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Arthur Eddington

Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington (28 December 1882 – 22 November 1944) was an English astronomer, physicist, and mathematician. He was also a philosopher of science and a populariser of science. The Eddington limit, the natural limit to the luminosity of stars, or the radiation generated by accretion onto a compact object, is named in his honour.

Around 1920, he foreshadowed the discovery and mechanism of nuclear fusion processes in stars, in his paper "The Internal Constitution of the Stars". At that time, the source of stellar energy was a complete mystery; Eddington was the first to correctly speculate that the source was fusion of hydrogen into helium.

Eddington wrote a number of articles that announced and explained Einstein's theory of general relativity to the English-speaking world. World War I had severed many lines of scientific communication, and new developments in German science were not well known in England. He also conducted an expedition to observe the solar eclipse of 29 May 1919 on the Island of Príncipe that provided one of the earliest confirmations of general relativity, and he became known for his popular expositions and interpretations of the theory.

Early years
Eddington was born 28 December 1882 in Kendal, Westmorland (now Cumbria), England, the son of Quaker parents, Arthur Henry Eddington, headmaster of the Quaker School, and Sarah Ann Shout.

His father taught at a Quaker training college in Lancashire before moving to Kendal to become headmaster of Stramongate School. He died in the typhoid epidemic which swept England in 1884. His mother was left to bring up her two children with relatively little income. The family moved to Weston-super-Mare where at first Stanley (as his mother and sister always called Eddington) was educated at home before spending three years at a preparatory school. The family lived at a house called Varzin, 42 Walliscote Road, Weston-super-Mare. A commemorative plaque on the building explains Sir Arthur's contribution to science.

In 1893 Eddington entered Brynmelyn School. He proved to be a most capable scholar, particularly in mathematics and English literature. His performance earned him a scholarship to Owens College, Manchester (what was later to become the University of Manchester), in 1898, which he was able to attend, having turned 16 that year. He spent the first year in a general course, but he turned to physics for the next three years. Eddington was greatly influenced by his physics and mathematics teachers, Arthur Schuster and Horace Lamb. At Manchester, Eddington lived at Dalton Hall, where he came under the lasting influence of the Quaker mathematician J. W. Graham. His progress was rapid, winning him several scholarships, and he graduated with a BSc in physics with First Class Honours in 1902.

Based on his performance at Owens College, he was awarded a scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1902. His tutor at Cambridge was Robert Alfred Herman and in 1904 Eddington became the first ever second-year student to be placed as Senior Wrangler. After receiving his M.A. in 1905, he began research on thermionic emission in the Cavendish Laboratory. This did not go well, and meanwhile he spent time teaching mathematics to first year engineering students. This hiatus was brief. Through a recommendation by E. T. Whittaker, his senior colleague at Trinity College, he secured a position at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, where he was to embark on his career in astronomy, a career whose seeds had been sown even as a young child when he would often "try to count the stars".

Astronomy
In January 1906, Eddington was nominated to the post of chief assistant to the Astronomer Royal at the Royal Greenwich Observatory. He left Cambridge for Greenwich the following month. He was put to work on a detailed analysis of the parallax of 433 Eros on photographic plates that had started in 1900. He developed a new statistical method based on the apparent drift of two background stars, winning him the Smith's Prize in 1907. The prize won him a fellowship of Trinity College, Cambridge. In December 1912, George Darwin, son of Charles Darwin, died suddenly, and Eddington was promoted to his chair as the Plumian Professor of Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy in early 1913. Later that year, Robert Ball, holder of the theoretical Lowndean chair, also died, and Eddington was named the director of the entire Cambridge Observatory the next year. In May 1914, he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society: he was awarded the Royal Medal in 1928 and delivered the Bakerian Lecture in 1926.

Eddington also investigated the interior of stars through theory, and developed the first true understanding of stellar processes. He began this in 1916 with investigations of possible physical explanations for Cepheid variable stars. He began by extending Karl Schwarzschild's earlier work on radiation pressure in Emden polytropic models. These models treated a star as a sphere of gas held up against gravity by internal thermal pressure, and one of Eddington's chief additions was to show that radiation pressure was necessary to prevent collapse of the sphere. He developed his model despite knowingly lacking firm foundations for understanding opacity and energy generation in the stellar interior. However, his results allowed for calculation of temperature, density and pressure at all points inside a star (thermodynamic anisotropy), and Eddington argued that his theory was so useful for further astrophysical investigation that it should be retained despite not being based on completely accepted physics. James Jeans contributed the important suggestion that stellar matter would certainly be ionized, but that was the end of any collaboration between the pair, who became famous for their lively debates.

Eddington defended his method by pointing to the utility of his results, particularly his important mass–luminosity relation. This had the unexpected result of showing that virtually all stars, including giants and dwarfs, behaved as ideal gases. In the process of developing his stellar models, he sought to overturn current thinking about the sources of stellar energy. Jeans and others defended the Kelvin–Helmholtz mechanism, which was based on classical mechanics, while Eddington speculated broadly about the qualitative and quantitative consequences of possible proton–electron annihilation and nuclear fusion processes.

Around 1920, he anticipated the discovery and mechanism of nuclear fusion processes in stars, in his paper "The Internal Constitution of the Stars". At that time, the source of stellar energy was a complete mystery; Eddington correctly speculated that the source was fusion of hydrogen into helium, liberating enormous energy according to Einstein's equation E = mc2. This was a particularly remarkable development since at that time fusion and thermonuclear energy, and even the fact that stars are largely composed of hydrogen (see metallicity), had not yet been discovered. Eddington's paper, based on knowledge at the time, reasoned that:

 * 1) The leading theory of stellar energy, the contraction hypothesis (cf. the Kelvin–Helmholtz mechanism), should cause stars' rotation to visibly speed up due to conservation of angular momentum. But observations of Cepheid variable stars showed this was not happening.
 * 2) The only other known plausible source of energy was conversion of matter to energy; Einstein had shown some years earlier that a small amount of matter was equivalent to a large amount of energy.
 * 3) Francis Aston had also recently shown that the mass of a helium atom was about 0.8% less than the mass of the four hydrogen atoms which would, combined, form a helium atom, suggesting that if such a combination could happen, it would release considerable energy as a byproduct.
 * 4) If a star contained just 5% of fusible hydrogen, it would suffice to explain how stars got their energy. (We now know that most "ordinary" stars contain far more than 5% hydrogen.)
 * 5) Further elements might also be fused, and other scientists had speculated that stars were the "crucible" in which light elements combined to create heavy elements, but without more-accurate measurements of their atomic masses nothing more could be said at the time.

All of these speculations were proven correct in the following decades.

With these assumptions, he demonstrated that the interior temperature of stars must be millions of degrees. In 1924, he discovered the mass–luminosity relation for stars (see Lecchini in ). Despite some disagreement, Eddington's models were eventually accepted as a powerful tool for further investigation, particularly in issues of stellar evolution. The confirmation of his estimated stellar diameters by Michelson in 1920 proved crucial in convincing astronomers unused to Eddington's intuitive, exploratory style. Eddington's theory appeared in mature form in 1926 as The Internal Constitution of the Stars, which became an important text for training an entire generation of astrophysicists.

Eddington's work in astrophysics in the late 1920s and the 1930s continued his work in stellar structure, and precipitated further clashes with Jeans and Edward Arthur Milne. An important topic was the extension of his models to take advantage of developments in quantum physics, including the use of degeneracy physics in describing dwarf stars.

Dispute with Chandrasekhar on the mass limit of stars
The topic of extension of his models precipitated his dispute with Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, who was then a student at Cambridge. Chandrasekhar's work presaged the discovery of black holes, which at the time seemed so absurdly non-physical that Eddington refused to believe that Chandrasekhar's purely mathematical derivation had consequences for the real world. Eddington was wrong and his motivation is controversial. Chandrasekhar's narrative of this incident, in which his work is harshly rejected, portrays Eddington as rather cruel and dogmatic. Chandra benefited from his friendship with Eddington. It was Eddington and Milne who put up Chandra's name for the fellowship for the Royal Society which Chandra obtained. An FRS meant he was at the Cambridge high-table with all the luminaries and a very comfortable endowment for research. Eddington's criticism seems to have been based partly on a suspicion that a purely mathematical derivation from relativity theory was not enough to explain the seemingly daunting physical paradoxes that were inherent to degenerate stars, but to have "raised irrelevant objections" in addition, as Thanu Padmanabhan puts it.

Relativity
During World War I, Eddington was secretary of the Royal Astronomical Society, which meant he was the first to receive a series of letters and papers from Willem de Sitter regarding Einstein's theory of general relativity. Eddington was fortunate in being not only one of the few astronomers with the mathematical skills to understand general relativity, but owing to his internationalist and pacifist views inspired by his Quaker religious beliefs, one of the few at the time who was still interested in pursuing a theory developed by a German physicist. He quickly became the chief supporter and expositor of relativity in Britain. He and Astronomer Royal Frank Watson Dyson organized two expeditions to observe a solar eclipse in 1919 to make the first empirical test of Einstein's theory: the measurement of the deflection of light by the Sun's gravitational field. In fact, Dyson's argument for the indispensability of Eddington's expertise in this test was what prevented Eddington from eventually having to enter military service.

When conscription was introduced in Britain on 2 March 1916, Eddington intended to apply for an exemption as a conscientious objector. Cambridge University authorities instead requested and were granted an exemption on the ground of Eddington's work being of national interest. In 1918, this was appealed against by the Ministry of National Service. Before the appeal tribunal in June, Eddington claimed conscientious objector status, which was not recognized and would have ended his exemption in August 1918. A further two hearings took place in June and July, respectively. Eddington's personal statement at the June hearing about his objection to war based on religious grounds is on record. The Astronomer Royal, Sir Frank Dyson, supported Eddington at the July hearing with a written statement, emphasising Eddington's essential role in the solar eclipse expedition to Príncipe in May 1919. Eddington made clear his willingness to serve in the Friends' Ambulance Unit, under the jurisdiction of the British Red Cross, or as a harvest labourer. However, the tribunal's decision to grant a further twelve months' exemption from military service was on condition of Eddington continuing his astronomy work, in particular in preparation for the Príncipe expedition. The war ended before the end of his exemption.

After the war, Eddington travelled to the island of Príncipe off the west coast of Africa to watch the solar eclipse of 29 May 1919. During the eclipse, he took pictures of the stars (several stars in the Hyades cluster, including Kappa Tauri of the constellation Taurus) whose line of sight from the Earth happened to be near the Sun's location in the sky at that time of year. This effect is noticeable only during a total solar eclipse when the sky is dark enough to see stars which are normally obscured by the Sun's brightness. According to the theory of general relativity, stars with light rays that passed near the Sun would appear to have been slightly shifted because their light had been curved by its gravitational field. Eddington showed that Newtonian gravitation could be interpreted to predict half the shift predicted by Einstein.

Eddington's observations published the next year allegedly confirmed Einstein's theory, and were hailed at the time as evidence of general relativity over the Newtonian model. The news was reported in newspapers all over the world as a major story. Afterward, Eddington embarked on a campaign to popularize relativity and the expedition as landmarks both in scientific development and international scientific relations.

It has been claimed that Eddington's observations were of poor quality, and he had unjustly discounted simultaneous observations at Sobral, Brazil, which appeared closer to the Newtonian model, but a 1979 re-analysis with modern measuring equipment and contemporary software validated Eddington's results and conclusions. The quality of the 1919 results was indeed poor compared to later observations, but was sufficient to persuade contemporary astronomers. The rejection of the results from the expedition to Brazil was due to a defect in the telescopes used which, again, was completely accepted and well understood by contemporary astronomers.

Throughout this period, Eddington lectured on relativity, and was particularly well known for his ability to explain the concepts in lay terms as well as scientific. He collected many of these into the Mathematical Theory of Relativity in 1923, which Albert Einstein suggested was "the finest presentation of the subject in any language." He was an early advocate of Einstein's general relativity, and an interesting anecdote well illustrates his humour and personal intellectual investment: Ludwik Silberstein, a physicist who thought of himself as an expert on relativity, approached Eddington at the Royal Society's (6 November) 1919 meeting where he had defended Einstein's relativity with his Brazil-Príncipe solar eclipse calculations with some degree of scepticism, and ruefully charged Arthur as one who claimed to be one of three men who actually understood the theory (Silberstein, of course, was including himself and Einstein as the other). When Eddington refrained from replying, he insisted Arthur not be "so shy", whereupon Eddington replied, "Oh, no! I was wondering who the third one might be!"

Cosmology
Eddington was also heavily involved with the development of the first generation of general relativistic cosmological models. He had been investigating the instability of the Einstein universe when he learned of both Lemaître's 1927 paper postulating an expanding or contracting universe and Hubble's work on the recession of the spiral nebulae. He felt the cosmological constant must have played the crucial role in the universe's evolution from an Einsteinian steady state to its current expanding state, and most of his cosmological investigations focused on the constant's significance and characteristics. In The Mathematical Theory of Relativity, Eddington interpreted the cosmological constant to mean that the universe is "self-gauging".

Fundamental theory and the Eddington number
During the 1920s until his death, Eddington increasingly concentrated on what he called "fundamental theory" which was intended to be a unification of quantum theory, relativity, cosmology, and gravitation. At first he progressed along "traditional" lines, but turned increasingly to an almost numerological analysis of the dimensionless ratios of fundamental constants.

His basic approach was to combine several fundamental constants in order to produce a dimensionless number. In many cases these would result in numbers close to 1040, its square, or its square root. He was convinced that the mass of the proton and the charge of the electron were a "natural and complete specification for constructing a Universe" and that their values were not accidental. One of the discoverers of quantum mechanics, Paul Dirac, also pursued this line of investigation, which has become known as the Dirac large numbers hypothesis. A somewhat damaging statement in his defence of these concepts involved the fine-structure constant, α. At the time it was measured to be very close to 1/136, and he argued that the value should in fact be exactly 1/136 for epistemological reasons. Later measurements placed the value much closer to 1/137, at which point he switched his line of reasoning to argue that one more should be added to the degrees of freedom, so that the value should in fact be exactly 1/137, the Eddington number. Wags at the time started calling him "Arthur Adding-one". This change of stance detracted from Eddington's credibility in the physics community. The current CODATA value is 1/

Eddington believed he had identified an algebraic basis for fundamental physics, which he termed "E-numbers" (representing a certain group – a Clifford algebra). These in effect incorporated spacetime into a higher-dimensional structure. While his theory has long been neglected by the general physics community, similar algebraic notions underlie many modern attempts at a grand unified theory. Moreover, Eddington's emphasis on the values of the fundamental constants, and specifically upon dimensionless numbers derived from them, is nowadays a central concern of physics. In particular, he predicted a number of hydrogen atoms in the Universe 136 × 2256 ≈ $1.57$, or equivalently the half of the total number of particles protons + electrons. He did not complete this line of research before his death in 1944; his book Fundamental Theory was published posthumously in 1948.

Eddington number for cycling
Eddington is credited with devising a measure of a cyclist's long-distance riding achievements. The Eddington number in the context of cycling is defined as the maximum number E such that the cyclist has cycled at least E miles on at least E days.

For example, an Eddington number of 70 would imply that the cyclist has cycled at least 70 miles in a day on at least 70 occasions. Achieving a high Eddington number is difficult, since moving from, say, 70 to 75 will (probably) require more than five new long-distance rides, since any rides shorter than 75 miles will no longer be included in the reckoning. Eddington's own life-time E-number was 84.

The Eddington number for cycling is analogous to the h-index that quantifies both the actual scientific productivity and the apparent scientific impact of a scientist.

Idealism
Eddington wrote in his book The Nature of the Physical World that "The stuff of the world is mind-stuff." "The mind-stuff of the world is, of course, something more general than our individual conscious minds ... The mind-stuff is not spread in space and time; these are part of the cyclic scheme ultimately derived out of it ... It is necessary to keep reminding ourselves that all knowledge of our environment from which the world of physics is constructed, has entered in the form of messages transmitted along the nerves to the seat of consciousness ... Consciousness is not sharply defined, but fades into subconsciousness; and beyond that we must postulate something indefinite but yet continuous with our mental nature ... It is difficult for the matter-of-fact physicist to accept the view that the substratum of everything is of mental character. But no one can deny that mind is the first and most direct thing in our experience, and all else is remote inference."

The idealist conclusion was not integral to his epistemology but was based on two main arguments.

The first derives directly from current physical theory. Briefly, mechanical theories of the ether and of the behaviour of fundamental particles have been discarded in both relativity and quantum physics. From this, Eddington inferred that a materialistic metaphysics was outmoded and that, in consequence, since the disjunction of materialism or idealism are assumed to be exhaustive, an idealistic metaphysics is required. The second, and more interesting argument, was based on Eddington's epistemology, and may be regarded as consisting of two parts. First, all we know of the objective world is its structure, and the structure of the objective world is precisely mirrored in our own consciousness. We therefore have no reason to doubt that the objective world too is "mind-stuff". Dualistic metaphysics, then, cannot be evidentially supported.

But, second, not only can we not know that the objective world is nonmentalistic, we also cannot intelligibly suppose that it could be material. To conceive of a dualism entails attributing material properties to the objective world. However, this presupposes that we could observe that the objective world has material properties. But this is absurd, for whatever is observed must ultimately be the content of our own consciousness, and consequently, nonmaterial.

Eddington believed that physics cannot explain consciousness - "light waves are propagated from the table to the eye; chemical changes occur in the retina; propagation of some kind occurs in the optic nerves; atomic changes follow in the brain. Just where the final leap into consciousness occurs is not clear. We do not know the last stage of the message in the physical world before it became a sensation in consciousness".

Ian Barbour, in his book Issues in Science and Religion (1966), p. 133, cites Eddington's The Nature of the Physical World (1928) for a text that argues the Heisenberg uncertainty principle provides a scientific basis for "the defense of the idea of human freedom" and his Science and the Unseen World (1929) for support of philosophical idealism, "the thesis that reality is basically mental".

Charles De Koninck points out that Eddington believed in objective reality existing apart from our minds, but was using the phrase "mind-stuff" to highlight the inherent intelligibility of the world: that our minds and the physical world are made of the same "stuff" and that our minds are the inescapable connection to the world. As De Koninck quotes Eddington,

"There is a doctrine well known to philosophers that the moon ceases to exist when no one is looking at it. I will not discuss the doctrine since I have not the least idea what is the meaning of the word existence when used in this connection. At any rate the science of astronomy has not been based on this spasmodic kind of moon. In the scientific world (which has to fulfill functions less vague than merely existing) there is a moon which appeared on the scene before the astronomer; it reflects sunlight when no one sees it; it has mass when no one is measuring the mass; it is distant 240,000 miles from the earth when no one is surveying the distance; and it will eclipse the sun in 1999 even if the human race has succeeded in killing itself off before that date."

Science
Against Albert Einstein and others who advocated determinism, indeterminism—championed by Eddington—says that a physical object has an ontologically undetermined component that is not due to the epistemological limitations of physicists' understanding. The uncertainty principle in quantum mechanics, then, would not necessarily be due to hidden variables but to an indeterminism in nature itself. Eddington proclaimed "It is a consequence of the advent of the quantum theory that physics is no longer pledged to a scheme of deterministic law".

Eddington agreed with the tenet of logical positivism that "the meaning of a scientific statement is to be ascertained by reference to the steps which would be taken to verify it".

Popular and philosophical writings
Eddington wrote a parody of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, recounting his 1919 solar eclipse experiment. It contained the following quatrain:

In addition to his textbook The Mathematical Theory of Relativity, during the 1920s and 30s, Eddington gave numerous lectures, interviews, and radio broadcasts on relativity, and later, quantum mechanics. Many of these were gathered into books, including The Nature of the Physical World and New Pathways in Science. His use of literary allusions and humour helped make these difficult subjects more accessible.

Eddington's books and lectures were immensely popular with the public, not only because of his clear exposition, but also for his willingness to discuss the philosophical and religious implications of the new physics. He argued for a deeply rooted philosophical harmony between scientific investigation and religious mysticism, and also that the positivist nature of relativity and quantum physics provided new room for personal religious experience and free will. Unlike many other spiritual scientists, he rejected the idea that science could provide proof of religious propositions.

His popular writings made him a household name in Great Britain between the world wars.

Death
Eddington died of cancer in the Evelyn Nursing Home, Cambridge, on 22 November 1944. He was unmarried. His body was cremated at Cambridge Crematorium (Cambridgeshire) on 27 November 1944; the cremated remains were buried in the grave of his mother in the Ascension Parish Burial Ground in Cambridge.

Cambridge University's North West Cambridge development has been named Eddington in his honour.

Eddington was played by David Tennant in the television film Einstein and Eddington, with Einstein played by Andy Serkis. The film was notable for its groundbreaking portrayal of Eddington as a somewhat repressed gay man. It was first broadcast in 2008.

The actor Paul Eddington was a relative, mentioning in his autobiography (in light of his own weakness in mathematics) "what I then felt to be the misfortune" of being related to "one of the foremost physicists in the world".

Obituaries

 * Obituary 1 by Henry Norris Russell, Astrophysical Journal 101 (1943–46) 133
 * Obituary 2 by A. Vibert Douglas, Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, 39 (1943–46) 1
 * Obituary 3 by Harold Spencer Jones and E. T. Whittaker, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 105 (1943–46) 68
 * Obituary 4 by Herbert Dingle, The Observatory 66 (1943–46) 1
 * The Times, Thursday, 23 November 1944; pg. 7; Issue 49998; col D: Obituary (unsigned) – Image of cutting available at

Awards and honors

 * Smith's Prize (1907)
 * International Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1922)
 * Bruce Medal of Astronomical Society of the Pacific (1924)
 * Henry Draper Medal of the National Academy of Sciences (1924)
 * Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (1924)
 * International Member of the United States National Academy of Sciences (1925)
 * Foreign membership of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (1926)
 * Prix Jules Janssen of the Société astronomique de France (French Astronomical Society) (1928)
 * Royal Medal of the Royal Society (1928)
 * Knighthood (1930)
 * International Member of the American Philosophical Society (1931)
 * Order of Merit (1938)
 * Honorary member of the Norwegian Astronomical Society (1939)
 * Hon. Freeman of Kendal, 1930

Named after him

 * Lunar crater Eddington
 * asteroid 2761 Eddington
 * Royal Astronomical Society's Eddington Medal
 * Eddington mission, now cancelled
 * Eddington Tower, halls of residence at the University of Essex
 * Eddington Astronomical Society, an amateur society based in his hometown of Kendal
 * Eddington, a house (group of students, used for in-school sports matches) of Kirkbie Kendal School
 * Eddington, new suburb of North West Cambridge, opened in 2017

Service

 * Gave the Swarthmore Lecture in 1929
 * Chairman of the National Peace Council 1941–1943
 * President of the International Astronomical Union; of the Physical Society, 1930–32; of the Royal Astronomical Society, 1921–23
 * Romanes Lecturer, 1922
 * Gifford Lecturer, 1927

In popular culture

 * Eddington is a central figure in the short story "The Mathematician's Nightmare: The Vision of Professor Squarepunt" by Bertrand Russell, a work featured in The Mathematical Magpie by Clifton Fadiman.
 * He was portrayed by David Tennant in the television film Einstein and Eddington, a co-production of the BBC and HBO, broadcast in the United Kingdom on Saturday, 22 November 2008, on BBC2.
 * His thoughts on humour and religious experience were quoted in the adventure game The Witness, a production of the Thelka, Inc., released on 26 January 2016.
 * Time placed him on the cover on 16 April 1934.
 * The song “In Transit”, from the 2023 album Signs Of Life by Neil Gaiman and Fourplay String Quartet was written in memory of him.

Publications

 * 1914. Stellar Movements and the Structure of the Universe. London: Macmillan.
 * 1918. Report on the relativity theory of gravitation. London, Fleetway Press, Ltd.
 * 1920. Space, Time and Gravitation: An Outline of the General Relativity Theory. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-33709-7
 * 1922. The theory of relativity and its influence on scientific thought
 * 1923. 1952. The Mathematical Theory of Relativity. Cambridge University Press.
 * 1925. The Domain of Physical Science. 2005 reprint: ISBN 1-4253-5842-X
 * 1926. Stars and Atoms. Oxford: British Association.
 * 1926. The Internal Constitution of Stars. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-33708-9
 * 1928. The Nature of the Physical World. MacMillan. 1935 replica edition: ISBN 0-8414-3885-4, University of Michigan 1981 edition: ISBN 0-472-06015-5 (1926–27 Gifford lectures)
 * 1929. Science and the Unseen World. US Macmillan, UK Allen & Unwin. 1980 Reprint Arden Library ISBN 0-8495-1426-6. 2004 US reprint – Whitefish, Montana : Kessinger Publications: ISBN 1-4179-1728-8. 2007 UK reprint London, Allen & Unwin ISBN 978-0-901689-81-8 (Swarthmore Lecture), with a new foreword by George Ellis.
 * 1930. Why I Believe in God: Science and Religion, as a Scientist Sees It. Arrow/scrollable preview.
 * 1933. The Expanding Universe: Astronomy's 'Great Debate', 1900–1931. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-34976-1
 * 1935. New Pathways in Science. Cambridge University Press.
 * 1936. Relativity Theory of Protons and Electrons. Cambridge Univ. Press.
 * 1939. Philosophy of Physical Science. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-7581-2054-0 (1938 Tarner lectures at Cambridge)
 * 1946. Fundamental Theory. Cambridge University Press.

Astronomy

 * Chandrasekhar limit
 * Eddington luminosity (also called the Eddington limit)
 * Gravitational lens
 * Outline of astronomy
 * Stellar nucleosynthesis
 * Timeline of stellar astronomy
 * List of astronomers

Science

 * Arrow of time
 * Classical unified field theories
 * Degenerate matter
 * Dimensionless physical constant
 * Dirac large numbers hypothesis (also called the Eddington–Dirac number)
 * Eddington number
 * Introduction to quantum mechanics
 * Luminiferous aether
 * Parameterized post-Newtonian formalism
 * Special relativity
 * Theory of everything (also called "final theory" or "ultimate theory")
 * Timeline of gravitational physics and relativity
 * List of experiments

People

 * List of science and religion scholars

Other

 * Infinite monkey theorem
 * Numerology
 * Ontic structural realism

title: Arthur Eddington


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Apple II (original)

The Apple II (stylized as apple ][) is a personal computer released by Apple Inc. in June 1977. It was one of the first successful mass-produced microcomputer products and is widely regarded as one of the most important personal computers of all time due to its role in popularizing home computing and influencing later software development.

The Apple II was designed primarily by Steve Wozniak. The system is based around the 8-bit MOS Technology 6502 microprocessor. Jerry Manock designed the foam-molded plastic case, Rod Holt developed the switching power supply, while Steve Jobs was not involved in the design or development of the computer. It was introduced by Jobs and Wozniak at the 1977 West Coast Computer Faire, and marks Apple's first launch of a computer aimed at a consumer market—branded toward American households rather than businessmen or computer hobbyists.

Byte magazine referred to the Apple II, Commodore PET 2001, and TRS-80 as the "1977 Trinity". As the Apple II had the defining feature of being able to display color graphics, the Apple logo was redesigned to have a spectrum of colors.

The Apple II was the first in a series of computers collectively referred to by the Apple II name. It was followed by the Apple II+, Apple IIe, Apple IIc, Apple IIc Plus, and the 16-bit Apple IIGS—all of which remained compatible. Production of the last available model, the Apple IIe, ceased in November 1993.

History
By 1976, Steve Jobs had convinced product designer Jerry Manock (who had formerly worked at Hewlett Packard designing calculators) to create the "shell" for the Apple II—a smooth case inspired by kitchen appliances that concealed the internal mechanics. The earliest Apple II computers were assembled in Silicon Valley and later in Texas; printed circuit boards were manufactured in Ireland and Singapore. The first computers went on sale on June 10, 1977 with an MOS Technology 6502 microprocessor running at 1.023 MHz ($2/7$ of the NTSC color subcarrier), two game paddles (bundled until 1980, when they were found to violate FCC regulations), 4 KiB of RAM, an audio cassette interface for loading programs and storing data, and the Integer BASIC programming language built into ROMs. The video controller displayed 24 lines by 40 columns of monochrome, uppercase-only text on the screen (the original character set matches ASCII characters 20h to 5Fh), with NTSC composite video output suitable for display on a video monitor or on a regular TV set (by way of a separate RF modulator).

The original retail price of the computer with 4 KiB of RAM was US$1298 1977 and with the maximum 48 KiB of RAM, it was US$2638 1977 To reflect the computer's color graphics capability, the Apple logo on the casing has rainbow stripes, which remained a part of Apple's corporate logo until early 1998. Perhaps most significantly, the Apple II was a catalyst for personal computers across many industries; it opened the doors to software marketed at consumers.

Certain aspects of the system's design were influenced by Atari, Inc.'s arcade video game Breakout (1976), which was designed by Wozniak, who said: "A lot of features of the Apple II went in because I had designed Breakout for Atari. I had designed it in hardware. I wanted to write it in software now". This included his design of color graphics circuitry, the addition of game paddle support and sound, and graphics commands in Integer BASIC, with which he wrote Brick Out, a software clone of his own hardware game. Wozniak said in 1984: "Basically, all the game features were put in just so I could show off the game I was familiar with—Breakout—at the Homebrew Computer Club. It was the most satisfying day of my life [when] I demonstrated Breakout—totally written in BASIC. It seemed like a huge step to me. After designing hardware arcade games, I knew that being able to program them in BASIC was going to change the world."

Overview
In the May 1977 issue of Byte, Steve Wozniak published a detailed description of his design; the article began, "To me, a personal computer should be small, reliable, convenient to use, and inexpensive."

The Apple II used peculiar engineering shortcuts to save hardware and reduce costs, such as:
 * Taking advantage of the way the 6502 processor accesses memory: it occurs only on alternate phases of the clock cycle; video generation circuitry memory access on the otherwise unused phase avoids memory contention issues and interruptions of the video stream;
 * This arrangement simultaneously eliminated the need for a separate refresh circuit for DRAM chips, as video transfer accessed each row of dynamic memory within the timeout period. In addition, it did not require separate RAM chips for video RAM, while the PET and TRS-80 had SRAM chips for video;
 * Apart from the 6502 CPU and a few support chips, the vast majority of the semiconductors used were 74LS low-power Schottky chips;
 * Rather than use a complex analog-to-digital circuit to read the outputs of the game controller, Wozniak used a simple timer circuit, built around a quad 555 timer IC called a 558, whose period is proportional to the resistance of the game controller, and he used a software loop to measure the timers;
 * A single 14.31818 MHz master oscillator (fM) was divided by various ratios to produce all other required frequencies, including microprocessor clock signals (fM/14), video transfer counters, and color-burst samples (fM/4). A solderable jumper on the main board allowed to switch between European 50 Hz and USA 60 Hz video.

The text and graphics screens have a complex arrangement. For instance, the scanlines were not stored in sequential areas of memory. This complexity was reportedly due to Wozniak's realization that the method would allow for the refresh of dynamic RAM as a side effect (as described above). This method had no cost overhead to have software calculate or look up the address of the required scanline and avoided the need for significant extra hardware. Similarly, in high-resolution graphics mode, color is determined by pixel position and thus can be implemented in software, saving Wozniak the chips needed to convert bit patterns to colors. This also allowed to draw text with subpixel rendering, since orange and blue pixels appear half a pixel-width farther to the right on the screen than green and purple pixels.

The Apple II at first used data cassette storage, like most other microcomputers of the time. In 1978, the company introduced an external $5 1/4$-inch floppy disk drive, called Disk II (stylized as Disk ][), attached through a controller card that plugs into one of the computer's expansion slots (usually slot 6). The Disk II interface, created by Wozniak, is regarded as an engineering masterpiece for its economy of electronic components.

The approach taken in the Disk II controller is typical of Wozniak's designs. With a few small-scale logic chips and a cheap PROM (programmable read-only memory), he created a functional floppy disk interface at a fraction of the component cost of standard circuit configurations.

Case design
The first production Apple II computers had hand-molded cases; these had visible bubbles and other lumps in them from the imperfect plastic molding process, which was soon switched to machine molding. In addition, the initial case design had no vent openings, causing high heat buildup from the PCB and resulting in the plastic softening and sagging. Apple added vent holes to the case within three months of production; customers with the original case could have them replaced at no charge.

PCB revisions
The Apple II's printed circuit board (PCB) underwent several revisions, as Steve Wozniak made modifications to it. The earliest version was known as Revision 0, and the first 6,000 units shipped used it. Later revisions added a color killer circuit to prevent color fringing when the computer was in text mode, as well as modifications to improve the reliability of cassette I/O. Revision 0 Apple IIs powered up in an undefined mode and had garbage on-screen, requiring the user to press Reset. This was eliminated in later board revisions. Revision 0 Apple IIs could display only four colors in hi-res mode, but Wozniak was able to increase this to six hi-res colors on later board revisions. (Technically it was eight, but only six were visible. )

The PCB had three RAM banks for a total of 24 RAM chips. Original Apple IIs had jumper switches to adjust RAM size, and RAM configurations could be 4, 8, 12, 16, 20, 24, 32, 36, or 48 KiB. The three smallest memory configurations used 4kx1 DRAMs, with larger ones using 16kx1 DRAMs, or mix of 4-kilobyte and 16-kilobyte banks (the chips in any one bank have to be the same size). The early Apple II+ models retained this feature, but after a drop in DRAM prices, Apple redesigned the circuit boards without the jumpers, so that only 16kx1 chips were supported. A few months later, they started shipping all machines with a full 48 KiB complement of DRAM.

Unlike most machines, all integrated circuits on the Apple II PCB were socketed; although this cost more to manufacture and created the possibility of loose chips causing a system malfunction, it was considered preferable to make servicing and replacement of bad chips easier.

The Apple II PCB lacks any means of generating an interrupt request, although expansion cards may generate one. Program code had to stop everything to perform any I/O task; like many of the computer's other idiosyncrasies, this was due to cost reasons and Steve Wozniak assuming interrupts were not needed for gaming or using the computer as a teaching tool.

Display and graphics
Color on the Apple II series uses a quirk of the NTSC television signal standard, which made color display relatively easy and inexpensive to implement. The original NTSC television signal specification was black and white. Color was added later by adding a 3.58-megahertz subcarrier signal that was partially ignored by black-and-white TV sets. Color is encoded based on the phase of this signal in relation to a reference color burst signal. The result is that the position, size, and intensity of a series of pulses define color information. These pulses can translate into pixels on the computer screen, with the possibility of exploiting composite artifact colors.

The Apple II display provides two pixels per subcarrier cycle. When the color burst reference signal is turned on and the computer attached to a color display, it can display green by showing one alternating pattern of pixels, magenta with an opposite pattern of alternating pixels, and white by placing two pixels next to each other. Blue and orange are available by tweaking the pixel offset by half a pixel-width in relation to the color-burst signal. The high-resolution display offers more colors by compressing more (and narrower) pixels into each subcarrier cycle.

The coarse, low-resolution graphics display mode works differently, as it can output a pattern of dots per pixel to offer more color options. These patterns are stored in the character generator ROM, and replace the text character bit patterns when the computer is switched to low-res graphics mode. The text mode and low-res graphics mode use the same memory region and the same circuitry is used for both.

A single HGR page occupied 8 KiB of RAM; in practice this meant that the user had to have at least 12 KiB of total RAM to use HGR mode and 20 KiB to use two pages. Early Apple II games from the 1977–79 period often ran only in text or low-resolution mode in order to support users with small memory configurations; HGR not being near universally supported by games until 1980.

Sound
Rather than a dedicated sound-synthesis chip, the Apple II contains a toggle circuit that can only emit a click through a built-in speaker or a line-out jack. More complex sounds, such as music or audio samples, are generated by software manually toggling the speaker at an appropriate frequency. This technique requires careful and precise timing, rendering it difficult to display moving graphics while sound is playing. Third party expansion cards were later released which addressed this problem.

A similar technique is used for cassette storage: cassette output works the same as the speaker, and input uses a simple zero-crossing detector as a 1-bit audio digitizer. Routines in machine ROM encode and decode data in frequency-shift keying for the cassette.

Programming languages
Initially, the Apple II was shipped with Integer BASIC encoded in the motherboard ROM chips. Written by Wozniak, the interpreter enabled users to write software applications without needing to purchase additional development utilities. Written with game programmers and hobbyists in mind, the language only supported the encoding of numbers in 16-bit integer format. Since it only supported integers between -32768 and +32767 (signed 16-bit integer), it was less suitable to business software, and Apple soon received complaints from customers. Because Steve Wozniak was busy developing the Disk II hardware, he did not have time to modify Integer BASIC for floating point support. Apple instead licensed Microsoft's 6502 BASIC to create Applesoft BASIC.

Disk users normally purchased a so-called Language Card, which had Applesoft in ROM, and was located below the Integer BASIC ROM in system memory. The user could switch between either BASIC by typing FP or INT in BASIC prompt. Apple also offered a different version of Applesoft for cassette users, which occupied low memory, and was started by using the LOAD command in Integer BASIC.

As shipped, Apple II incorporated a machine code monitor with commands for displaying and altering the computer's RAM, either one byte at a time, or in blocks of 256 bytes at once. This enabled programmers to write and debug machine code programs without further development software. The computer powers on into the monitor ROM, displaying a * prompt. From there, Ctrl enters BASIC, or a machine language program can be loaded from cassette. Disk software can be booted with Ctrl followed by 6, referring to Slot 6 which normally contained the Disk II controller.

A 6502 assembler was soon offered on disk, and later the UCSD compiler and operating system for the Pascal language were made available. The Pascal system requires a 16 KiB RAM card to be installed in the language card position (expansion slot 0) in addition to the full 48 KiB of motherboard memory.

Manual
The first 1,000 or so Apple IIs shipped in 1977 with a 68-page mimeographed "Apple II Mini Manual", hand-bound with brass paper fasteners. This was the basis for the Apple II Reference Manual, which became known as the Red Book for its red cover, published in January 1978. All existing customers who sent in their warranty cards were sent free copies of the Red Book. The Apple II Reference Manual contained the complete schematic of the entire computer's circuitry, and a complete source listing of the "Monitor" ROM firmware that served as the machine's BIOS.

An Apple II manual signed by Steve Jobs in 1980 with the inscription "Julian, your generation is the first to grow up with computers. Go change the world." sold at auction for $787,484 in 2021.

Operating system
The original Apple II came with an 8 KiB ROM containing a BASIC variant called Integer BASIC as well as a resident monitor called the Apple System Monitor. Initially, only cassette tape was available for storage, which was considered too slow and unreliable for business use. In late 1977, Apple began to develop the Disk II floppy disk drive and required an operating system to utilize it. The existing standard at the time was CP/M, but due to incompatibility with the 6502 processor and a perceived clunkiness, Apple contracted Shepardson Microsystems for $13,000 to write Apple DOS. At Shepardson, Paul Laughton developed the software in just 35 days, a remarkably short deadline, even for the time. The Disk II and Apple DOS were released in late 1978. The final and most popular version of this software was Apple DOS 3.3.

Apple DOS was superseded by ProDOS, which supported a hierarchical filesystem and larger storage devices. With an optional third-party Z80-based expansion card, the Apple II could boot into the CP/M operating system and run WordStar, dBase II, and other CP/M software. With the release of MousePaint in 1984 and the Apple II GS in 1986, the platform took on the look of the Macintosh user interface, including a mouse.

Apple released Applesoft BASIC in 1977, a more advanced variant of the language which users could run instead of Integer BASIC for more capabilities, such as the ability to use floating point numbers.

Some commercial Apple II software came on self-booting disks and did not use standard DOS disk formats. This discouraged the copying or modifying of the software on the disks, and improved loading speed.

Third-party devices and applications
When the Apple II initially shipped in June 1977, no expansion cards were available for the slots. This meant that the user did not have any way of connecting a modem or a printer. One popular hack involved connecting a teletype machine to the cassette output.

Wozniak's open-architecture design and Apple II's multiple expansion slots permitted a wide variety of third-party devices, including peripheral cards, such as serial controllers, display controllers, memory boards, hard disks, networking components, and real-time clocks. There were plug-in expansion cards—such as the Z-80 SoftCard—that permitted Apple II to use the Z80 processor and run programs for the CP/M operating system, including the dBase II database and the WordStar word processor. The Z80 card also allowed the connection to a modem, and thereby to any networks that a user might have access to. In the early days, such networks were scarce. But they expanded significantly with the development of bulletin board systems in later years. There was also a third-party 6809 card that allowed OS-9 Level One to be run. Third-party sound cards greatly improved audio capabilities, allowing simple music synthesis and text-to-speech functions. Apple II accelerator cards doubled or quadrupled the computer's speed.

Early Apple IIs were often sold with a Sup'R'Mod, which allowed the composite video signal to be viewed in a television.

The Soviet Union radio-electronics industry designed Apple II-compatible computer Agat. Roughly 12,000 Agat 7 and 9 models were produced and they were widely used in Soviet schools. Agat 9 computers could run "Apple II" compatibility and native modes. "Apple II" mode allowed to run a wider variety of (presumably pirated) Apple II software, but at the expense of less RAM. Because of that Soviet developers preferred native mode over "Apple II" compatibility mode.

In 1978, Bob Bishop of Apple Computer, Inc. programmed 9 Apple II computers to run the gameboard on the TV game show Tic-Tac-Dough;. Each Apple was responsible for displaying various contents for each box of the gameboard (category, X, O, bonus game numbers and amounts, TIC, TAC or Dragon, as well displaying custom messages and an active screensaver), and in turn controlled by an Altair 8800 system. It was the first game show to use computerized graphics.

Reception
Jesse Adams Stein wrote, "As the first company to release a 'consumer appliance' micro-computer, Apple Computer offers us a clear view of this shift from a machine to an appliance." But the company also had "to negotiate the attitudes of its potential buyers, bearing in mind social anxieties about the uptake of new technologies in multiple contexts. The office, the home and the 'office-in-the-home' were implicated in these changing spheres of gender stereotypes and technological development." After seeing a crude, wire-wrapped prototype demonstrated by Wozniak and Steve Jobs in November 1976, Byte predicted in April 1977, that the Apple II "may be the first product to fully qualify as the 'appliance computer' ... a completed system which is purchased off the retail shelf, taken home, plugged in and used". The computer's color graphics capability especially impressed the magazine. The magazine published a favorable review of the computer in March 1978, concluding: "For the user that wants color graphics, the Apple II is the only practical choice available in the 'appliance' computer class."

Personal Computer World in August 1978 also cited the color capability as a strength, stating that "the prime reason that anyone buys an Apple II must surely be for the colour graphics". While mentioning the "oddity" of the artifact colors that produced output "that is not always what one wishes to do", it noted that "no-one has colour graphics like this at this sort of price". The magazine praised the sophisticated monitor software, user expandability, and comprehensive documentation. The author concluded that "the Apple II is a very promising machine" which "would be even more of a temptation were its price slightly lower ... for the moment, colour is an Apple II".

Although it sold well from the launch, the initial market was to hobbyists and computer enthusiasts. Sales expanded exponentially into the business and professional market, when the spreadsheet program VisiCalc was launched in mid-1979. VisiCalc is credited as the defining killer app in the microcomputer industry.

By the end of 1977 Apple had sales of US$775,000 for the fiscal year, which included sales of the Apple I. This puts Apple clearly behind the others of the "holy trinity" of the TRS-80 and Commodore PET, even though the TRS-80 was launched last of the three. However, during the first five years of operations, revenues doubled about every four months. Between September 1977 and September 1980, annual sales grew from US$775,000 to US$118 million. During this period the sole products of the company were the Apple II and its peripherals, accessories, and software.

In 2006, PC World wrote that the Apple II was the greatest PC of all time.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Apple II (original)


text:
April 3

Pre-1600

 * 686 – Maya king Yuknoom Yich'aak K'ahk' assumes the crown of Calakmul.
 * 1043 – Edward the Confessor is crowned King of England.
 * 1077 – The Patriarchate of Friûl, the first Friulian state, is created.
 * 1559 – The second of two treaties making up the Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis is signed, ending the Italian Wars.

1601–1900

 * 1721 – Robert Walpole becomes, in effect, the first Prime Minister of Great Britain, though he himself denied that title.
 * 1851 – Rama IV is crowned King of Thailand after the death of his half-brother, Rama III.
 * 1860 – The first successful United States Pony Express run from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Sacramento, California, begins.
 * 1865 – American Civil War: Union forces capture Richmond, Virginia, the capital of the Confederate States of America.
 * 1882 – American Old West: Robert Ford kills Jesse James.
 * 1885 – Gottlieb Daimler is granted a German patent for a light, high-speed, four-stroke engine, which he uses seven months later to create the world's first motorcycle, the Daimler Reitwagen.
 * 1888 – Jack the Ripper: The first of 11 unsolved brutal murders of women committed in or near the impoverished Whitechapel district in the East End of London, occurs.
 * 1895 – The trial in the libel case brought by Oscar Wilde begins, eventually resulting in his imprisonment on charges of homosexuality.

1901–present

 * 1920 – Attempts are made to carry out the failed assassination attempt on General Mannerheim, led by Aleksander Weckman by order of Eino Rahja, during the White Guard parade in Tampere, Finland.
 * 1922 – Joseph Stalin becomes the first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
 * 1933 – First flight over Mount Everest, the British Houston-Mount Everest Flight Expedition, led by the Marquis of Clydesdale and funded by Lucy, Lady Houston.
 * 1936 – Bruno Richard Hauptmann is executed for the kidnapping and death of Charles Augustus Lindbergh, Jr., the infant son of pilot Charles Lindbergh.
 * 1942 – World War II: Japanese forces begin an assault on the United States and Filipino troops on the Bataan Peninsula.
 * 1946 – Japanese Lt. General Masaharu Homma is executed in the Philippines for leading the Bataan Death March.
 * 1948 – Cold War: U.S. President Harry S. Truman signs the Marshall Plan, authorizing $5 billion in aid for 16 countries.
 * 1948  – In Jeju Province, South Korea, a civil-war-like period of violence and human rights abuses known as the Jeju uprising begins.
 * 1955 – The American Civil Liberties Union announces it will defend Allen Ginsberg's book Howl against obscenity charges.
 * 1956 – Hudsonville–Standale tornado: The western half of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan is struck by a deadly F5 tornado.
 * 1968 – Martin Luther King Jr. delivers his "I've Been to the Mountaintop" speech; he was assassinated the next day.
 * 1969 – Vietnam War: United States Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird announces that the United States will start to "Vietnamize" the war effort.
 * 1973 – Martin Cooper of Motorola makes the first handheld mobile phone call to Joel S. Engel of Bell Labs.
 * 1974 – The 1974 Super Outbreak occurs, the second largest tornado outbreak in recorded history (after the 2011 Super Outbreak). The death toll is 315, with nearly 5,500 injured.
 * 1975 – Vietnam War: Operation Babylift, a mass evacuation of children in the closing stages of the war begins.
 * 1975  – Bobby Fischer refuses to play in a chess match against Anatoly Karpov, giving Karpov the title of World Champion by default.
 * 1980 – US Congress restores a federal trust relationship with the 501 members of the Shivwits, Kanosh, Koosharem, and the Indian Peaks and Cedar City bands of the Paiute people of Utah.
 * 1981 – The Osborne 1, the first successful portable computer, is unveiled at the West Coast Computer Faire in San Francisco.
 * 1989 – The US Supreme Court upholds the jurisdictional rights of tribal courts under the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 in Mississippi Choctaw Band v. Holyfield.
 * 1993 – The outcome of the Grand National horse race is declared void for the first (and only) time
 * 1996 – Suspected "Unabomber" Theodore Kaczynski is captured at his Montana cabin in the United States.
 * 1996  – A United States Air Force Boeing T-43 crashes near Dubrovnik Airport in Croatia, killing 35, including Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown.
 * 1997 – The Thalit massacre begins in Algeria; all but one of the 53 inhabitants of Thalit are killed by guerrillas.
 * 2000 – United States v. Microsoft Corp.: Microsoft is ruled to have violated United States antitrust law by keeping "an oppressive thumb" on its competitors.
 * 2004 – Islamic terrorists involved in the 2004 Madrid train bombings are trapped by the police in their apartment and kill themselves.
 * 2007 – Conventional-Train World Speed Record: A French TGV train on the LGV Est high speed line sets an official new world speed record of 574.8 km/h (159.6 m/s, 357.2 mph).
 * 2008 – ATA Airlines, once one of the ten largest U.S. passenger airlines and largest charter airline, files for bankruptcy for the second time in five years and ceases all operations.
 * 2008  – Texas law enforcement cordons off the FLDS's YFZ Ranch. Eventually 533 women and children will be taken into state custody.
 * 2009 – Jiverly Antares Wong opens fire at the American Civic Association immigration center in Binghamton, New York, killing thirteen and wounding four before committing suicide.
 * 2010 – Apple Inc. released the first generation iPad, a tablet computer.
 * 2013 – More than 50 people die in floods resulting from record-breaking rainfall in La Plata and Buenos Aires, Argentina.
 * 2016 – The Panama Papers, a leak of legal documents, reveals information on 214,488 offshore companies.
 * 2017 – A bomb explodes in the St Petersburg metro system, killing 14 and injuring several more people.
 * 2018 – YouTube headquarters shooting: A 38-year-old gunwoman opens fire at YouTube Headquarters in San Bruno, California, injuring three people before committing suicide.

Pre-1600

 * 1016 – Xing Zong, Chinese emperor (d. 1055)
 * 1151 – Igor Svyatoslavich, Russian prince (d. 1202)
 * 1395 – George of Trebizond, Greek philosopher, scholar and humanist (d. 1486)
 * 1438 – John III of Egmont, Dutch nobleman (d. 1516)
 * 1529 – Michael Neander, German mathematician and astronomer (d. 1581)
 * 1540 – Maria de' Medici, Italian noblewoman, the eldest daughter of Cosimo I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany and Eleonora di Toledo. (d. 1557)
 * 1593 – George Herbert, English poet (d. 1633)

1601–1900

 * 1643 – Charles V, duke of Lorraine (d. 1690)
 * 1682 – Valentin Rathgeber, German organist and composer (d. 1750)
 * 1693 – George Edwards, English ornithologist and entomologist (d. 1773)
 * 1715 – William Watson, English physician, physicist, and botanist (d. 1787)
 * 1764 – John Abernethy, English surgeon and anatomist (d. 1831)
 * 1769 – Christian Günther von Bernstorff, Danish-Prussian politician and diplomat (d. 1835)
 * 1770 – Theodoros Kolokotronis, Greek general (d. 1843)
 * 1778 – Pierre Bretonneau, French doctor who performed the first successful tracheotomy (d. 1862)
 * 1781 – Swaminarayan, Indian religious leader (d. 1830)
 * 1782 – Alexander Macomb, American general (d. 1841)
 * 1783 – Washington Irving, American short story writer, essayist, biographer, historian (d. 1859)
 * 1791 – Anne Lister, English diarist, mountaineer, and traveller (d. 1840)
 * 1798 – Charles Wilkes, American admiral, geographer, and explorer (d. 1877)
 * 1807 – Mary Carpenter, English educational and social reformer (d. 1877)
 * 1814 – Lorenzo Snow, American religious leader, 5th President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (d. 1901)
 * 1822 – Edward Everett Hale, American minister, historian, and author (d. 1909)
 * 1823 – George Derby, American lieutenant and journalist (d. 1861)
 * 1823  – William M. Tweed, American politician (d. 1878)
 * 1826 – Cyrus K. Holliday, American businessman (d. 1900)
 * 1837 – John Burroughs, American botanist and author (d. 1921)
 * 1842 – Ulric Dahlgren, American colonel (d. 1864)
 * 1848 – Arturo Prat, Chilean lawyer and captain (d. 1879)
 * 1852 – Talbot Baines Reed, English author (d. 1893)
 * 1858 – Jacob Gaudaur, Canadian rower (d. 1937)
 * 1860 – Frederik van Eeden, Dutch psychiatrist and author (d. 1932)
 * 1864 – Emil Kellenberger, Swiss target shooter (d. 1943)
 * 1875 – Mistinguett, French actress and singer (d. 1956)
 * 1876 – Margaret Anglin, Canadian actress, director, and producer (d. 1958)
 * 1876  – Tomáš Baťa, Czech businessman, founded Bata Shoes (d. 1932)
 * 1880 – Otto Weininger, Jewish-Austrian philosopher and author (d. 1903)
 * 1881 – Alcide De Gasperi, Italian journalist and politician, 30th Prime Minister of Italy (d. 1954)
 * 1882 – Philippe Desranleau, Canadian archbishop (d. 1952)
 * 1883 – Ikki Kita, Japanese philosopher and author (d. 1937)
 * 1885 – Allan Dwan, Canadian-American director, producer, and screenwriter (d. 1981)
 * 1885  – Bud Fisher, American cartoonist (d. 1954)
 * 1885  – Marie-Victorin Kirouac, Canadian botanist and academic (d. 1944)
 * 1885  – St John Philby, English colonial and explorer (d. 1960)
 * 1886 – Dooley Wilson, American actor and singer (d. 1953)
 * 1887 – Ōtori Tanigorō, Japanese sumo wrestler, the 24th Yokozuna (d. 1956)
 * 1887  – Nishizō Tsukahara, Japanese admiral (d. 1966)
 * 1888 – Thomas C. Kinkaid, American admiral (d. 1972)
 * 1889 – Grigoraș Dinicu, Romanian violinist and composer (d. 1949)
 * 1893 – Leslie Howard, English actor (d. 1943)
 * 1895 – Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Italian-American composer and educator (d. 1968)
 * 1895  – Zez Confrey, American pianist and composer (d. 1971)
 * 1897 – Joe Kirkwood Sr., Australian golfer (d. 1970)
 * 1897  – Thrasyvoulos Tsakalotos, Greek general (d. 1989)
 * 1898 – David Jack, English footballer and manager (d. 1958)
 * 1898  – George Jessel, American actor, singer, and producer (d. 1981)
 * 1898  – Henry Luce, American publisher, co-founded Time magazine (d. 1967)
 * 1900 – Camille Chamoun, Lebanese lawyer and politician, 7th President of Lebanon (d. 1987)
 * 1900  – Albert Walsh, Canadian lawyer and politician, 1st Lieutenant Governor of Newfoundland (d. 1958)

1901–present

 * 1903  – Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay, Indian social reformer and freedom fighter (d. 1988)
 * 1904 – Iron Eyes Cody, American actor and stuntman (d. 1999)
 * 1904  – Sally Rand, American dancer (d. 1979)
 * 1904  – Russel Wright, American furniture designer (d. 1976)
 * 1905 – Robert Sink, American general (d. 1965)
 * 1910 – Ted Hook, Australian public servant (d. 1990)
 * 1911 – Nanette Bordeaux, Canadian-American actress (d. 1956)
 * 1911  – Michael Woodruff, English-Scottish surgeon and academic (d. 2001)
 * 1911  – Stanisława Walasiewicz, Polish-American runner (d. 1980)
 * 1912 – Dorothy Eden, New Zealand-English author (d. 1982)
 * 1912  – Grigoris Lambrakis, Greek physician and politician (d. 1963)
 * 1913 – Per Borten, Norwegian politician, 18th Prime Minister of Norway (d. 2005)
 * 1914 – Ray Getliffe, Canadian ice hockey player (d. 2008)
 * 1914  – Sam Manekshaw, Indian field marshal (d. 2008)
 * 1915 – Piet de Jong, Dutch politician and naval officer, Prime Minister of the Netherlands (d. 2016)
 * 1915  – İhsan Doğramacı, Turkish physician and academic (d. 2010)
 * 1916 – Herb Caen, American journalist and author (d. 1997)
 * 1916  – Cliff Gladwin, English cricketer (d. 1988)
 * 1916  – Louis Guglielmi, Catalan composer (d. 1991)
 * 1918 – Mary Anderson, American actress (d. 2014)
 * 1918  – Louis Applebaum, Canadian composer and conductor (d. 2000)
 * 1919 – Ervin Drake, American songwriter and composer (d. 2015)
 * 1919  – Clairette Oddera, French-Canadian actress and singer (d. 2008)
 * 1920 – Stan Freeman, American composer and conductor (d. 2001)
 * 1920  – Yoshibayama Junnosuke, Japanese sumo wrestler, the 43rd Yokozuna (d. 1977)
 * 1921 – Robert Karvelas, American actor (d. 1991)
 * 1921  – Jan Sterling, American actress (d. 2004)
 * 1922 – Yevhen Bulanchyk, Ukrainian hurdler (d. 1996)
 * 1922  – Doris Day, American singer and actress (d. 2019)
 * 1923 – Daniel Hoffman, American poet and academic (d. 2013)
 * 1924 – Marlon Brando, American actor and director (d. 2004)
 * 1924  – Roza Shanina, Russian sergeant and sniper (d. 1945)
 * 1925 – Tony Benn, English pilot and politician, Secretary of State for Industry (d. 2014)
 * 1926 – Alex Grammas, American baseball player, manager, and coach (d. 2019)
 * 1926  – Gus Grissom, American colonel, pilot, and astronaut (d. 1967)
 * 1927  – Wesley A. Brown, American general and engineer (d. 2012)
 * 1928 – Don Gibson, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 2003)
 * 1928  – Emmett Johns, Canadian priest, founded Dans la Rue (d. 2018)
 * 1928  – Earl Lloyd, American basketball player and coach (d. 2015)
 * 1928  – Jennifer Paterson, English chef and television personality (d. 1999)
 * 1929 – Fazlur Rahman Khan, Bangladeshi engineer and architect, co-designed the Willis Tower and John Hancock Center (d. 1982)
 * 1929  – Poul Schlüter, Danish lawyer and politician, 37th Prime Minister of Denmark (d. 2021)
 * 1930 – Lawton Chiles, American soldier, lawyer, and politician, 41st Governor of Florida (d. 1998)
 * 1930  – Helmut Kohl, German politician, Chancellor of Germany (d. 2017)
 * 1930  – Mario Benjamín Menéndez, Argentinian general and politician (d. 2015)
 * 1930  – Wally Moon, American baseball player and coach (d. 2018)
 * 1931 – William Bast, American screenwriter and author (d. 2015)
 * 1933 – Bob Dornan, American politician
 * 1933  – Rod Funseth, American golfer (d. 1985)
 * 1934 – Pamela Allen, New Zealand children's writer and illustrator
 * 1934  – Jane Goodall, English primatologist and anthropologist
 * 1934  – Jim Parker, American football player (d. 2005)
 * 1935 – Harold Kushner, American rabbi and author (d. 2023)
 * 1936 – Jimmy McGriff, American organist and bandleader (d. 2008)
 * 1936  – Harold Vick, American saxophonist and flute player (d. 1987)
 * 1938 – Jeff Barry, American singer-songwriter, and producer
 * 1938  – Phil Rodgers, American golfer (d. 2018)
 * 1939 – François de Roubaix, French composer (d. 1975)
 * 1939  – Hawk Taylor, American baseball player and coach (d. 2012)
 * 1939  – Paul Craig Roberts, American economist and politician
 * 1941 – Jan Berry, American singer-songwriter (d. 2004)
 * 1941  – Philippé Wynne, American soul singer (d. 1984)
 * 1942 – Marsha Mason, American actress
 * 1942  – Wayne Newton, American singer
 * 1942  – Billy Joe Royal, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 2015)
 * 1943 – Mario Lavista, Mexican composer (d. 2021)
 * 1943  – Jonathan Lynn, English actor, director, and screenwriter
 * 1943  – Richard Manuel, Canadian singer-songwriter and pianist (d. 1986)
 * 1943  – Hikaru Saeki, Japanese admiral, the first female star officer of the Japan Self-Defense Forces
 * 1944 – Peter Colman, Australian biologist and academic
 * 1944  – Tony Orlando, American singer
 * 1945 – Doon Arbus, American author and journalist
 * 1945  – Bernie Parent, Canadian ice hockey player and coach
 * 1945  – Catherine Spaak, French actress (d. 2022)
 * 1946 – Nicholas Jones, English actor
 * 1946  – Dee Murray, English bass player (d. 1992)
 * 1946  – Hanna Suchocka, Polish politician, Prime Minister of Poland
 * 1947 – Anders Eliasson, Swedish composer (d. 2013)
 * 1948 – Arlette Cousture, Canadian author and screenwriter
 * 1948  – Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, Dutch academic, politician, and diplomat, 11th Secretary General of NATO
 * 1948  – Hans-Georg Schwarzenbeck, German footballer
 * 1948  – Carlos Salinas de Gortari, Mexican economist and politician, 53rd President of Mexico
 * 1949 – Lyle Alzado, American football player and actor (d. 1992)
 * 1949  – A. C. Grayling, English philosopher and academic
 * 1949  – Richard Thompson, English singer-songwriter and guitarist
 * 1950 – Indrajit Coomaraswamy, Sri Lankan cricketer and economist
 * 1951 – Brendan Barber, English trade union leader
 * 1951  – Annette Dolphin, British academician and educator
 * 1951  – Mitch Woods, American singer-songwriter and pianist
 * 1952 – Mike Moore, American lawyer and politician
 * 1953 – Sandra Boynton, American author and illustrator
 * 1953  – Wakanohana Kanji II, Japanese sumo wrestler, the 56th Yokozuna (d. 2022)
 * 1953  – James Smith, American boxer
 * 1954 – Elisabetta Brusa, Italian composer
 * 1954  – K. Krishnasamy, Indian physician and politician
 * 1956 – Kalle Kulbok, Estonian politician
 * 1956  – Boris Miljković, Serbian director and producer
 * 1956  – Miguel Bosé, Spanish musician and actor
 * 1956  – Ray Combs, American game show host (d. 1996)
 * 1958 – Alec Baldwin, American actor, comedian, producer and television host
 * 1958  – Adam Gussow, American scholar, musician, and memoirist
 * 1958  – Francesca Woodman, American photographer (d. 1981)
 * 1959 – David Hyde Pierce, American actor and activist
 * 1960 – Arjen Anthony Lucassen, Dutch singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer
 * 1961 – Tim Crews, American baseball player (d. 1993)
 * 1961  – Eddie Murphy, American actor and comedian
 * 1962 – Dave Miley, American baseball player and manager
 * 1962  – Mike Ness, American singer-songwriter and guitarist
 * 1962  – Jaya Prada, Indian actress and politician
 * 1963 – Les Davidson, Australian rugby league player
 * 1963  – Ricky Nixon, Australian footballer and manager
 * 1963  – Criss Oliva, American guitarist and songwriter (d. 1993)
 * 1964 – Marco Ballotta, Italian footballer and manager
 * 1964  – Nigel Farage, English politician
 * 1964  – Claire Perry, English banker and politician
 * 1964  – Bjarne Riis, Danish cyclist and manager
 * 1964  – Andy Robinson, English rugby player and coach
 * 1964  – Jay Weatherill, Australian politician, 45th Premier of South Australia
 * 1965 – Nazia Hassan, Pakistani pop singer-songwriter, lawyer and social activist (d. 2000)
 * 1966 – John de Vries, Australian race car driver
 * 1967 – Cat Cora, American chef and author
 * 1967  – Pervis Ellison, American basketball player
 * 1967  – Brent Gilchrist, Canadian ice hockey player
 * 1967  – Cristi Puiu, Romanian director and screenwriter
 * 1967  – Mark Skaife, Australian race car driver and sportscaster
 * 1968 – Sebastian Bach, Bahamian-Canadian singer-songwriter and actor
 * 1968  – Charlotte Coleman, English actress (d. 2001)
 * 1968  – Jamie Hewlett, English director and performer
 * 1968  – Tomoaki Kanemoto, Japanese baseball player
 * 1969 – Rodney Hampton, American football player
 * 1969  – Peter Matera, Australian footballer and coach
 * 1969  – Ben Mendelsohn, Australian actor
 * 1969  – Lance Storm, Canadian wrestler and trainer
 * 1971 – Vitālijs Astafjevs, Latvian footballer and manager
 * 1971  – Emmanuel Collard, French race car driver
 * 1971  – Picabo Street, American skier
 * 1972 – Jennie Garth, American actress and director
 * 1972  – Catherine McCormack, English actress
 * 1972  – Sandrine Testud, French tennis player
 * 1973 – Nilesh Kulkarni, Indian cricketer
 * 1973  – Adam Scott, American actor
 * 1974 – Marcus Brown, American basketball player
 * 1974  – Lee Williams, Welsh model and actor
 * 1975 – Shawn Bates, American ice hockey player
 * 1975  – Michael Olowokandi, Nigerian-American basketball player
 * 1975  – Aries Spears, American comedian and actor
 * 1975  – Yoshinobu Takahashi, Japanese baseball player
 * 1975  – Koji Uehara, Japanese baseball player
 * 1976 – Nicolas Escudé, French tennis player
 * 1978 – Matthew Goode, English actor
 * 1978  – Tommy Haas, German-American tennis player
 * 1978  – John Smit, South African rugby player
 * 1979 – Simon Black, Australian footballer and coach
 * 1980 – Andrei Lodis, Belarusian footballer
 * 1980  – Megan Rohrer, American pastor and transgender activist
 * 1981 – Aaron Bertram, American trumpet player
 * 1981  – DeShawn Stevenson, American basketball player
 * 1982 – Jared Allen, American football player
 * 1982  – Iain Fyfe, Australian footballer
 * 1982  – Cobie Smulders, Canadian actress
 * 1983 – Ben Foster, English footballer
 * 1983  – Stephen Weiss, Canadian ice hockey player
 * 1984 – Jonathan Blondel, Belgian footballer
 * 1984  – Maxi López, Argentinian footballer
 * 1985 – Jari-Matti Latvala, Finnish race car driver
 * 1985  – Leona Lewis, English singer-songwriter and producer
 * 1986 – Amanda Bynes, American actress
 * 1986  – Stephanie Cox, American soccer player
 * 1986  – Annalisa Cucinotta, Italian cyclist
 * 1986  – Sergio Sánchez Ortega, Spanish footballer
 * 1987 – Rachel Bloom, American actress, writer, and producer
 * 1987  – Jay Bruce, American baseball player
 * 1987  – Yileen Gordon, Australian rugby league player
 * 1987  – Jason Kipnis, American baseball player
 * 1987  – Martyn Rooney, English sprinter
 * 1987  – Julie Sokolow, American singer-songwriter and guitarist
 * 1987  – Yuval Spungin, Israeli footballer
 * 1988 – Kam Chancellor, American football player
 * 1988  – Brandon Graham, American football player
 * 1988  – Peter Hartley, English footballer
 * 1988  – Tim Krul, Dutch footballer
 * 1989 – Romain Alessandrini, French footballer
 * 1989  – Israel Folau, Australian rugby player and footballer
 * 1989  – Joel Romelo, Australian rugby league player
 * 1989  – Thisara Perera, Sri Lankan cricketer
 * 1990 – Karim Ansarifard, Iranian footballer
 * 1990  – Madison Brengle, American tennis player
 * 1990  – Sotiris Ninis, Greek footballer
 * 1990  – Natasha Negovanlis, Canadian actress and singer
 * 1991 – Hayley Kiyoko, American actress and singer
 * 1992 – Simone Benedetti, Italian footballer
 * 1992  – Yuliya Yefimova, Russian swimmer
 * 1993 – Pape Moussa Konaté, Senegalese footballer
 * 1994 – Kodi Nikorima, New Zealand rugby league player
 * 1994  – Dylann Roof, American mass murderer
 * 1996 – Mayo Hibi, Japanese tennis player
 * 1997 – Gabriel Jesus, Brazilian footballer
 * 1998 – Paris Jackson, American actress, model and singer
 * 1999 – Chanel Harris-Tavita, New Zealand-Samoan rugby league player

Pre-1600

 * 963 – William III, Duke of Aquitaine (b. 915)
 * 1153 – al-Adil ibn al-Sallar, vizier of the Fatimid Caliphate
 * 1171 – Philip of Milly, seventh Grand Master of the Knights Templar (b. c. 1120)
 * 1203 – Arthur I, Duke of Brittany (b. 1187)
 * 1253 – Saint Richard of Chichester
 * 1287 – Pope Honorius IV (b. 1210)
 * 1325 – Nizamuddin Auliya, Sufi saint (b. 1238)
 * 1350 – Odo IV, Duke of Burgundy (b. 1295)
 * 1538 – Elizabeth Boleyn, Countess of Wiltshire (b. 1480)
 * 1545 – Antonio de Guevara, Spanish chronicler and moralist (b. 1481)

1601–1900

 * 1606 – Charles Blount, 8th Baron Mountjoy, English general and politician, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland (b. 1563)
 * 1630 – Christopher Villiers, 1st Earl of Anglesey, English noble (b. c.  1593)
 * 1637 – Joseph Yuspa Nördlinger Hahn, German rabbi
 * 1680 – Chatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, Indian emperor, founded the Maratha Empire (b. 1630)
 * 1682 – Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, Spanish painter and educator (b. 1618)
 * 1691 – Jean Petitot, French-Swiss painter (b. 1608)
 * 1695 – Melchior d'Hondecoeter, Dutch painter (b. 1636)
 * 1717 – Jacques Ozanam, French mathematician and academic (b. 1640)
 * 1728 – James Anderson, Scottish lawyer and historian (b. 1662)
 * 1792 – George Pocock, English admiral (b. 1706)
 * 1804 – Jędrzej Kitowicz, Polish priest, historian, and author (b. 1727)
 * 1826 – Reginald Heber, English priest (b. 1783)
 * 1827 – Ernst Chladni, German physicist and academic (b. 1756)
 * 1838 – François Carlo Antommarchi, French physician and author (b. 1780)
 * 1844 – Edward Bigge, English cleric, 1st Archdeacon of Lindisfarne (b. 1807)
 * 1846 – William Braine, English soldier and explorer (b. 1814)
 * 1849 – Juliusz Słowacki, Polish-French poet and playwright (b. 1809)
 * 1868 – Franz Berwald, Swedish composer and surgeon (b. 1796)
 * 1880 – Felicita Vestvali, German actress and opera singer (b. 1831)
 * 1882 – Jesse James, American criminal and outlaw (b. 1847)
 * 1897 – Johannes Brahms, German pianist and composer (b. 1833)

1901–present

 * 1901 – Richard D'Oyly Carte, English composer and talent agent (b. 1844)
 * 1902 – Esther Hobart Morris, American lawyer and judge (b. 1814)
 * 1930 – Emma Albani, Canadian-English operatic soprano (b. 1847)
 * 1936 – Richard Hauptmann, German-American murderer (b. 1899)
 * 1941 – Tachiyama Mineemon, Japanese sumo wrestler, the 22nd Yokozuna (b. 1877)
 * 1941  – Pál Teleki, Hungarian academic and politician, 22nd Prime Minister of Hungary (b. 1879)
 * 1943 – Conrad Veidt, German actor, director, and producer (b. 1893)
 * 1946 – Masaharu Homma, Japanese general (b. 1887)
 * 1950 – Kurt Weill, German-American composer and pianist (b. 1900)
 * 1950  – Carter G. Woodson, American historian, author, and journalist, founded Black History Month (b. 1875)
 * 1951 – Henrik Visnapuu, Estonian poet and playwright (b. 1890)
 * 1952 – Miina Sillanpää, Finnish minister and politician (b. 1866)
 * 1957 – Ned Sparks, Canadian-American actor (b. 1883)
 * 1958 – Jaan Kärner, Estonian poet and author (b. 1891)
 * 1962 – Manolis Kalomiris, Greek composer and educator (b. 1883)
 * 1970 – Avigdor Hameiri, Israeli author (b. 1890)
 * 1971 – Joseph Valachi, American gangster (b. 1904)
 * 1972 – Ferde Grofé, American pianist and composer (b. 1892)
 * 1975 – Mary Ure, Scottish-English actress (b. 1933)
 * 1976 – David M. Dennison, American physicist and academic (b. 1900)
 * 1976  – Claude-Henri Grignon, Canadian journalist and politician (b. 1894)
 * 1978 – Ray Noble, English bandleader, composer, and actor (b. 1903)
 * 1978  – Winston Sharples, American composer (b. 1909)
 * 1981 – Juan Trippe, American businessman, founded Pan American World Airways (b. 1899)
 * 1982 – Warren Oates, American actor (b. 1928)
 * 1983 – Jimmy Bloomfield, English footballer and manager (b. 1934)
 * 1986 – Peter Pears, English tenor and educator (b. 1910)
 * 1987 – Tom Sestak, American football player (b. 1936)
 * 1988 – Milton Caniff, American cartoonist (b. 1907)
 * 1990 – Sarah Vaughan, American singer (b. 1924)
 * 1991 – Charles Goren, American bridge player and author (b. 1901)
 * 1991  – Graham Greene, English novelist, playwright, and critic (b. 1904)
 * 1993 – Pinky Lee, American television host (b. 1907)
 * 1994 – Frank Wells, American businessman (b. 1932)
 * 1995 – Alfred J. Billes, Canadian businessman, co-founded Canadian Tire (b. 1902)
 * 1996 – Ron Brown, American captain and politician, 30th United States Secretary of Commerce (b. 1941)
 * 1997 – John Ugelstad, Norwegian chemical engineer and inventor (b. 1921)
 * 1998 – Mary Cartwright, English mathematician and academic (b. 1900)
 * 1999 – Lionel Bart, English composer (b. 1930)
 * 1999  – Geoffrey Walsh, Canadian general (b. 1909)
 * 2000 – Terence McKenna, American botanist and philosopher (b. 1946)
 * 2000  – Dina Abramowicz, Librarian and YIVO and Yiddish language expert (b. 1909)
 * 2005 – François Gérin, Canadian lawyer and politician (b. 1944)
 * 2007 – Nina Wang, Chinese businesswoman (b. 1937)
 * 2008 – Hrvoje Ćustić, Croatian footballer (b. 1983)
 * 2012 – Mingote, Spanish cartoonist and journalist (b. 1919)
 * 2012  – Richard Descoings, French civil servant (b. 1958)
 * 2012  – Govind Narain, Indian politician, 8th Governor of Karnataka (b. 1917)
 * 2012  – Chief Jay Strongbow, American wrestler (b. 1928)
 * 2012  – José María Zárraga, Spanish footballer and manager (b. 1930)
 * 2013 – Mariví Bilbao, Spanish actress (b. 1930)
 * 2013  – Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, German-American author and screenwriter (b. 1927)
 * 2014 – Régine Deforges, French author, playwright, and director (b. 1935)
 * 2014  – Fred Kida, American illustrator (b. 1920)
 * 2014  – Prince Michael of Prussia (b. 1940)
 * 2014  – Jovan Pavlović, Serbian metropolitan (b. 1936)
 * 2014  – Arthur "Guitar Boogie" Smith, American guitarist, fiddler, and composer (b. 1921)
 * 2015 – Sarah Brady, American activist and author (b. 1942)
 * 2015  – Bob Burns, American drummer and songwriter (b. 1950)
 * 2015  – Shmuel Wosner, Austrian-Israeli rabbi and author  (b. 1913)
 * 2016 – Cesare Maldini, Italian footballer and manager (b. 1932)
 * 2016  – Joe Medicine Crow, American anthropologist, historian, and author (b. 1913)
 * 2016  – Koji Wada, Japanese singer and songwriter (b. 1974)
 * 2017 – Kishori Amonkar, Indian classical vocalist (b. 1931)
 * 2021 – Stan Stephens, Canadian-American politician, 20th Governor of Montana (b. 1929)
 * 2022 – June Brown, English actress (b. 1927)
 * 2024 – Bob Lanigan, Australian rugby league player (b. 1942)
 * 2024  – Gaetano Pesce, Italian architect and designer (b. 1939)

Holidays and observances

 * Christian feast day:
 * Agape, Chionia, and Irene
 * Burgundofara
 * Luigi Scrosoppi
 * Richard of Chichester
 * April 3 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)

title: April 3


text:
Alexis Korner

Alexis Andrew Nicholas Koerner (19 April 1928 – 1 January 1984), known professionally as Alexis Korner, was a British blues musician and radio broadcaster, who has sometimes been referred to as "a founding father of British blues". A major influence on the sound of the British music scene in the 1960s, he was instrumental in the formation of several notable British bands including The Rolling Stones and Free. Korner was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the musical influence category in 2024.

Early career
Alexis Andrew Nicholas Koerner was born on 19 April 1928 in Paris, France, to an Austrian Jewish father and a mother of Greek, Turkish and Austrian descent. He spent his childhood in France, Switzerland and North Africa, and arrived in London in 1940 after the start of the Second World War. One memory of his youth was listening to a record by black pianist Jimmy Yancey during a German air raid. Korner said, "From then on all I wanted to do was play the blues."

After the war, Korner played piano and guitar (his first guitar was built by friend and author Sydney Hopkins, who wrote Mister God, This Is Anna) and in 1949 joined Chris Barber's Jazz Band where he met blues harmonica player Cyril Davies. They started playing together as a duo, started the influential London Blues and Barrelhouse Club in 1955 and made their first record together in 1957.

Korner made his first official record on Decca Records DFE 6286 in the company of Ken Colyer's Skiffle Group. His talent extended to playing mandolin on one of the tracks of this British EP, recorded in London on 28 July 1955. Korner encouraged many American blues artists, previously virtually unknown in Britain, to perform at the London Blues and Barrelhouse Club, which he established with Davies at the Round House pub in Soho.

The 1960s
In 1961, Korner and Davies formed Blues Incorporated, initially a loose-knit group of musicians with a shared love of electric blues and R&B music. The group included, at various times, Charlie Watts, Jack Bruce, Ginger Baker, Long John Baldry, Graham Bond, Danny Thompson and Dick Heckstall-Smith. It also attracted a wider crowd of mostly younger fans, some of whom occasionally performed with the group, including Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Brian Jones, Geoff Bradford, Rod Stewart, John Mayall, and Jimmy Page.

Although Cyril Davies left the group in late 1962, Blues Incorporated continued to record, with Korner at the helm, until 1966. However, by that time its originally stellar line-up (and crowd of followers) had mostly left to start their own bands. While his one-time acolytes, the Rolling Stones and Cream, made the front pages of music magazines all over the world, Korner was relegated to the role of 'elder statesman'.

In 1966, Korner formed the trio Free At Last with Hughie Flint and Binky McKenzie. Flint later recalled "I played with Alexis, right after leaving The Bluesbreakers, in a trio, which Alexis named Free At Last, a sort of mini and slightly restricted version of Blues Incorporated. Playing with Alexis was very loose. We would play anything from Percy Mayfield's ‘River's Invitation' to Charles Mingus' ‘Better Get It In Your Soul' – with lots of freaky guitar and bass solos. Alexis, like John Mayall had the most eclectic taste in music, very knowledgeable, and generous, and I am indebted to both of them for my wide approach to music".

Although Free At Last was short-lived, Korner ensured its name lived on in part by christening another young group of aspiring musicians, Free. Korner was instrumental in the formation of the band in April 1968, and continued to mentor them until they secured a deal with Island Records.

Although he himself was a blues purist, Korner criticised better-known British blues musicians during the blues boom of the late 1960s for their blind adherence to Chicago blues, as if the music came in no other form. He liked to surround himself with jazz musicians and often performed with a horn section drawn from a pool that included, among others, saxophone players Art Themen, Mel Collins, Dick Heckstall-Smith, and Lol Coxhill.

While touring Scandinavia he formed the band New Church with guitarist and singer Peter Thorup. They subsequently were one of the support bands at the Rolling Stones Free Concert in Hyde Park, London, on 5 July 1969. Jimmy Page reportedly found out about a new singer, Robert Plant, who had been jamming with Korner, who wondered why Plant had not yet been discovered. Plant and Korner were recording an album with Plant on vocals until Page had asked him to join "the New Yardbirds", a.k.a. Led Zeppelin. Only two songs are in circulation from these recordings: "Steal Away" and "Operator". Korner gave one of his last radio interviews to BBC Midlands on the Record Collectors Show with Mike Adams and Chris Savory.

Broadcasting
In the 1960s Korner began a media career, working initially as a showbusiness interviewer and then on ITV's Five O'Clock Club, a children's TV show. Korner also wrote about blues for the music papers, and continued to maintain his own career as a blues artist, especially in Europe. Korner's main career in the 1970s was in broadcasting. In 1973, he presented a six-part documentary on BBC Radio 1, The Rolling Stones Story, and in 1977 he established a Sunday-night show on Radio 1, Alexis Korner's Blues and Soul Show, which ran until 1981. He also used his gravelly voice to great effect as an advertising voice-over artist.

CCS period
In 1970, Korner and Thorup formed a big-band ensemble, CCS – short for "The Collective Consciousness Society" – which had several hit singles produced by Mickie Most, including a version of Led Zeppelin's "Whole Lotta Love", which was used as the theme for BBC's Top of the Pops between 1970 and 1981. Another instrumental called "Brother" was used as the theme to the BBC Radio 1 Top 20/40 when Tom Browne/Simon Bates presented the programme in the 1970s. It was also used in the 1990s on Radio Luxembourg for the Top 20 Singles chart. This was the period of Korner's greatest commercial success in the UK. In 1973, he provided a voice part for the Hot Chocolate single release Brother Louie.

1970s to 1984
In 1973, he and Peter Thorup formed another group, Snape, with Boz Burrell, Mel Collins, and Ian Wallace, who were previously together in King Crimson. Korner also played on B.B. King's In London album, and cut his own, similar "supersession" album; Get Off My Cloud, with Keith Richards, Steve Marriott, Peter Frampton, Nicky Hopkins and members of Joe Cocker's Grease Band. In the mid-1970s, while touring Germany, Korner established an intensive working relationship with bassist Colin Hodgkinson who played for the support act Back Door. They would continue to collaborate right up until Korner's death.

In 1978, for Korner's 50th birthday, an all-star concert was held featuring many of his above-mentioned friends, as well as Eric Clapton, Paul Jones, Chris Farlowe, Zoot Money and others, which was later released as The Party Album, and as a video.

In 1981, Korner joined another "supergroup", Rocket 88, a project led by Ian Stewart based on boogie-woogie keyboard players, which featured a rhythm section comprising Jack Bruce and Charlie Watts, among others, as well as a horn section. They toured Europe and released an album on Atlantic Records. He played in Italy with Paul Jones and the Blues Society of Italian bluesman Guido Toffoletti.

Family life and death
In 1950, Korner married Roberta Melville (died 2021), daughter of art critic Robert Melville. He had a daughter, singer Sappho Gillett Korner (died 2006), and two sons, guitarist Nicholas 'Nico' Korner (died 1989) and sound engineer Damian Korner (died 2008).

Alexis Korner died in London from lung cancer on 1 January 1984, at the age of 55.

Korner was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2024 in the musical influence category.

Album discography (selected UK and other releases)

 * Blues from the Roundhouse 10-inch (1957) – Alexis Korner's Breakdown Group
 * R&B from the Marquee (1962) – Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated
 * Red Hot from Alex (1964) – Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated
 * At the Cavern (1964) – Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated
 * Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated (1965) – Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated
 * Sky High (1966) – Alexis Korner Blues Incorporated
 * I Wonder Who (1967)
 * Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated (re-issue of Sky High) – Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated
 * A New Generation of Blues (1968)
 * Both Sides (1970) – New Church
 * CCS 1st (1970) – CCS
 * Alexis Korner (1971)
 * Bootleg Him! (1972)
 * CCS 2nd (1972) – CCS
 * Accidentally Borne in New Orleans (1972) – with Peter Thorup; Snape
 * Live on Tour in Germany (1973) – with Peter Thorup; Snape
 * The Best Band in the Land (1973) – CCS
 * Alexis Korner (1974)
 * Get Off My Cloud (1975)
 * The Lost Album (1977)
 * Just Easy (1978)
 * The Party Album (1979) – Alexis Korner and Friends
 * Me (1980)
 * Rocket 88 (1981) – Rocket 88
 * Juvenile Delinquent (1984)
 * Testament (1985) – with Colin Hodgkinson
 * Live in Paris (1988) – with Colin Hodgkinson

title: Alexis Korner