Famous People Born In 1864

Nellie Bly was an American industrialist, journalist, inventor, and charity worker. She is remembered for her circumnavigation of the world in 72 days. She is also known for pioneering a new kind of investigative journalism as she worked undercover from within a mental institution to report on the institution. Nellie Bly’s life and work have inspired several works of art.

Max Weber was a German historian, political economist, jurist, and sociologist. Widely regarded as one of the most influential and important theorists, Weber's ideas had a profound influence on social research and social theory. Although he did not see himself as a sociologist, Weber is often counted among the fathers of sociology alongside Émile Durkheim, Auguste Comte, and Karl Marx.

Richard Georg Strauss was a German conductor, composer, violinist, and pianist. Renowned for his pioneering subtleties of orchestration, Strauss is generally regarded as a modernist, although he was initially considered a conservative, backwards-looking composer. Over the years, his music has influenced other prominent composers like Béla Viktor János Bartók, Karol Maciej Szymanowski, Edward Elgar, and Benjamin Britten.

Remembered for the legendary poems Waltzing Matilda and The Man from Snowy River, Andrew Barton “Banjo” Paterson was an Australian bush poet who depicted rural life through his works. Initially a law clerk and a journalist, he later adopted the pseudonym Banjo, which was his favorite horse’s name.

French sculptor Camille Claudel is also popularly known as legendary sculptor Auguste Rodin’s student, mistress, and muse. Claudel also contributed to many of Rodin’s masterpieces but never got any credit for it. After her relationship with Rodin soured, she became alienated and eventually died in an asylum.

German psychiatrist and neuropathologist Alois Alzheimer is noted for identifying the first published case of presenile dementia, which his colleague and German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin later identified as Alzheimer's disease.  Alois publicly discussed his findings on brain pathology and symptoms of presenile dementia in late-1906 and penned a larger paper giving details of the disease and his findings in 1907.

Roger Casement was an Irish nationalist and diplomat. Also a well-known humanitarian activist, Casement is remembered for the Casement Report, a 1904 document in which he wrote about the abuses in the Congo Free State. His investigations of human rights abuses earned him a knighthood in 1911. However, Casement was stripped of his knighthood after being charged with high treason.

Hermann Minkowski was a mathematician who served as a professor at the University of Göttingen, the University of Königsberg, and the University of Zurich. He is credited with creating and developing the geometry of numbers. He is also credited with using geometrical methods to resolve problems in the theory of relativity, mathematical physics, and number theory.

Miguel de Unamuno was a Spanish essayist, poet, playwright, novelist, and philosopher. His most famous novel was Abel Sánchez: The History of a Passion, a modern retelling of the Biblical Cain and Abel story. He was a significant figure in the Spanish literary and intellectual circles and served as rector of the University of Salamanca. 

Charles Marion Russell was an American artist best remembered for depicting the American Old West. Dubbed the cowboy artist, Russell produced over 2,000 paintings featuring Native Americans, landscapes of the western United States, and cowboys. In 1955, Charles Marion Russell was made a member of the Hall of Great Westerners.

Princess Stéphanie of Belgium became the Crown Princess of Austria, Hungary, and Bohemia after her marriage to Crown Prince Rudolf, the son of Austrian emperor Franz Joseph I. Following the death of her husband and his mistress in a suicide-murder pact, she married a Hungarian nobleman.

French author Maurice Leblanc is best known for creating the character Arsène Lupin, who has been part of 60 of Leblanc’s crime stories and novels. He quit his law studies to become an author. Several of his films have been turned into films. He also earned the Légion d'Honneur.

Walther Nernst was a German chemist best remembered for his work in physical chemistry, thermodynamics, solid state physics, and electrochemistry. He is credited with formulating the Nernst heat theorem, which was in turn used in the formulation of the third law of thermodynamics. Walther Nernst received the prestigious Nobel Prize in Chemistry in the year 1920.

Isabelo de los Reyes, also known as Don Belong, was a prominent Filipino politician and activist who co-founded the independent Philippine church Iglesia Filipina Independiente. A labor leader and author, too, he served as the senator of the Philippines. He also wrote extensively on folklore, religion, and history.

Best remembered for his co-discovery of viruses during his research on the mosaic disease in tobacco, Russian botanist Dmitri Ivanovsky is regarded as one of the pioneers of virology. Interestingly, following his discovery, he didn’t focus on virology much and taught plant anatomy and physiology instead.

Eleuthérios Venizélos was a Greek statesman who played a prominent role in the Greek national liberation movement. He served as the Prime Minister of Greece on eight occasions between 1910 and 1933. As a politician, he contributed immensely to the expansion of Greece. Eleuthérios Venizelos is often called the Maker of Modern Greece due to his influence on the country.

The first Nigerian civil engineer, Herbert Macaulay was a multi-talented man who had been a politician, a musician, and a journalist. Also remembered as the Father of Nigerian Nationalism, he was one of the major figures who opposed British colonialism in Nigeria. He practiced ancient African magic and the occult.

Princess Elisabeth of Hesse and by Rhine was a princess of the House of Hesse-Darmstadt and one of the granddaughters of Queen Victoria. She later married Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich of Russia and became well-known for her philanthropic activities. Following her husband’s murder, she became a nun and established a Moscow-based convent.

Ion Ionel Constantin Brătianu served as Prime Minister of Romania for five-terms and played an instrumental role in unification of Old Romanian Kingdom with Transylvania, Bessarabia and Bukovina. He served as Foreign Minister of Romania. He led National Liberal Party (PNL) for over 18-years. He hailed from the influential Brătianu family of Romanian politicians, who dominated PNL throughout its existence.

Li Yuanhong was a Chinese politician who held the office of the President of China for a year each on two different occasions. A respected politician, Li Yuanhong played a critical role in avoiding China's participation in the First World War. He then resigned from his post in 1917, only to be elected again as president of China in 1922. 

French Post-Impressionist painter Paul Sérusier, considered a pioneer of abstract art, was a member of Les Nabis group that played a key role in transition from impressionism and academic art to abstract art and symbolism. His 1888 painting The Talisman, made under guidance of Paul Gauguin at the artist's colony of Pont-Aven in Brittany, became an icon of 20th-century art.  

Alexej von Jawlensky was a Russian painter best remembered for his work in Germany. An influential figure, Jawlensky was an important member of several popular groups like the New Munich Artist's Association, The Blue Rider, and The Blue Four. The Jawlensky Award was established in his honor in 1991. The award is presented once every five years.

American surgeon George Washington Crile, who is noted for co-founding the non-profit American academic medical center called the Cleveland Clinic, is credited formally as the first surgeon who performed the first surgery using a direct blood transfusion. He made significant contributions to the study of blood pressure, described the radical neck dissection and designed a small hemostatic forceps.