Famous People Born on Christmas Day
Birthday Celebrants include Newton, Sadat, Bogart, Herzberg, Ripley
Dec 8, 2008
Well-known great thinkers and other famous celebrities born on Christmas Day, December 25th. In the spirit of the holidays, they are profiled and remembered for their achievements. May they continue to inspire and encourage.
Clara Barton (1821-1912)
Pioneer American nurse, humanitarian and teacher. She is best remembered as the founder and the first president of the American Red Cross.
Humphrey "Bogie" Bogart (1899-1957)
American actor and cultural icon. He is considered one of the greatest movie legends of all time. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked him the greatest male star.
Carlos Castaneda (1925-1998)
Peruvian-born American author and anthropologist. He wrote a series of books that describe his claimed training in traditional Mesoamerican shamanism. His 12 books have sold millions of copies in 17 languages. Rarely speaking in public, he and his work have been controversial for many years.
Gerhard Herzberg (1904-1999)
Physicist and physical chemist, and Nobel Laureate in chemistry in 1971. Born in Germany, he fled to Canada in 1935, where he continued his scientific career. His work concerned atomic and molecular spectroscopy. He is well-known for using techniques that determine the structures of diatomic and polyatomic molecules, including free radicals, and for the chemical analysis of astronomical objects.
Oscar Lewis (1914-1970)
American anthropologist and sociologist. He introduced the concept of culture of poverty. His books include Five Families; Mexican Case Studies In The Culture Of Poverty, 1959; Tepoztlán, Village In Mexico, 1960; The Children of Sanchez, Autobiography Of A Mexican Family , 1961; La Vida; A Puerto Rican Family In The Culture Of Poverty--San Juan And New York, 1966; and A Death In The Sánchez Family, 1969.
Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1726)
English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, natural philosopher, alchemist, theologian. His Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, published in 1687, is considered to be the most influential book in the history of science. Isaac Newton described universal gravitation and the three laws of motion, laying the foundation for classical mechanics, which dominated the scientific view of the physical universe for the next three centuries and is the basis for modern engineering. Newton showed that the motions of objects on Earth and of celestial bodies are governed by the same set of natural laws by demonstrating the consistency between Kepler's laws of planetary motion and his theory of gravitation.
Robert LeRoy Ripley (1893-1949)
American cartoonist, author and amateur anthropologist, who created the world famous "Ripley's Believe It or Not!" newspaper panel series, featuring odd 'facts' from around the world. Subjects covered in Ripley's cartoons and text ranged from sports feats to little known facts about unusual and exotic sites. The concept's popularity included items submitted by readers, who supplied photographs of a wide variety of small town American trivia.
Ernst August Friedrich Ruska (1906-1988)
German physicist. In 1986, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his invention of the electron microscope. He posited that microscopes using electrons, with waves 1,000 shorter than those of light, could provide a more detailed picture of an object than a microscope utilizing light, in which magnification is limited by the size of the wavelengths. In 1931, he built an electron lens and used these in a series to build the first electron microscope two years later.
Muhammad Anwar Al Sadat (1918-1981)
The third President of Egypt, serving from 15 October 1970 until his assassination on 6 October 1981. He was a senior member of the Free Officers group that overthrew the Muhammad Ali Dynasty in the Egyptian Revolution of 1952. He was a close confidant of Gamal Abdel Nasser, whom he succeeded as President in 1970. His visit to Israel and the eventual Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty won him the Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience award September 11, 1991 (posthumously), but it was an act unpopular with the Arab world and Islamists, that resulted in Egypt being expelled from the Arab League.
Adolf Otto Reinhold Windaus (1876-1959)
German chemist who won a Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1928 for his work on sterols and their relation to vitamins. He was the doctoral advisor of Adolf Butenandt who also won a Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1939. Windaus was involved in the discovery of the transformation of cholesterol through several steps to vitamin D3 (Cholecalciferol).
Readers may want to check out Quotes from Famous Christmas Birthday Celebrants
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
