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Curated category

Foreign members of the Royal Society

  • J. Robert OppenheimerJulius Robert Oppenheimer was born on the 22nd of April 1904, in New York City to Ella Friedman and Julius Seligmann Oppenheimer.
  • Enrico FermiEnrico Fermi was born in Rome, Italy, on the 29th of September 1901. He grew up at Via Gaeta 19 with his parents Alberto and Ida de Gattis.
  • John Archibald WheelerJohn Archibald Wheeler was born in Jacksonville, Florida, on the 9th of July 1911. He grew up in Youngstown, Ohio, but spent a year from 1921 to 1922 on a…
  • Sigmund FreudSigmund Freud was born Sigismund Schlomo Freud on the 6th of May 1856 in the Moravian town of Freiberg, then part of the Austrian Empire.
  • Robert KochHeinrich Hermann Robert Koch entered the world on the 11th of December 1843 in Clausthal, Germany. His father worked as a mining engineer and raised thirteen…
  • Joseph StiglitzJoseph Eugene Stiglitz was born on the 9th of February, 1943 in Gary, Indiana. He grew up in a Jewish family where his mother Charlotte worked as a…
  • Erwin SchrödingerErwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger entered the world on the 12th of August 1887 in Vienna. He was the only child of Rudolf Schrödinger, a botanist, and…
  • Hendrik LorentzHendrik Antoon Lorentz entered the world on the 18th of July 1853 in Arnhem, Netherlands. He was born to Gerrit Frederik Lorentz and Geertruida van Ginkel.
  • Max PlanckMax Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck was born on the 23rd of April 1858 in Kiel, Holstein. He entered the world into a family where theology and law ruled supreme.
  • Werner HeisenbergWerner Karl Heisenberg was born on the 5th of December 1901 in Würzburg, Germany. His father Kaspar Ernst August Heisenberg taught classical languages and…
  • Louis PasteurOn the 6th of July 1885, Louis Pasteur faced a choice that could have ended in his prosecution. A 9-year-old boy named Joseph Meister had been badly mauled…
  • Alexander von HumboldtOn the 14th of September 1769, a boy named Alexander von Humboldt drew his first breath in Berlin. His father held the rank of major in the Prussian Army and…
  • Eugene WignerEugene Paul Wigner was born in Budapest, Austria-Hungary on the 17th of November 1902. He grew up as the son of Elisabeth Elsa Einhorn and Antal Anton…
  • Claude ShannonClaude Elwood Shannon was born on the 30th of April 1916 in a hospital near Petoskey, Michigan. His family lived in the small town of Gaylord where he spent…
  • Gilbert N. LewisG. N. Lewis was born in 1875 in Weymouth, Massachusetts, where a street now bears his name as G.N. Lewis Way off Summer Street.
  • Henri PoincaréOn the 29th of April 1854, Jules Henri Poincaré was born in the Cité Ducale neighborhood of Nancy. His early years were marked by a severe illness that left…
  • Hermann WeylHermann Klaus Hugo Weyl entered the world on the 9th of November 1885 in Elmshorn. This small town sat near Hamburg within Germany.
  • Evgeny LifshitzEvgeny Mikhailovich Lifshitz entered the world on the 21st of February 1915. He was born into a Jewish family in Kharkov, then part of the Russian Empire.
  • Nikolai VavilovNikolai Vavilov entered the Petrovskaya Agricultural Academy in 1906. He carried a pet lizard in his pocket wherever he went during those early years.
  • Dmitri MendeleevDmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev entered the world in 1834 within the village of Verkhnie Aremzyani near Tobolsk. His father Ivan Pavlovich Mendeleev worked as a…
  • Joseph FourierJean-Baptiste Joseph Fourier was born on the 21st of March 1768 in Auxerre, Burgundy. His father worked as a tailor and died when Fourier was only nine years…
  • Svante ArrheniusSvante August Arrhenius was born on the 19th of February 1859 at Vik near Uppsala in Sweden. His father Svante Gustav worked as a land surveyor for Uppsala…
  • Niels BohrOn the 7th of October 1885, Niels Henrik David Bohr was born in Copenhagen, Denmark. He grew up as the second of three children to Christian Bohr and Ellen…
  • Lev LandauLev Davidovich Landau was born on the 22nd of January 1908 in Baku, then part of the Russian Empire. His father worked as an engineer for the local oil…
  • Ivan PavlovIvan Petrovich Pavlov entered the world on the 26th of September 1849 in the town of Ryazan. He was the first child among ten siblings born to a village…
  • Pafnuty ChebyshevPafnuty Lvovich Chebyshev was born in the village of Okatovo, located within the district of Borovsk and the province of Kaluga.
  • Élie MetchnikoffIlya Ilyich Mechnikoff entered the world on the 15th of May 1845 in a village within the Kharkov Governorate of the Russian Empire.
  • Kurt GödelKurt Friedrich Gödel, born on the 28th of April 1906 in Brünn, Austria-Hungary, died in Princeton Hospital on the 14th of January 1978, weighing so little…
  • Judea PearlJudea Pearl entered the world on the 4th of September 1936 in Tel Aviv. This city sat within the British Mandate for Palestine at that time.
  • Linus PaulingLinus Carl Pauling was born on the 28th of February 1901, in Portland, Oregon. His father Herman Henry William Pauling worked as a traveling salesman for the…
  • Louis de BroglieLouis Victor Pierre Raymond, 7th Duc de Broglie, entered the world on the 15th of August 1892 in Dieppe, France. He belonged to a noble family that had held…
  • Peter DebyePeter Joseph William Debye was born on the 24th of March 1884 in Maastricht, Netherlands. He enrolled at Aachen University of Technology in 1901 to study…
  • Santiago Ramón y CajalOn the 1st of May 1852, Santiago Ramón y Cajal was born in Petilla de Aragón. This small town in Navarre became his first laboratory and prison.
  • Walther NernstWalther Hermann Nernst entered the world on the 25th of June 1864 in Briesen, a town within the Prussian Province of West Prussia.
  • Theodosius DobzhanskyTheodosius Dobzhansky entered the world on the 25th of January 1900 in Nemirov within the Russian Empire. His parents were Grigory and Sophia Voinarsky.