Famous People Born In 1800

Charles Goodyear was an American manufacturing engineer and self-taught chemist who developed vulcanized rubber. He invented the chemical process to manufacture pliable, moldable, and waterproof rubber which revolutionized the automobile industry. In 1976, Charles Goodyear was inducted posthumously into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

Henry Fox Talbot was an English photography pioneer, inventor, and scientist. He is best remembered for inventing the calotype and salted paper processes that served as predecessors to photographic processes of the 20th century. He is also credited with inventing the photoglyphic engraving process. Henry Fox Talbot also played a major role in the progression of photography as an art.

Helmuth von Moltke the Elder was a Prussian field marshal who served as the chief of staff in the Royal Prussian Army for 30 years. Moltke, who commanded troops during Austro-Prussian War, Second Schleswig War, and the Franco-Prussian War, is credited with creating a new method of directing armies. He is also credited with pioneering the military usage of railways. 

John Edward Gray was a British zoologist best remembered for his association with the British Museum in London, where he was the keeper of zoology from 1840 to 1874. John Edward Gray is also remembered for publishing several records of the museum collections that included descriptions of new species.

Slovenia’s national poet, France Prešeren was one of the pioneers of Romanticism in Europe. He also penned the first ballad and epic of his country. Though he initially studied law, he later soared to fame with works such as Sonetni venec and brought in elements of ghazal and pattern poetry to Slovenian literature.

A prominent Whig and essayist Thomas Babington Macaulay is best remembered for his 5-volume History of England. Though a qualified lawyer, he never took it up as a career. As part of his administrative work in India later, he introduced English as the chief medium of instruction in schools.

Juan José Flores was a Venezuelan-born military general who served as the president of the new Republic of Ecuador on three non-consecutive terms. Enlisted as a private in the Spanish Royalist army at the age of 15, he grew up to be a military man with a commanding presence. He was an intelligent man and an eloquent orator. 

Friedrich Wöhler was a German chemist best remembered for his contribution to the field of inorganic chemistry. He was the first person to isolate the chemical elements yttrium and beryllium in pure metallic form. Friedrich Wöhler was also the first person to prepare many inorganic compounds such as silicon nitride and silane.

Lawyer and social reformer Edwin Chadwick played a significant role in the passage of the 1848 Public Health Act. He also reformed the Poor Laws, bringing about major developments in urban sanitization. He was eventually knighted for his achievements. His writings include an iconic report on the “Labouring Population of Great Britain.”

Jean-Baptiste Dumas was a 19th-century French chemist. He is best remembered for his works on organic analysis and synthesis. He is also credited with developing a method for the analysis of nitrogen in compounds. He was a member of the French Academy of Sciences and one of the founders of the École centrale des arts et manufactures. 

Though born into a noble family, Mihály Vörösmarty had to face poverty from an early age and also sustained by tutoring. A trained lawyer, he later devoted himself to reforming Hungarian literature by removing all its classical influences. The play Csongor és Tünde remains one of his best-known works.

George Villiers, 4th Earl of Clarendon had earned the nickname The Great Lord Clarendon. A Liberal Party politician, he had been the foreign secretary of Britain under 4 prime ministers. He was also a significant member of the Congress of Paris, which put an end to the Crimean War.

A Benedictine priest, Anyos Jedlik also taught physics and is often termed the unknown inventor of the first electric car, though Carl Benz later patented the motorcar for producing the first automobile series. His invention of the dynamo, which he didn’t speak of for years, was later credited to Werner von Siemens.

German-American jurist Francis Lieber is best remembered for establishing the laws of war. His Lieber Code, penned during the American Civil War, later served as the basis for the Geneva Conventions. He also penned Encyclopedia Americana and worked as a professor of history and economics in the US.

Austrian musicologist, composer, writer, botanist and publisher Ludwig von Köchel is best-known for creating the Köchel catalogue, a chronological and thematic register of works of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Köchel also arranged works of Mozart into 24 categories and Breitkopf & Härtel used this while publishing the first complete edition of Mozart's works titled Alte Mozart-Ausgabe.

Italian operatic baritone Antonio Tamburini was born to a bandmaster father and was trained in music since childhood. He was 18 when he made his debut with La contessa di colle erbose. After gaining fame with his performances in Italy and Britain, he spent the final years of his career in Russia.

Remembered as Belgium’s foremost liberal leader, Charles Latour Rogier began his career at the bar. When the Belgium Revolution broke out, he left his practice to lead an armed militia in support of the revolution, eventually emerging as leader of the movement. Later he became the Governor of Antwerp, thereafter, he held several ministerial posts before being elected the Prime Minister.

Félix Archimède Pouchet, the father of French naturalist Georges Pouchet, is remembered for his belief in the spontaneous generation of life from non-living matter, a theory that was discarded after Louis Pasteur proved that microorganisms existed in the air. A professor and a naturalist, he penned the iconic work Hétérogénie.

Charles Tilstone Beke was an English geographer, traveler, and Biblical critic. He is best remembered for his book Origines Biblicae or Researches in Primeval History, which attempts to recreate mankind's early history with the help of geological data. Although the book did not impress religious leaders and supporters of the Book of Genesis, Beke's work was appreciated by many scholars.

Though Portuguese poet António Feliciano de Castilho lost his eyesight at age 6, that never stopped him from writing, and he later emerged as a classical scholar. He was one of the major figures of the Portuguese Romantic movement and was known for his works such as Quadros Históricos de Portugal.