Born on April 15

Swiss mathematician, physicist, and engineer (1707–1783), Euler is one of the greatest scientists of the 18th century. Prolific and innovative, he contributed to nearly every field of mathematics and physics, despite the blindness that affected him from 1738 onward.

French painter and theorist (1886–1966), co-founder of Purism with Le Corbusier. He advocated a return to order and clarity as a reaction against the excesses of Cubism, and established several art schools across Europe and the United States.

A. Philip Randolph was an African-American trade unionist and civil rights activist. Founder of the first major Black union in the United States, he was a key architect of desegregation and the 1963 March on Washington.

Bessie Smith (1894–1937) was an American singer nicknamed the “Empress of the Blues.” A towering figure of classic blues in the 1920s, she helped popularize the genre and paved the way for Black American artists.

Soviet leader from 1953 to 1964, Khrushchev succeeded Stalin and launched a policy of de-Stalinization. A central figure of the Cold War, he confronted the United States during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.

Vigdís Finnbogadóttir was elected President of Iceland in 1980, becoming the first woman in the world to be democratically elected head of state. Re-elected four times, she served until 1996 and became a global figure in feminism and cultural diplomacy.

Alla Pugacheva (born 1949) is the most famous pop singer of the Soviet Union and Russia. Nicknamed "the Primadonna," she dominated the Soviet and then Russian music scene for over forty years. Her career illustrates mass culture and the entertainment industry under a communist regime.

Carol Greider is an American molecular biologist born in 1961. In 1984 she discovered telomerase, the enzyme that protects the ends of chromosomes, which earned her the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2009.

British actress born in 1990, who rose to fame as Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter series. She became an international feminist activist, notably as a UN Goodwill Ambassador and promoter of the HeForShe campaign.