March 15

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  44 BC: Julius Caesar, Dictator of the Roman Republic, is stabbed to death by Marcus Junius Brutus, Gaius Cassius Longinus, Decimus Junius Brutus, and several other Roman senators on the Ides of March.

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  1897: Mathematician and academic James Joseph Sylvester dies. He made fundamental contributions to matrix theory, invariant theory, number theory, partition theory, and combinatorics.

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  1900: Mathematician and physicist Elwin Bruno Christoffel dies. He introduced fundamental concepts of differential geometry, opening the way for the development of tensor calculus, later providing the mathematical basis for general relativity.

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  1943: Sylvester Stewart born. Better known by his stage name Sly Stone, he is an American musician, songwriter, and record producer who is most famous for his role as front man for Sly and the Family Stone, playing a critical role in the development of soul, funk, rock, and psychedelia in the 1960s and 1970s.

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  1962: American physicist and academic Arthur Compton dies. He won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1927 for his 1923 discovery of the Compton effect, which demonstrated the particle nature of electromagnetic radiation.