On This Day in Fact and Fiction
December 22, 2024
1550: Philosopher and academic Cesare Cremonini born. His work will promote rationalism (against revelation) and Aristotelian materialism (against the dualist immortality of the soul) inside scholasticism.
1693: Astronomer Elisabeth Hevelius dies. One of the first female astronomers, Hevelius is known as "the mother of moon charts".
1732: Inventor, engineer, and businessman Richard Arkwright born. Later in his life Arkwright will be known as the "father of the modern industrial factory system."
1765: Mathematician Johann Friedrich Pfaff born. He will work on partial differential equations of the first order Pfaffian systems, as they are now called, which will become part of the theory of differential forms.
1858: Composer Giacomo Puccini born. He will be called "the greatest composer of Italian opera after Verdi".
1887: Mathematician and theorist Srinivasa Ramanujan born. He will make substantial contributions to mathematical analysis, number theory, infinite series, and continued fractions, including solutions to mathematical problems considered to be unsolvable.
1894: The Dreyfus affair begins in France, when Alfred Dreyfus is wrongly convicted of treason.
1972: Inventor Norman Lorimer Dean dies. Dean designed the Dean drive, which he promoted as a reactionless drive.
"On This Day in Fact and Fiction" is sponsored by Gnomon Chronicles Industries.