Category: Today’s Birthday

After moving to Paris in 1778, Pinel, a French physician, was appointed director of the Bicêtre and Salpêtrière hospitals. His experiences there prompted him to advocate for the humane treatment of mentally ill persons—then called the insane—and for the empirical study of mental disease. He further contributed to the development of psychiatry by establishing the practice of thoroughly documenting psychiatric case histories for research. What initially inspired Pinel’s interest in mental illness? Discuss

Ricardo was a British economist who made a fortune in the stock market before turning to the study of political economy, publishing his major work, The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, in 1817. According to his labor theory of value, the value of almost any good is a function of the labor needed to produce it; thus, a $10 watch requires ten times more labor than a $1 pencil. According to his “iron law of wages,” what keeps wages stabilized around the subsistence level? Discuss

Darrow was an American lawyer and a leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union. He worked to free anarchists charged with murder in the Haymarket Riot, and his defense of Eugene V. Debs established his reputation as a union lawyer. Later came sensational criminal cases that displayed his eminence as a defense lawyer, especially the Loeb-Leopold murder case. Perhaps his most famous case was the Scopes trial, in which he defended a high school teacher who was charged with what? Discuss

The son of a financier, Morgan began his career as an accountant before being named a partner in the firm that became J.P. Morgan and Company. One of the world’s most powerful railroad magnates, he formed a syndicate to supply the US Treasury’s depleted gold reserves and financed the mergers that formed General Electric and US Steel Corporation—the world’s first billion-dollar corporation. In addition to being a noted art collector, Morgan had one of America’s most important collections of what? Discuss

Mansart was a French architect and town planner who completed the Palace of Versailles. Favored by Louis XIV, he was made the chief architect for royal buildings. After enlarging the château of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, he began work at Versailles. Much of his work was executed in Roman baroque style, but some of his designs at Versailles point toward the lightness and elegance of the rococo. The impressive Dôme des Invalides in Paris is considered his greatest achievement. Who was his great-uncle? Discuss

Along with Max Weber, Durkheim is considered one of the chief founders of modern sociology. His view that the methods of natural science can be applied to the study of society was influenced by the positivist philosophy of Auguste Comte. Durkheim held that the collective mind of society was the source of religion and morality and that the common values developed in society, particularly in primitive societies, are the cohesive bonds of social order. What was Durkheim’s view on crime? Discuss

Ortelius was a Flemish geographer and cartographer who, while traveling with his contemporary Gerardus Mercator, was inspired to compile the first modern world atlas. The first edition of Theatrum orbis terrarium, issued in 1570, contained 53 maps compiled, in part, from the maps of 87 cartographers. A leading member of the 16th-century Flemish school of geography, Ortelius is thought to have been the first to posit what theory about the positioning of the continents? Discuss

In the 1930s, Butts, an unemployed architect, invented a game called Lexiko, in which players drew lettered tiles from a pool and then attempted to form words. After unsuccessful attempts to sell the game to board-game makers, Butts sold the rights to entrepreneur James Brunot, who made a few minor adjustments and renamed the game Scrabble. More than 150 million sets have been sold in multiple languages since. How did Butts determine how many tiles of each letter should be included in the game? Discuss

A member of the French de Jussieu family of distinguished botanists, Antoine Laurent de Jussieu categorized plants into families and developed a system of plant classification. He elaborated on the system of classification of his uncle, Bernard de Jussieu, in Genera plantarum, a work which influenced later systems of classification. He was professor at the Museum of Natural History, Paris, and organized its botanical collection. What other members of the de Jussieu family were botanists? Discuss

Severus became emperor of Rome in 193 CE, also known as the “Year of the Five Emperors.” In the months before he ascended the throne, two emperors were assassinated and a third—Didius Julianus—earned the position by buying it from the Praetorian Guard. With the empire in disarray, Severus marched on Rome, ousted Julianus, and was proclaimed emperor. He then built himself a strong army that would protect both him and his empire. It is said that he gave what advice to his sons before his death? Discuss