Template:Selected anniversaries/December 9
1508: Physician, mathematician, and cartographer Gemma Frisius born. He will create important globes, improve the mathematical instruments of his day, and apply mathematics to surveying and navigation in new ways.
1571: Mathematician and astronomer Adriaan Metius born. He will manufacture precision astronomical instruments, and publish treatises on the astrolabe and on surveying.
1718: Monk, cosmographer, and cartographer Vincenzo Coronelli dies. He gained fame for his atlases and globes; some of the globes are very large and highly detailed.
1814: Physician Golding Bird born. He will pioneer the medical use of electricity.
1868: Chemist Fritz Haber born. He will receive the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1918 for his invention of the Haber–Bosch process, a method used in industry to synthesize ammonia from nitrogen gas and hydrogen gas. Haber will also do pioneering work in chemical warfare, weaponizing chlorine and other poisonous gases during World War I.
1883: Mathematician, theorist, and academic Nikolai Luzin born. He will contribute to descriptive set theory and aspects of mathematical analysis with strong connections to point-set topology.
1905: Screenwriter and novelist Dalton Trumbo born. He will be blacklisted for refusing testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in 1947; while blacklisted, he will win Academy Awards for two films: Roman Holiday, attributed to a front author, and The Brave One under the pseudonym Robert Rich.
1906: Computer scientist and Admiral Grace Hopper born. She will pioneer computer programming techniques, inventing one of the first compilers, and popularizing machine-independent programming languages (leading to the development of COBOL).