Curated category
Members of the American Philosophical Society
- Martin ScorseseMartin Scorsese was born on the 17th of November 1942 in the Flushing neighborhood of Queens. He grew up in the Little Italy section of Manhattan where his…
- Woody AllenAllan Stewart Konigsberg was born on the 30th of November 1935 at Mount Eden Hospital in Bronx, New York City. He grew up in Brooklyn's Midwood neighborhood…
- Charles DarwinCharles Robert Darwin was born on the 12th of February 1809 at his family's home, The Mount, in Shrewsbury, Shropshire. He was the fifth of six children of…
- Barack ObamaBarack Obama was born on the 4th of August 1961, at Kapiolani Medical Center for Women and Children in Honolulu, Hawaii.
- T. S. EliotThomas Stearns Eliot was born on the 26th of September 1888 in St. Louis, Missouri. He lived at a house on Locust Street for his first sixteen years before…
- James M. McPhersonJames Munro McPherson arrived in the world on the 11th of October 1936. His birthplace was Valley City, North Dakota. This small town shaped his early years…
- Theodore RooseveltTheodore Roosevelt Jr. was born on the 27th of October 1858, at 28 East 20th Street in Manhattan. His youth was defined by debilitating asthma attacks that…
- Nikola TeslaNikola Tesla was born on the 10th of July 1856 in the village of Smiljan. This location sat within the Military Frontier of the Austrian Empire, now part of…
- Carl LinnaeusCarl Linnaeus was born on the 23rd of May 1707 in the village of Råshult. His father Nicolaus Ingemarsson taught him Latin as a small child.
- Jimmy CarterJames Earl Carter Jr. was born on the 1st of October 1924, in the small town of Plains, Georgia. He entered the world at the Wise Sanitarium where his mother…
- John D. RockefellerJohn Davison Rockefeller was born on the 8th of July 1839 in a small village called Richford, New York. He entered the world as the second child of William A.
- J. Robert OppenheimerJulius Robert Oppenheimer was born on the 22nd of April 1904, in New York City to Ella Friedman and Julius Seligmann Oppenheimer.
- Ulysses S. GrantHiram Ulysses Grant was born on the 27th of April 1822 in Point Pleasant, Ohio. His father Jesse Root Grant worked as a leather merchant and held strong Whig…
- Robert Lucas Jr.Robert Emerson Lucas Jr. was born on the 15th of September 1937 in Yakima, Washington. His parents ran an ice creamery there before it failed during the…
- Al GoreOn the 31st of March 1948, Albert Arnold Gore Jr. was born in Washington, D.C., the second child of a U.S. Representative and his wife Pauline LaFon Gore.
- Edward ThorndikeEdward Lee Thorndike was born in Williamsburg, Massachusetts. His father Edward R Thorndike served as a Methodist minister in Lowell, Massachusetts.
- 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.
- Saul BellowSolomon Bellows arrived in the world on the 10th of June 1915, within the quiet streets of Lachine, Quebec. His parents had fled Saint Petersburg, Russia…
- Woodrow WilsonIn 1856, a child named Woodrow Wilson stood near the front gate of his family's parsonage in Augusta, Georgia. He was three years old when he heard a…
- David A. BellDavid Avrom Bell entered the world in 1961 within a Jewish family in New York City. His father Daniel Bell worked as a sociologist while his mother Pearl…
- 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…
- Eugene O'NeillEugene Gladstone O'Neill was born on the 16th of October 1888, inside the Barrett House hotel located at Longacre Square in New York City.
- Thomas EdisonIn 1862, a fifteen-year-old Thomas Edison stood on the tracks near Port Huron, Michigan. He watched a runaway train approach three children who could not…
- Carl SaganCarl Edward Sagan was born on the 9th of November 1934 in the Bensonhurst neighborhood of Brooklyn. His father Samuel worked as a garment worker who had…
- Joseph PriestleyJoseph Priestley was born in Birstall, West Yorkshire, on the 24th of March 1733. He grew up as the oldest of six children to Mary Swift and Jonas Priestley…
- 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…
- Ken BurnsKenneth Lauren Burns was born on the 29th of July 1953 in Brooklyn, New York. His mother Lyla Smith Burns worked as a biotechnician while his father Robert…
- Margaret L. KingMargaret L. King entered Sarah Lawrence College in 1963 and graduated with a history degree in 1967. Her academic journey continued at Stanford University…
- Neil ArmstrongNeil Alden Armstrong was born on the 5th of August 1930 in rural Washington Township, Auglaize County, Ohio. His father worked as an auditor for the state…
- Robert SeamansRobert Channing Seamans Jr. was born on the 30th of October 1918 in Salem, Massachusetts. He attended Lenox School in Lenox, Massachusetts before earning a…
- Noam ChomskyNoam Chomsky was born on the 7th of December 1928 in the East Oak Lane neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His parents were Ashkenazi Jewish…
- John von NeumannBudapest, 1903. A boy named Neumann János Lajos sat at a table in an eighteen-room apartment on the top floor of a building above the Kann-Heller offices.
- Paul KrugmanPaul Robin Krugman was born on the 28th of February 1953 in Albany, New York. He spent his early years moving between upstate cities before settling into…
- Walter CronkiteWalter Leland Cronkite Jr. entered the world on the 4th of November 1916, in Saint Joseph, Missouri. His father was a dentist named Walter Leland Cronkite…
- David LandesDavid Saul Landes entered the world on the 29th of April 1924. He began his higher education journey at City College of New York in 1942.
- 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.
- Louis PasteurLouis Pasteur was born on the 27th of December 1822 in Dole, Jura, France. He entered primary school in 1831 and struggled with dyslexia and dysgraphia…
- Carl Friedrich GaussOn the 30th of April 1777, Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss was born in Brunswick within the Duchy of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel.
- Claude Lévi-StraussClaude Lévi-Strauss was born on the 28th of November 1908 in Brussels. His parents were French Jews who had moved there for his father's work as a portrait…
- Paul SamuelsonPaul Samuelson was born in Gary, Indiana, on the 15th of May 1915. His family consisted of upwardly mobile Jewish immigrants from Poland who had prospered…
- James TobinJames Tobin entered the world on the 5th of March 1918 in Champaign, Illinois. His father Louis Michael Tobin worked as a journalist at the University of…
- Joan RobinsonJoan Violet Maurice was born in Camberley, Surrey, on the 31st of October 1903. Her father Frederick Maurice had just returned from fighting in the Second…
- Warren BuffettWarren Buffett was born on the 30th of August 1930, in Omaha, Nebraska. He grew up as the second of three children and the only son of Congressman Howard…
- Alan GreenspanAlan Greenspan was born on the 6th of March 1926 in the Washington Heights area of New York City. His father Herbert worked as a stockbroker while his mother…
- Angus DeatonAngus Deaton was born in Edinburgh, Scotland on the 19th of October 1945. He attended Hawick High School before moving to Fettes College as a foundation…
- 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…
- Charles A. BeardCharles Austin Beard was born on the 27th of November 1874 in Knightstown, Indiana. He grew up working on a family farm in the Corn Belt region.
- Henri FrankfortHenri Frankfort entered the world on the 24th of February 1897 in Amsterdam. He grew up within a liberal Jewish family that shaped his early worldview.
- Lynn ThorndikeLynn Thorndike entered the world on the 24th of July 1882 in Lynn, Massachusetts. He was born into a family of scholars and clergy. His father Edward R.
- Paul DiracPaul Adrien Maurice Dirac was born on the 8th of August 1902 at his parents' home in Bristol, England. His father Charles Adrien Ladislas Dirac came from…