The day is almost over and I am finally getting to the birthday post. As you will see, the main person today is difficult. And it isn’t much of a day for birthdays. That’s fine. My perfect day is one where there are two or three people who I have something interesting to talk about. The worst days are the ones where I have ten or more people like that, because most of them are just going to get piled in with the “other birthdays.” If all I did was the birthday post each day, I could make it really interesting. As it is, I think what I do is better than what most people do. At least this is personalized.

On this day in 1888, the great silent film director F W Murnau was born. He died very young, in a car accident while he was at the peak of his career. He will always be remembered, however, for his filmed version of Dracula, Nosferatu. Of course, he made the film without getting the rights and by a court ruling, all the prints of the film were supposed to be destroyed. All but one was. Here is a little taste of it:

Other birthdays: composer Johann Krieger (1651); astronomer Thomas Henderson (1798); chemist Carl Remigius Fresenius (1818); science writer Arthur Eddington (1882); the most over-rated man in comic book history Stan Lee (91); actor Martin Milner (82); actor Maggie Smith (79); musician Edgar Winter (67); humorist Charlie Pierce (60); and actor Denzel Washington (59).

The day, however, belongs to the great mathematician John von Neumann who was born on this day in 1903. It is hard to classify him because he did such varied work: pure math, applied math, and even physics. I know him especially because of his work with fluid dynamics. But his work has also had applications in economics and computer science. You really need to read a biography of him to get a good idea of the breadth of his importance. You may remember how Neil deGrasse Tyson went on about all the different things that Newton did. Well, Neumann makes Newton seem like a slacker. And Neumann only lived to be 53. He died of some kind of cancer. But what Godel was in his very narrow field of interest, Neumann was in his broad fields of interest.

Happy birthday John von Neumann!

On this day in 1915, actor Barbara Billingsley was born. She only died a couple of years ago at the age of 94. Best remembered as the mother on Leave It to Beaver, she is the ultimate symbol of 1950s domesticity. Never exactly a hottie (she only started acting at the age of 30), she exuded what we all wanted mothers to be. And I don’t mean that in an entirely neutral way. She was meant to be sexy. She was 42 when she started the series. The original MILF.

The British broadcaster James Burke is 77 today. He is best known for his BBC science series Connections and then the later (and better) The Day the Universe Changed. They were basically science history. I think he was pretty loose with his causality. But it was always fun. The following video is from the very end of the latter series. At the time, I didn’t really believe this specific bit. He makes the case for religious belief—at least non-dogmatic religious belief. This goes entirely against what he’d been saying throughout the rest of the series. But I’ve come to be far more agnostic on that topic. But there’s no way I’m giving up indoor plumbing and center heating. And neither is Burke! “If the universe is what you say it is, then say!” (BTW: that was in 1985—two years before I got on the internet.)

Other birthdays: composer Carl Friedrich Abel (1723); mathematician Pierre Ossian Bonnet (1819); baseball manager Connie Mack (1862); mathematician Dmitri Egorov (1869); American poet Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869); tragic (I really don’t think he was a Nazi) composer Franz Schmidt (1874); actor Hector Elizondo (77); American traitor Paul Wolfowitz (70); mediocre journalist Diane Sawyer (68); and actor Ralph Fiennes (51).

The day, however, belongs to… Wait. In India, it is National Mathematics Day. This is in recognition of today’s birthday winner, Srinivasa Ramanujan who was born on this day in 1887. He was born into the Indian middle class—basically a caste of teachers. And so he was educated, but poor. He showed amazing mathematical ability at a very young age. And he mostly taught himself. But because he was isolated from Europe, he worked independently. He rediscovered many theorems and developed entirely new areas of mathematical research. Unfortunately, he died at the age of 32, at least partially as a result of malnutrition. He was undoubtedly one of the greatest mathematical minds ever, on the order of Gauss. But it just shows what nonsense are ideas of “equality of opportunity.” Ramanujan is not a household name because he was born in the wrong place. Still, his influence is felt to this day and will continue as long as humans continue the study of mathematics.

Happy birthday Srinivasa Ramanujan!

This is a really great and varied day for birthdays. Really some days have a lot of the same kind of people. But as I think you will see, there are some really fascinating people today.

On this day in 1787, educator Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet was born. He was a pioneer in the education of the deaf in the United States. As you can well imagine, deaf children at the beginning of the 19th century were largely ignored (and abused). He began teaching a neighborhood deaf child and this eventually resulted in him studying in France where the education of the deaf was far advanced. When he came back to the United States, he founded the American School for the Deaf, which is still in operation with 200 students. It will turn 200 years old in 2017.

The mathematician Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi was born in 1804. Now he actually did work that I understand: elliptic functions and differential equations. He has the distinction of being the first Jewish mathematics professor at a German university. It’s kind of creepy to think about that given what happened there just a hundred years later. But it wasn’t just Germany. Throughout Europe, Jews were seen as some kind of horrible creatures. Remember what Martin Luther thought of them just 200 years earlier. As much as I have my problems with the Israeli government, their paranoia is about a lot more than just the Nazis. And there is a sad irony that I’ve seen with other races. Jacobi basically worked himself to death. I think that is part of trying to prove to the majority that they ought to accept you. But instead, it is used as yet another reason for the majority to hate you.

The great Romantic composer Cesar Franck was born in 1822. Over time, I’ve had to reevaluate my distaste for the Romantic period. What I don’t like about it is the average material. Mediocre Baroque or Classical music is generally quite listenable. Mediocre Romantic music is annoying in the extreme. It tends toward sentimentality and when a composer doesn’t know what else to do, he simply adds unnecessary harmonic complexity. To be fair, the situation gets even worse in the Modern period. But I don’t rant about mediocre Modern composition, because it is rarely played. Anyway, Franck is no mediocrity. I’m sure he had his bad work, just like everyone. But I’ve never heard anything of his that I didn’t quite like. Here is his Sonata in A major for Violin and Piano, which is one of the greatest works of the 19th century. The whole piece is about a half hour long, but I highly recommend listening to it all. You can’t fully appreciate it by listening to just one movement. Unfortunately, I can only locate one live performance of it, which is good, but it is recorded at such a low volume that you miss much of its subtlety. Here is Joshua Bell & Jeremy Denk performing it brilliantly:

It was hard not to give this day to Emily Dickinson who was born on this day in 1830. I feel a great kinship with her because of her agoraphobia. I would rather conduct my relationships through letters. (I’m not saying this is a good thing.) But Dickinson was also interested in a lot of the same things that I am and her thinking of metaphysics certainly parallels mine. Regardless, I thought I would present “The Mystery of Pain.” I found a version online for teachers where it comments, “This poem is suitable to be taught for Junior High School students because it has a great moral value of life. It notices to be patient when we are in a pain, and we have to realize that everything will change, there is no everlasting pain. Since the language used is quite hard to understand, the teacher should assist students to find the correct interpretation of the poem.” All I can say is that I hope the teachers understand the poem better than whomever wrote that! Let me give you my interpretation. We tend to not be able to imagine that we will always feel the way we now do and that’s a drag when we are feeling pain. But the enlightened mind will know that the pain will go away, only to be replaced by another pain. I would find that a depressing thought if it were not exactly what I know to be true.

Melvil Dewey was born in 1851. He was my kind of guy. I really like coming up with structures for things. Of course, I’m the worst person in the world to implement those structures. He is, of course, the inventor of the Dewey Decimal System. In my opinion, the Dewey Decimal System is better than the Library of Congress System. This is nothing especially against the LCS, but it is designed for a particular purpose and is focused on making libraries useful for specialists. For the generalist (and that’s most people), the DDS is more consistent. The way that “religion” (100s) is subdivided is the same way that “technology” (600s) is. No attempts at all are made to make different categories of knowledge consistent. Intellectuals tend to prefer the LCS, because that is what college libraries use. But that’s not a good reason. What’s more, ethnocentric and sexist aspects of both systems have been demonstrated, but only the DDS has made major improvements in this regard. Melvil Dewey was also a big proponent of the metric system. Like I said: he was my kind of guy!

And the great Shakespearean actor (and much more), Kenneth Branagh is 53 today. I don’t have a lot to say about him, except that I’m a huge fan. Here he is as Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing, the film I use to introduce Shakespeare to those who do not like him. Here is a very funny part:

And then a more serious scene:

Unfortunately, I can’t find the scene after that where Benedick challenges Claudio. But don’t just think of Branagh with regard to this film. His Hamlet is excellent. And he turns the awful Love’s Labour’s Lost into a fine little film. He was also excellent as Iago in Othello. I’m also quite fond of him in How to Kill Your Neighbor’s Dog. Why he has taken to directing things like Thor and Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, I cannot say.

Other birthdays: astronomer Johannes Stoffler (1452); botanist George Shaw (1751); composer Olivier Messiaen (1908); comedy writer Douglas Kenney (1946); Indian sculptor Jasuben Shilpi (1948); and actor Susan Dey (61).

The day, however, belongs to Ada Lovelace who was born in 1815. She worked on Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine. She developed the first algorithm for the machine. This makes her the first computer programmer in history. The programming language Ada is named after her. She was, incidentally, the only legitimate child of Lord Byron (hey, the man got around).

It is interesting (Profoundly so!) how much sexism still exists in academia. This first program was created to compute Bernoulli numbers. A number of (male) scholars have tried to claim that Lovelace did not really write the program because Babbage provided her with the mathematics for the calculations. There is all kinds of stupid and bigoted in that contention. First, Babbage himself notes that he provided Lovelace with the mathematics to save her the trouble. It wasn’t as though the mathematics had never been worked out. And when Lovelace got his notes, she found and corrected a major mistake he had made. (None of this should be taken as a slight against Babbage who was brilliant and extremely generous in giving Lovelace credit.) Second, computer programmers use the work of mathematicians all the time. It is not a trivial matter to convert even simple equations (which is not the case with the Bernoulli numbers) into modern computer languages on modern computers, much less on the Analytical Engine.

I think the wish to disregard Lovelace’s contributions comes not just from her sex but also because she was manic-depressive. That is not the picture of the Romantic scientific hero that many (men) want to accept. One scholar claimed that Ada’s correspondence indicated that it was “obvious once again that Ada was as mad as a hatter.” I would note that many mathematicians were pretty far out. Kurt Godel could certainly be described as “mad as a hatter.” The same could be said of that other great computer pioneer, Alan Turing, whose fascination with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs caused him to kill himself by eating an apple he had poisoned with cyanide. There is no doubt of the importance of Ada Lovelace, and the attacks on her are typical of just how small the minds of big brained people can be.

Happy birthday Ada Lovelace!