistry in Berlin. He became interested in sugar refining through his stepfather. At the age of 20, Achard entered the “Circle of Friends of Natural Sciences” and met Andreas […]

Robert Abplanalp (1922 - 2003)

Robert Henry “Bob” Abplanalp, KHS (April 4, 1922 – August 30, 2003) was an American inventor and engineer who invented the modern form of the aerosol valve, the founder of Precision Valve Corporation and a political activist.  Born to Swiss immigrant parents in the Bronx, New York, Abplanalp graduated from Fordham Preparatory School in 1939 […]

Niels Henrik Abel (1802 - 1829)

Niels Henrik Abel was born in Nedstrand, Norway, as the second child of Søren Georg Abel and Anne Marie Simonsen. When he was born, the family was living at a rectory on Finnøy. Much suggests that Niels Henrik was born in the neighboring parish, as his parents were guests of the bailiff in Nedstrand in […]

Frederick Augustus Abel (1827 - 1902)

Born in London, Abel studied chemistry at the Royal Polytechnic Institution and in 1845 became one of the original 26 students of A. W. von Hofmann at the Royal College of Chemistry. In 1852 he was appointed lecturer in chemistry at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, succeeding Michael Faraday, who had held that post since […]

Cleveland Abbe (1838 - 1916)

Cleveland Abbe was born in New York City and grew up in the prosperous merchant family of George Waldo and Charlotte Colgate Abbe. One of his younger brothers, Robert, became a prominent surgeon and radiologist. In school, Cleveland excelled in mathematics and chemistry, graduating in 1857 from the Free Academy. He then taught engineering for […]

Abe Fortas (1910 - 1982)

Fortas was born in Memphis, Tennessee, the son of Ray (née Berson) and William Fortas. He was the youngest of five children. His parents were Orthodox Jews, were of British descent, and his father worked as a cabinetmaker. Fortas acquired a lifelong love for music from his father, who encouraged his playing the violin, and […]

Stephen Johnson Field II (1816 - 1899)

Born in Haddam, Connecticut, he was the sixth of the nine children of David Dudley Field I, a Congregationalist minister, and his wife Submit Dickinson. His family produced three other children of major prominence in 19th Century America: David Dudley Field II the prominent attorney, Cyrus Field the millionaire investor and creator of the Atlantic […]

Oliver Ellsworth (1745 - 1807)

Ellsworth was born in Windsor, Connecticut, to Capt. David and Jemima (née Leavitt) Ellsworth. He entered Yale in 1762, but transferred to the College of New Jersey (later Princeton) at the end of his second year. He continued to study theology and, while attending, helped found the American Whig–Cliosophic Society along with Aaron Burr and […]

William Rufus Day (1849 - 1923)

Day was born in Ravenna, Ohio, son of Luther Day of the Ohio Supreme Court. He graduated from the University of Michigan in 1870 and spent the following year in the school’s law department. He settled in Canton, Ohio in 1872, where he began practicing law in a partnership with William A. Lynch. For twenty-five […]

David Davis (1815 - 1886)

He was born to a wealthy family in Cecil County, Maryland, where he attended public school. After graduating from Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, in 1832, he went on to study law in Massachusetts and at Yale University. Upon his graduation from Yale in 1835, Davis moved to Bloomington, Illinois, to practice law. He also […]

Peter Vivian Daniel (1784 - 1860)

Daniel was born in Stafford County, Virginia, in 1784 to a family of old colonial heritage. He was educated at home, and attended the College of New Jersey for one year before returning to Virginia. He read law under former Attorney General of the United States Edmund Randolph in Richmond, and was admitted to the […]

William Cushing (1732 - 1810)

William Cushing was born in Scituate, Province of Massachusetts Bay, on March 1, 1732. The Cushing family had a long history in the area, settling Hingham in 1638. Cushing’s father John Cushing was a provincial magistrate who in 1747 became an associate justice of the Superior Court of Judicature, the province’s high court. Cushing graduated […]

Benjamin Robbins Curtis (1809 - 1874)

Benjamin Curtis was born November 4, 1809 in Watertown, Massachusetts, the son of Lois Ribbins and Benjamin Curtis, the captain of a merchant vessel. Young Curtis attended common school in Newton and beginning in 1825 Harvard College, where he won an essay writing contest in his junior year. He graduated in 1829, a member of […]

Nathan Clifford (1803 - 1881)

Clifford was born of old Yankee stock in Rumney, New Hampshire, to farmers, the only son of seven children (His great-great-grandmother, Ann Smith, wife of Israel Clifford, was an accuser of Goody Cole in 1672, at the age of 10.) He attended the public schools of that town, then the Haverhill Academy in New Hampshire, […]

John Hessin Clarke (1857 - 1945)

Born in New Lisbon, Ohio, Clarke was the third child and only son of John Clarke, a lawyer and judge, and his wife Melissa Hessin. He attended New Lisbon High School and Western Reserve College, where he became a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon Fraternity. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1877. Clarke did not […]

Tom Campbell Clark (1899 - 1977)

Clark was born in Dallas, Texas on September 23, 1899, to son of Virginia Maxey (née Falls), and William Henry Clark. A graduate of Dallas High School, he served as a Texas National Guard infantryman in 1918; afterward he studied law, receiving his law degree from the University of Texas School of Law in 1922. […]

Samuel Chase (1741 - 1811)

Samuel was the only child of the Reverend Thomas Chase (c. 1703 – 1779) and his wife, Matilda Walker, born near Princess Anne, Maryland.  His father was a clergyman who immigrated to Somerset County to become a priest in a new church. Samuel was educated at home. He was eighteen when he left for Annapolis […]

Salmon Portland Chase (1808 - 1873)

Chase was born in Cornish, New Hampshire, to Janet Ralston and Ithamar Chase, who died in 1817 when Salmon was nine years old. His mother was left with ten children and few resources, and so Salmon lived from 1820 to 1824 in Ohio with his uncle Bishop Philander Chase, a leading figure in the Protestant […]

John Catron (1786 - 1865)

Little is known of Catron’s early life, other than that all of his grandparents emigrated from Germany to Virginia, as part of the extensive emigration of Germans and Swiss from Hesse and the Palatinate due to wars, and economic and religious insecurity in the area. His father, Peter (Catron) Kettering, had immigrated as a child […]

Benjamin Nathan Cardozo (1870 - 1938)

Cardozo was born in New York City, the son of Rebecca Washington (née Nathan) and Albert Jacob Cardozo. Both Cardozo’s maternal grandparents, Sara Seixas and Isaac Mendes Seixas Nathan, and his paternal grandparents, Ellen Hart and Michael H. Cardozo, were Sephardi Jews of the Portuguese Jewish community, affiliated with Manhattan’s Congregation Shearith Israel; their families […]

John Archibald Campbell (1811 - 1889)

Campbell was born near Washington, Georgia, to Col. Duncan Greene Campbell (for whom the now-defunct Campbell County, Georgia was named). Considered a child prodigy, he graduated from the University of Georgia in 1825 at the age of 14, and immediately enrolled at the United States Military Academy for three years and would have graduated in […]

Ronnie “Fast Eddie” Allen (1938 - 2013)

Born in Danville, Illinois, Ronnie Allen was there only a week, when his family had to move. His father was part-owner of a carnival, and the entire family, who worked at the carnival, moved every week to a new town.  When Ronnie was 11 years old, his father was killed in a motor vehicle accident, […]