Famous People Born In 1805

Mary Seacole was a British-Jamaican nurse, businesswoman, and healer. She played a major role during the Crimean War, providing aid for wounded servicemen and nursing them back to health. In 1991, Seacole was posthumously honored with the Jamaican Order of Merit. In 2004, she was named the greatest black Briton for her contribution during the war.

William Lloyd Garrison was an American journalist, abolitionist, social reformer, and suffragist. He is best remembered for founding The Liberator, an anti-slavery newspaper, which was published from 1831 to 1865. He also co-founded the American Anti-Slavery Society which helped fight slavery in the United States. In the 1870s, William Lloyd Garrison was an important figure in the women's suffrage movement.

French diplomat and political scientist Alexis de Tocqueville is best remembered for his written works The Old Regime and the Revolution and Democracy in America. He was part of French politics, primarily during the July Monarchy and the Second Republic. He had been the minister of foreign affairs briefly.

Giuseppe Mazzini was an Italian journalist, politician, and activist. He played a major role in the Italian revolutionary movement and in the unification of Italy. His efforts gave rise to an independent and unified Italy, which replaced many separate states that were dominated by foreign powers. Mazzini is widely regarded as the most influential European revolutionary.

George Muller was a Christian evangelist. He was one of the founders of the Plymouth Brethren movement and the director of the Ashley Down orphanage in Bristol, England. He is credited to have cared for over 10,000 orphans during his lifetime. He also opened numerous schools. Following his death, his work was continued by The George Müller Foundation. 

Legendary Apache leader Cochise  led the Native Americans against the Whites, thwarting colonial intrusion in the U.S. Southwest, in the 1860s, especially in the Battle of Apache Pass. He has been immortalized through films such as Broken Arrow, while Cochise County in Arizona has been named after him.

Son of a Dublin solicitor, Sir William Rowan Hamilton was raised and educated by his priest uncle from age 3. Initially a master of languages such as Latin, Greek, and Persian, Hamilton began deviating to math at 16. He is remembered for his contribution to optics, Hamiltonian mechanics, and algebra.

Ferdinand de Lesseps was a French diplomat who is credited with forming the Suez Canal Company. The construction of the Suez Canal, which joined the Red Sea and the Mediterranean Sea, inspired the 1938 romantic drama film Suez where Lesseps was played by Tyrone Power. Lesseps has been portrayed by other actors in films and TV mini-series as well.

Angelina Grimke was an American political activist, abolitionist, women's rights advocate, and promoter of the women's suffrage movement. She is best remembered for the anti-slavery speech which she gave outside Pennsylvania Hall in May 1838. One of her letters regarding anti-slavery was published by William Lloyd Garrison in his newspaper The Liberator in 1835.

Religious leader Joseph Smith Jr. is known as the founder of the Mormonism and the Latter Day Saint movement. He also published the Book of Mormon. He established his communities in Ohio and Missouri and eventually founded the city Nauvoo in Illinois, which became the center of his spiritual activities.

German mathematician Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet is remembered for his invaluable contribution to number theory. He pioneered the concept of a function, expressed through the equation y = f (x). Though his parents wanted him to become a merchant, his mastery of math made them change their minds.

Born to a hat manufacturer, James Wilson initially wished to study law but later joined his father’s business. Over the years, he established what is now the Standard Chartered Bank. Sent to Kolkata by Queen Victoria to introduce tax reforms, he introduced paper currency in the country, but died of dysentery.

Louis Auguste Blanqui was a French socialist who gave rise to Blanquism, a form of radicalism. While he initially studied both medicine and law, he later stepped into politics. He had been imprisoned for more than three decades and died of a stroke after a political speech at age 75.

An explorer at heart, Alexander Burnes joined the East India Company army at 16. Proficient in languages such as Hindi and Urdu, he later explored places such as the modern-day Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Turkmenistan, and penned the autobiography Travels into Bokhara. He also earned the knighthood for his explorations.

Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin was a French watchmaker turned magician and illusionist. The son of a watchmaker, he followed in his father’s footsteps and had a successful career in this field. He ventured into magic by chance and ended up revolutionizing the field. He is today widely regarded as the father of the modern style of conjuring. 

Born to a farmer in Germany’s Black Forest, Franz Xaver Winterhalter was initially trained as a lithographer. The nineteenth-century German painter later gained fame for his paintings and portraits of Europe’s royalty and aristocracy. Among his subjects were Queen Victoria of England and Elizabeth of Austria.

Spanish baritone singer and voice educator Manuel García was the son of legendary opera singer Manuel del Popolo Vicente García. He started his career with his father’s production of Rossini’s The Barber of Seville. He invented the laryngoscope and penned the classic Complete Treatise on the Art of Singing.

Initially a surveyor, Thomas Brassey later built some of the most well-known railway lines of the world. The British contractor contributed to the Grand Junction Railway, Canada’s Grand Trunk Railway, and the Crimean Railway. He later also became a Liberal MP and a governor of Victoria, Australia.

Although Johann von Lamont is best known for discovering that the Earth’s magnetic field fluctuates with a period of around 10 years, his contributions towards astronomy is not limited to that. Known to catalogue more than 34,000 stars, he also determined the mass of Uranus, orbits of Saturn’s satellites Enceladus and Tethys and periods of Uranus’ satellites, Ariel and Titan.

Scottish chemist Thomas Graham was a pioneer of colloid chemistry. His research on the diffusion of gases led to the Graham's Law. He is also considered to be the inventor of dialysis, a method he used to separate colloids from crystalloids, and one which was later modified to assist in kidney-related ailments.

The son of anti-slavery icon William Wilberforce, Anglican priest Samuel Wilberforce served as the bishop of Oxford. He earned the nickname Soapy Sam, probably due to his clean private life or his peculiar manner of hand-washing. A major figure of the Oxford Movement, he opposed Darwin’s theory of evolution.

American academic trauma surgeon Samuel David Gross served as professor of surgery at the University of Louisville and Jefferson Medical College, and as president of the AMA. His best-known work was perhaps the two-volume System of Surgery. He was portrayed in Thomas Eakins’ masterpiece, The Gross Clinic. His bronze-statue made by Alexander Stirling Calder presently finds place at Thomas Jefferson University.