Today XLIX

Birthdays:

• George Bryan "Beau" Brummell, arbiter of fashion in Regency England and a friend of the Prince Regent, who led the trend for men to wear understated but beautifully cut clothes, adorned with elaborately tied neckwear, credited with introducing and bringing to fashion the modern man's suit worn with tie, June 7, 1778 - March 30, 1840


• Leopold Auer, violinist, teacher, conductor, and composer, June 7, 1845 – July 15, 1930


• Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin, leading Post-Impressionist artist, best known as a painter, his bold experimentation with coloring leading directly to the Synthetist style of modern art, while his expression of the inherent meaning of the subjects in his paintings, under the influence of the cloisonnist style, paved the way to Primitivism and the return to the pastoral, June 7, 1848 – May 9, 1903


• Lénárd Fülöp, aka Philipp Eduard Anton von Lenard, physicist, winner of the 1905 Nobel Prize for Physics for his research on cathode rays and the discovery of many of their properties, June 7, 1862–May 20, 1947


• Charles Glover Barkla, physicist, who evolved the laws of X-ray scattering and the laws governing the transmission of X rays through matter and excitation of secondary rays; for his discovery of the characteristic X-rays of elements, he received the 1917 Nobel Prize in Physics, and was awarded the Royal Society's Hughes Medal that same year, June 7, 1877 – October 23, 1944


• Robert Sanderson Mulliken, physicist and chemist, primarily responsible for the elaboration of the molecular orbital method of computing the structure of molecules; he received the 1966 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, June 7, 1896 – October 31, 1986


• György Széll, aka George Szell, conductor and composer, remembered for his long and successful tenure [1946 to 1970] as music director of the Cleveland Orchestra, June 7, 1897 – July 29, 1970


• Jessie Alice JESSICA Tandy, theatre, film, and TV actress, won an Emmy Award for Best Actress-Miniseries/Special in 1987 for Foxfire, an Academy Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role in 1989 for Driving Miss Daisy, and four Tony Awards - Best Actress (Dramatic) in 1948 for A Streetcar Named Desire, Best Actress (Play) in 1978 for The Gin Game, Best Actress in 1982 for Foxfire, and, in 1994, a Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement shared with her husband, Hume Cronyn, June 7, 1909 – September 11, 1994



• Dino Paul Crocetti, aka Dean Martin, singer and film actor, half of the comedy team of Martin and [Jerry] Lewis, June 7, 1917 – December 25, 1995


• James Francis Ivory, award-winning film director, best known for the results of his long collaboration with Merchant Ivory Productions, whose films won six Academy Awards, 1928


• The Rt. Hon. John Napier Turner, PC, CC, QC, MA, BCL, LLD, seventeenth Prime Minister of Canada, the oldest living former Prime Minister, 1929


• Neeme Järvi, conductor, 1937


• Sir Thomas Jones Woodward, OBE, aka Tom Jones, pop singer, 1940


• Thurman Lee Munson, MLB catcher, played with the New York Yankees from 1969 to 1979; selected by the Yankees with the fourth pick in the first round of the 1968 amateur draft; named the AL Rookie of the Year in 1970 for batting .302 with 7 home runs and 57 RBIs and 80 assists, and the AL MVP in 1976 for batting .302 with 17 home runs and 105 RBIs and 14 SBs. Currently, he is the only Yankee ever to win both the Rookie of the Year and the Most Valuable Player awards. Munson was killed in an airplane accident at age 32, June 7, 1947 – August 2, 1979


• William John 'Liam' Neeson OBE, Oscar-nominated actor, 1952


• Ann Sergeyevna Kournikova, retired professional tennis player; she became one of the best known tennis players worldwide, even among those who do not follow the game. It is rumoured that Kournikova is Russian for "girl with hole in racket," 1981


• Larisa Romanovna Oleynik, actress, best known for the title role of the TV series The Secret World of Alex Mack, 1981

RIP:

• Joseph von Fraunhofer, physicist; in 1814, he invented the spectroscope, and discovered 574 dark lines appearing in the solar spectrum, later shown to be atomic absorption lines, as explained by Kirchhoff and Bunsen in 1859, still sometimes called Fraunhofer lines. He also invented the diffraction grating and, in doing so, transformed spectroscopy from a qualitative art to a quantitative science by demonstrating how one could measure the wavelength of light accurately. He found out that the spectra of Sirius and other first-magnitude stars differed from each other and from the sun, thus founding stellar spectroscopy, March 6, 1787 – June 7, 1826


• Harlean Harlow Carpenter, aka Jean Harlow, film actress and top sex symbol of the 1930's, March 3, 1911 – June 7, 1937


• 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. 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


• ZaSu Pitts, movie actress, January 3, 1894 – June 7, 1963


• Judith Tuvim, aka Judy Holliday, Academy Award-winning actress, June 21, 1921 – June 7, 1965


• Dorothy Rothschild, aka Dorothy Parker, writer and poet, best known for her caustic wit, wisecracks, and sharp eye for 20th century Urban foibles, August 22, 1893 – June 7, 1967


• Dan Duryea, TV and movie actor, January 23, 1907 - June 7, 1968


• Edward Morgan [E.M.] Forster, novelist, short story writer, and essayist, most famous for his novels, most of which have been filmed, January 1, 1879 - June 7, 1970


• Henry Valentine Miller, writer and painter, known for breaking with existing literary forms and developing a new sort of "novel" that is a mixture of novel, autobiography, social criticism, philosophical reflection, surrealist free association, and mysticism; his most characteristic works of this kind are Tropic of Cancer, Tropic of Capricorn, and Black Spring. He also wrote travel memoirs and essays of literary criticism and analysis, December 26, 1891 – June 7, 1980


• Trevor Goddard, former professional boxer turned actor, best known as Kano in the first Mortal Kombat movie and Mic Brumby on JAG; although he was often cast in Australian roles he was actually English, disguising his London accent for an Australian one, to tap into the Hollywood demand for Australian actors. He died from an accidental drug overdose of heroin, cocaine, and prescription drugs, October 14, 1962 – June 7, 2003