Template:Selected anniversaries/May 4
1677: Mathematician and theologian Isaac Barrow dies. He played an early role in the development of infinitesimal calculus.
1733: Mathematician, physicist, and sailor Jean-Charles de Borda born. He will contribute to the development of the metric system, constructing a platinum standard meter, the basis of metric distance measurement.
1825: Biologist Thomas Henry Huxley born. He will be known as "Darwin's Bulldog" for his advocacy of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.
1839: Mathematician, art critic, and alleged time-traveller The Eel teams up with mathematician and criminologist Joseph Diez Gergonne. Working together, they will develop a new theory of projective geometry which detects and prevents shape theft and several other types of crimes against mathematical constants.
1859: Mathematician and logician Joseph Diez Gergonne dies. He contributed to the principle of duality in projective geometry, by noticing that every theorem in the plane connecting points and lines corresponds to another theorem in which points and lines are interchanged, provided that the theorem embodied no metrical notions.
1860: USS Cairo retrofitted with military Gnomon algorithm functions for use in fighting crimes against mathematical constants.
1921: Physicist Harry Daghlian born. He will be fatally irradiated in a criticality accident during an experiment with the Demon core at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
1943: Alice Beta Paragliding published. Many experts believe that the illustration depicts Beta infiltrating the ENIAC program, although this is widely debated.