Today LXV

Birthdays:

• André Tacquet, mathematician, whose work prepared ground for the eventual discovery of the calculus; he helped articulate some of the preliminary concepts necessary for Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz to recognize the inverse nature of the quadrature and the tangent; he was one of the precursors of the infinitesimal calculus, June 23, 1612 – December 22, 1660


• Carl Heinrich Carsten Reinecke, musician and composer, began to compose by the age of seven, and his first public appearance as a pianist was at the age of twelve; best known for his flute sonata Undine, June 23, 1824 - March 10, 1910


• Dr. Alfred Charles Kinsey, biologist and professor of entomology and zoology, who in 1947 founded what would become the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction, June 23, 1894 – August 25, 1956


• David Lewis, CC, MA, labour lawyer and politician, National Secretary of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation [CCF] from 1936 to 1950, and, in 1961, one of the key architects of the New Democratic Party [NDP], June 23, 1909 - May 23, 1981


• Jean Anouilh, dramatist, June 23, 1910 – October 3, 1987


• Milton John MILT Hinton, jazz double bass player, often referred to as "the dean of jazz bass players;" an accomplished photographer, he was one of Louis Armstrong's best friends, June 23, 1910 - December 19, 2000


• Alan Mathison Turing, mathematician, logician, and cryptographer, often considered to be the father of modern computer science; with the Turing test, he made a significant and characteristically provocative contribution to the debate regarding artificial intelligence: whether it will ever be possible to say that a machine is conscious and can think; he provided an influential formalisation of the concept of algorithm and computation with the Turing machine; during World War II, he worked at Bletchley Park, Britain's codebreaking centre, where he devised a number of techniques for breaking German ciphers, including the method of the bombe, an electromechanical machine which could find settings for the Enigma machine; after the war, he worked at the National Physical Laboratory, creating one of the first designs for a stored-program computer, although it was never actually built; in 1947, he moved to the University of Manchester to work, largely on software, on the Manchester Mark I, then emerging as one of the world's earliest true computers, June 23, 1912 – June 7, 1954


• Robert Louis BOB Fosse, musical theater dancer, choreographer, and director, winner of the 1972 Academy Award for Best Director for Cabaret, June 23, 1927 – September 23, 1987


• June Carter Cash, singer, songwriter, and actress, a member of the first family of country music, the Carter Family, and the wife of Johnny Cash; she played the guitar, banjo, and autoharp, June 23, 1929 – May 15, 2003


• Terence TERRY Nelhams-Wright, aka Adam Faith, singer, actor, and financial journalist and advisor, June 23, 1940 — March 8, 2003


• Wilma Glodean Rudolph, athlete and three-time Olympic champion, June 23, 1940 – November 12, 1994


• Stuart Fergusson Victor Sutcliffe, artist, was a bass-playing member of The Beatles for two years, and is often credited for naming the band after Buddy Holly's band The Crickets, June 23, 1940 – April 10, 1962


• Robert Burns, aka Robert C. Hunter, lyricist, singer songwriter, and poet, best known for his association with Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead, 1941


• James Levine, orchestral conductor and pianist, 1943


• Bryan Brown, actor, 1947


• Joss Hill Whedon, writer, director, executive producer, and creator of several television series, most famously Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, and Firefly, and its spinoff movie, Serenity; has also written several film scripts and several comic book series, 1964


• Selma Blair Beitner, aka Selma Blair, actress, 1972

RIP:

• Reinhold Moritzovich Glière, composer, January 11, 1875 – June 23, 1956


• Jonas Edward Salk, M.D., physician and researcher, best known as the inventor of the first polio vaccine, the Salk vaccine, devoting much of his later life to developing an AIDS vaccine, October 28, 1914 – June 23, 1995


• Maureen Paula O'Sullivan, actress, May 17, 1911 – June 23, 1998


• Yvonne Dionne, one of the Dionne Quintuplets, May 28, 1934 - June 23, 2001