Today LXVII

Birthdays:

• Gustave Charpentier, composer, June 25, 1860 - February 18, 1956


• Walther Hermann Nernst, chemist, helped establish the field of physical chemistry, contributing to electrochemistry, thermodynamics, solid state chemistry, and photochemistry, recipient of the 1920 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work in thermochemistry, June 25, 1864 – November 18, 1941


• Hermann Julius Oberth, physicist, one of the founding fathers of rocketry and astronautics, June 25, 1894 - December 28, 1989


• Eric Arthur Blair, aka George Orwell, author, journalist, and political and cultural commentator, known for his Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm, June 25, 1903 – January 21, 1950


• Johannes Hans Daniel Jensen, physicist, shared half of the 1963 Nobel Prize for Physics with Maria Goeppert-Mayer for their proposal of the shell nuclear model, June 25, 1907 – February 11, 1973


• Willard Van Orman Quine, Ph.D., philosopher and logician, whose doctoral thesis and early publications were on formal logic and set theory; later, he emerged as a major philosopher, by virtue of papers on ontology, epistemology, and language; known for five texts: Elementary Logic, Methods of Logic, Philosophy of Logic, Mathematical Logic, and Set Theory and Its Logic, June 25, 1908 – December 25, 2000


• William Howard Stein, biochemist, winner of the 1972 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Christian Boehmer Anfinsen and Stanford Moore, for their work on ribonuclease, June 25, 1911 – February 2, 1980


• Cyril Fletcher, comedian, June 25, 1913 – January 2, 2005


• Celia Franca, dancer and founder of The National Ballet of Canada, 1921


• Nicholas Mosley, 3rd Baron Ravensdale, novelist, 1923


• Sidney Lumet, actor and film director; in 2005, won an Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement, 1924


• June Lockhart, television and film actress, known for her roles on Lassie and Lost in Space, 1925


• Mary Beth Peil, opera singer and actress, 1930


• Sir Peter Thomas Blake, pop artist, known for his design of the album cover for Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, 1932


• James Howard Meredith, civil rights activist, 1933


• Eddie Floyd, soul/R&B singer and songwriter, 1935


• Harold Melvin, singer, lead singer for Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes, June 25, 1939 - March 24, 1997


• Philip Nicholson, aka A. J. Quinnell, mystery and thriller writer, June 25, 1940 - July 10, 2005


• Georges-Henri Denys Arcand, C.C. , C.Q., Academy Award winning film director, screenwriter, and producer, 1941


• Carly Elisabeth Simon, musician and singer-songwriter boom, 1945


• Lieutenant-General Roméo Alain Dallaire, OC, CMM, GOQ, MSC, CD, B.Sc, LL.D (h.c.), senator, humanitarian, author, and retired general, 1946


• Ian McDonald, musician, member and producer of King Crimson, also a member/founder of Gibraltar and Foreigner, for whom he played guitar, woodwinds, and keyboards, 1946


• David Frank Paich, session musician, and keyboard player, vocalist, and main composer for Toto, 1954


• Carlos Juan Delgado Hernández, first baseman for the New York Mets, holds many team records with the Toronto Blue Jays, 1972


• Linda Edna Cardellini, television and film actress, 1975


• Vladimir Kramnik, chess player, the current Classical World Chess Champion, 1975


• Tatiana Felixovna Lysenko, gymnast, 1975

RIP:

• Georg Philipp Telemann, Baroque music composer, the most prolific composer of his era, March 14, 1681 – June 25, 1767


• Ernst Theodor Wilhelm [E.T.A.] Hoffmann, author of fantasy and horror, jurist, composer, music critic, draftsman, and caricaturist, January 24, 1776 - June 25, 1822


• Carlo Matteucci, physicist and neurophysiologist, pioneer in the study of bioelectricity, June 21, 1811 - June 25, 1868


• Colin Clive, stage and screen actor, famous for portraying Dr. Frankenstein in the films Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein, January 20, 1900 – June 25, 1937


• Thomas William 'Tommy' Corcoran, MLB shortstop, played from 1890 to 1907, January 4, 1869 - June 25, 1960


• Sir John Boyd Orr, 1st Baron Boyd-Orr, doctor, biologist, and politician, received the 1949 Nobel Peace Prize for his scientific research into nutrition, September 23, 1880 – June 25, 1971


• Kornél Löwy, aka Cornelius Lanczos, Ph.D., mathematician and physicist, whose 1921 doctoral thesis was on relativity theory; in 1924, he discovered an exact solution of the Einstein field equation, one of the simplest known exact solutions in general relativity, regarded as important, in part, because it exhibits closed timelike curves; assistant to Albert Einstein from 1928 to 1929, February 2, 1893–June 25, 1974


• John Herndon 'Johnny' Mercer, singer and songwriter, winner of five Acadaemy Awards, November 18, 1909 – June 25, 1976


• Igor Sergeyevich Gouzenko, cipher clerk for the Soviet Embassy to Canada in Ottawa, who defected on September 5, 1945 with documents on Soviet espionage activities in the West, January 13, 1919 - June 25, 1982


• Alberto Evaristo Ginastera, classical composer and teacher, April 11, 1916 – June 25, 1983


• Hillel Slovak, musician, the original guitarist for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, April 13, 1962 – June 25, 1988


• Warren Earl Burger, Chief Justice of the United States from 1969 to 1986, under whose leadership, the Supreme Court delivered major decisions on abortion, capital punishment, and school desegregation, September 17, 1907 – June 25, 1995


• Ernest Thomas Sinton Walton physicist, the winner, along with Sir John Douglas Cockcroft, of the 1951 Nobel Prize for Physics, for work on the transmutation of atomic nuclei by artificially accelerated atomic particles, aka 'splitting the atom,' October 6, 1903 – June 25, 1995


• Jacques-Yves Cousteau, naval officer, explorer, ecologist, filmmaker, photographer, and researcher, who studied the sea and all forms of life in water, co-developed the aqualung, and pioneered marine conservation, June 11, 1910 – June 25, 1997


• John Fiedler, voice actor and character actor in stage, film, television and radio, known for voicing Piglet in Disney productions of Winnie the Pooh, as Mr. Peterson, the nervous patient on The Bob Newhart Show, and as an official possessed by Jack the Ripper in the Star Trek episode "Wolf in the Fold", February 3, 1925 – June 25, 2005