Curated playlist
1937 deaths
- H. P. LovecraftH. P. Lovecraft died in 1937 virtually unknown to readers. His monsters later became global touchstones.
- John D. RockefellerJohn D. Rockefeller, the son of a traveling con artist, became the first billionaire in the United States.
- George GershwinGeorge Gershwin's last words were "Fred Astaire." He collapsed at age 38 while working on a film score.
- Maurice RavelMaurice Ravel was twice expelled from the Paris Conservatoire. He later became France's greatest living composer.
- Ernest RutherfordErnest Rutherford scoffed at atomic power in 1933. Leó Szilárd later said that speech inspired his chain reaction idea.
- Heinrich Jacob GoldschmidtChemist Heinrich Jacob Goldschmidt moved to Göttingen at 72 to join his son. The Nazis forced both men out.
- Amelia EarhartAmelia Earhart climbed out of a single-engine airplane in a pasture in Northern Ireland, and a farm hand asked the obvious question. “Have you flown far?” he said. She answered, “From America.” The woman in the pasture was Amelia Earhart,…
- Austen ChamberlainAusten Chamberlain won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1925 but never became prime minister. His half-brother Neville did.
- Alfred AdlerAlfred Adler replaced the analyst's couch with two chairs. He wanted patient and doctor seated more or less as equals.
- Yevgeny ZamyatinYevgeny Zamyatin smuggled his banned novel We out of the Soviet Union. He wrote to Stalin and left in 1931.
- Pavel FlorenskyA paper on relativity helped send priest Pavel Florensky to a Soviet labor camp.