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1921 births

  • Hans L. TrefousseHans Louis Trefousse spent eleven hours in Leipzig arguing with a Nazi commander who had barricaded himself and his troops inside a fortified position.
  • D. Brainerd HolmesD. Brainerd Holmes studied engineering at Cornell University, receiving a degree in electrical engineering. He first worked for Bell Labs and Western…
  • SuhartoSuharto ruled Indonesia for 31 years, longer than any other president in the country's history. He was born on the 8th of June 1921 in a…
  • Samuel C. PhillipsSamuel C. Phillips was a general who flew fighters over occupied Europe, helped design the missiles that defined the Cold War, and then ran the program that…
  • Silvio GazzanigaSilvio Gazzaniga entered the world on the 23rd of January 1921 within the bustling streets of Milan. He pursued his education in the art schools located in…
  • Geoffrey EltonGeoffrey Elton arrived in Britain in February 1939 as a Jewish refugee from Czechoslovakia, a teenage boy named Gottfried Rudolf Otto Ehrenberg.
  • Walter Kaufmann (philosopher)Walter Kaufmann arrived at Princeton University in 1947 as a young philosopher with a freshly minted Harvard doctorate, a dissertation completed in under a…
  • Andrei SakharovAndrei Sakharov was the man who built the Soviet Union's most devastating weapon and then spent the rest of his life trying to limit the damage it could do.
  • Raymond WilliamsRaymond Henry Williams was born on the 31st of August 1921 in Pandy, a village just north of Llanfihangel Crucorney, near Abergavenny in Wales.
  • Yitzhak NavonYitzhak Rachamim Navon entered the world on the 9th of April 1921 within the walls of Jerusalem. His family lived under the British Mandate for Palestine…
  • Geoffrey KirkGeoffrey Stephen Kirk was born in December 1921 within the industrial heart of Nottingham. His father Frederic worked as an educational administrator at…
  • Saul ZaentzSaul Zaentz was born on the 28th of February 1921 in Passaic, New Jersey. He grew up as the youngest of five children to Polish Jewish immigrants who had…
  • Maxime FagetMaxime Allen Faget was the engineer who decided that a spacecraft returning from orbit should look nothing like an aircraft.