Born on January 12

Byzantine emperor who reigned from 408 to 450, Theodosius II is known for consolidating the Eastern Empire and his devotion to Christianity. He ordered the construction of the famous Theodosian Walls around Constantinople and promulgated the Theodosian Code, a landmark collection of Roman laws.

A French writer of the 17th century, Charles Perrault is famous for having collected and transcribed folk tales. He gave literary form to traditional stories such as Little Red Riding Hood and Cinderella, thus laying the foundations of modern children's literature.

Joseph Joffre (1852-1931) was a French general, commander-in-chief of the French army at the start of the First World War. Victor of the Battle of the Marne in September 1914, he became a Marshal of France in 1916.

Indian Hindu monk and disciple of the mystic Ramakrishna, he was one of the foremost figures who brought Hindu spirituality (vedanta and yoga) to the West in the late 19th century. His speech at the World's Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893 made him famous.

Swiss chemist (1899–1965), Paul Hermann Müller synthesized DDT in 1939 and discovered its insecticidal properties. This discovery earned him the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1948, although DDT is now banned for its harmful environmental effects.

A French philosopher of Lithuanian origin, Emmanuel Levinas is one of the great thinkers of ethics in the 20th century. Having introduced the phenomenology of Husserl and Heidegger to France, he made the relationship with the other the foundation of all philosophy.

Soviet engineer of Ukrainian origin, Korolev is the father of the Soviet space program. He designed Sputnik, the first artificial satellite, and the Vostok capsule that allowed Gagarin to fly in space.

Italian director and screenwriter born in 1933. A figure of Italian auteur cinema, she is known for provocative works exploring power, memory, and Nazism, including “The Night Porter” (1974).

Haruki Murakami is a Japanese writer born in 1949, one of the most widely translated contemporary novelists in the world. His work blends realism and the fantastic, exploring the loneliness and unease of the individual in modern Japan.

Founder of Amazon in 1994, Jeff Bezos transformed global commerce through e-commerce and cloud computing. He is one of the wealthiest people in the world and founded Blue Origin for private space exploration.