Innovators born in 1887

The year 2012 celebrated the 125 years of five innovators, Henry Moseley, Sukumar Ray, Erwin Schrödinger, Jamini Roy, and Srinivasa Ramanujan. Henry Gwyn Jeffreys Moseley was an English physicist who provided the explanation of X-ray spectra, which justified many concepts in chemistry by sorting the chemical elements of the Periodic Table of the Elements in a quite logical order based on their physics. He died at the age of 26 only at the First World War. Sukumar Ray was an Indian writer who was known for his humorous creations. He wrote poems, stories, and playrights exclusively for children. His innovative creations are sometimes called ‘literary nonsense’, but these were full of sense. He also died young at the age of 33, but before that he fathered Satyajit Ray, who later become a world famous film director. Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger was an Austrian theoretical physicist who achieved fame for his contributions to quantum mechanics, especially the Schrödinger equation, for which he received the Nobel Prize in 1933. Jamini Roy was an Indian painter who experimented with tribal folk art and transformed them into innovative paintings with his new style of painting. Srinivasa Ramanujan Iyengar was an Indian mathematician and self-taught genius who, with almost no formal training in pure mathematics, made substantial contributions to mathematical analysis, number theory, infinite series and continued fractions.

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John F Kennedy- President with a Pulitzer Prize

John Fitzgerald Kennedy was the 35th President of the United States of America. At 43 he became one of the youngest Presidents of the USA. He is the only US President to have won the prestigious Pulitzer Prize. The notable events during his tenure were the Cuban missile crisis, building of Berlin War and the beginning of the Vietnam War. Aldous Leonard Huxley was an eminent English writer who was also a humanist, pacifist and a satirist. He moved to Los Angeles and settled there. Some of his works are Point Counter Point, Do What You Will, The Devils of Loudun and Island. He also wrote an essay in a very poignant style on the ‘Bose Institute’, the research institution created by Sir J.C. Bose. Both Kennedy and Huxley died on the same day, i.e. November 22, 1963.

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