Famous People Born In 1835

Mark Twain, “the father of American literature,” was one of the world’s greatest 19-th century humorists and authors. His novels The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn were drawn from his childhood experiences in Missouri. In his later life, he sunk into bankruptcy and also recovered.

Leopold II of Belgium reigned over Belgium as its second king from 1865 to 1909. He also owned the Independent State of the Congo from 1885 to 1908. Congolese people were subjected to torture and murder under Leopold's administration; the term crimes against humanity was coined by George Washington Williams in 1890 to describe the atrocities of Leopold's administration.

Empress Dowager Cixi was a Chinese regent and empress dowager. From 1861 to 1908, Cixi served as the de facto supreme ruler of the Qing dynasty. She is credited with overseeing a series of moderate reforms called the Tongzhi Restoration, which helped the regime survive for a long period of time. She also supported military and technological reforms.  

Writer, lecturer, suffragist, reformer, feminist, politician and slave-owner Rebecca Latimer Felton was the first woman who served in the United States Senate. The most distinguished woman in Georgia during the Progressive Era, Felton was appointed Senator from Georgia as a mark of respect. With this she became the oldest freshman-senator who entered the Senate and served for just 24 hours.    

Cesare Lombroso was an Italian criminologist, phrenologist, and physician. He founded the Italian School of Positivist Criminology at the end of the 19th century. Initially an army surgeon, he later became a professor of forensic medicine and hygiene. His works drew from the concepts of physiognomy, degeneration theory, and psychiatry. Later in life, be became interested in spirituality.

Henryk Wieniawski was a Polish composer, violinist, and pedagogue. He is often counted among the greatest violinists of all time. He was also one of the most important players in London's Beethoven Quartet Society. Henryk Wieniawski is still revered by violinists all over the world. 

Giovanni Schiaparelli made headlines when he discovered the canals of Mars, suggesting the existence of intelligent life forms on the planet. He also discovered the asteroid named Hesperia and was associated with the Brera Observatory in Milan for more than 40 years. He had also been a senator of Italy.

Cesar Cui was a Russian composer best remembered for his association with a group called The Five, which worked to create a national style of classical music. Also a well-known music critic of his time, Cui worked hard to promote the music of other Russian composers, especially the works of his co-members from The Five.

Adolf von Baeyer was a German chemist who is best known for synthesizing indigo. Interested in science from a young age,  he studied chemistry at the University of Heidelberg, where his mentor was the prominent organic chemist August Kekulé. He went on to have a successful career and received the 1905 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Initially a herbalist’s apprentice, Simon Newcomb later deviated to mathematics and astronomy. Born to a schoolteacher, he had loved math since age 5 but wasn’t formally educated. He later joined Harvard University, taught math at the US Navy, detected locations of celestial bodies, and wrote a science-fiction novel, too.

Pope Pius X was the head of the Catholic Church from 1903 to 1914. He is credited for initiating the preparation of the 1917 Code of Canon Law. He was vehemently opposed to modernism as a pope. He regularly gave homily sermons in the pulpit, a rare practice for popes. He was beatified in 1951 and canonized in 1954.

Giosuè Carducci was an Italian poet, literary critic, teacher, and writer. Widely regarded as the national poet of modern Italy, Carducci was a very influential figure. He became the first Italian to be honored with the prestigious Nobel Prize in Literature in 1906. Carducci was also a translator and is responsible for translating some of Heine and Goethe into Italian.

Born into a samurai family, Matsukata Masayoshi grew up to become the prime minister of Japan. His strategic financial reforms, which included cutting down on government expenditure and establishing the Bank of Japan, helped the country stabilize itself. He had also been the Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal of Japan.

Mirza Ghulam Ahmad was an Indian religious leader. He is credited with founding the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, which is an Islamic revival movement. A prolific author, Ghulam Ahmad wrote over 90 books on various theological, moral, and religious subjects. He continues to be revered as a subordinate prophet by Ahmadi Muslims, which is often debated by mainstream Muslims.

Remembered as the most successful British diplomat to have served in Qing dynasty China, Sir Robert Hart, 1st Baronet played a major role in the expansion of the Maritime Customs Bureau and employed both Chinese and Westerners in it. He was eventually knighted and made a baronet for his services.

Best known for originating the Stefan-Boltzmann law, Josef Stefan was an Austrian physicist, who published nearly eighty scientific papers in his life time. Starting his career as a lecturer in mathematical physics at University of Vienna, he rose to become director of Physical Institute, meanwhile empirically deriving the Stefan-Boltzmann law, thus paving the way for further work on blackbody radiation.

A pioneer of the mathematical method in economics, William Stanley Jevons was the son of an iron merchant and economic enthusiast. Remembered for his studies on marginal utility and supply/demand, he penned the iconic work A General Mathematical Theory of Political Economy and also wrote on Britain’s depleting coal supplies.

Demetrius Vikelas was a Greek writer and businessman. He is best remembered for serving as the International Olympic Committee's (IOC) first president from 1894 to 1896. The Syros Island National Airport and the Sports Center Stadium in Syros are named in his honor.

Eugenio Beltrami was an Italian mathematician, whose work on the differential geometry of curves and surfaces helped to establish the soundness of non-Euclidean geometry. A faculty of University of Bologna, he dealt in wide range of subjects, establishing Beltrami equation, Beltrami identity, Beltrami's theorem, Laplace–Beltrami operator, Beltrami vector field and Beltrami–Klein model, publishing several works including Opere Matematiche.

John Hughlings Jackson was an English neurologist best known for his research on epilepsy. He attended the York Medical and Surgical School and became the house physician to the York Dispensary. He later established his reputation as a neurologist and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.  He was one of the founders of the important journal Brain.