Born on July 17

French painter and printmaker (1796–1875), Corot is one of the leading figures of 19th-century landscape painting. A forerunner of Impressionism, he was a prominent member of the Barbizon school and profoundly influenced the generations that followed.

An American scientist, Eunice Newton Foote demonstrated as early as 1856 the ability of carbon dioxide to trap heat, anticipating the understanding of the greenhouse effect. An activist as well, she was a forgotten pioneer of climate science.

Mary Osborne (1921-1992) was an American jazz guitarist, one of the few women instrumentalists to make a name for herself in the swing and bebop eras. Inspired after hearing Charlie Christian, she became a much-sought-after studio musician in New York.

A physicist turned German politician, Angela Merkel led Germany as Chancellor from 2005 to 2021. The first woman to hold this position, she is one of the most influential political figures in contemporary European history.

Wong Kar-wai is a Hong Kong director, screenwriter, and producer born in 1958 in Shanghai. A major figure of Asian auteur cinema, he is celebrated for his mesmerizing visual style and his melancholic stories about love and the passage of time.

Terence Tao is an Australian-American mathematician born in 1975, considered one of the greatest living mathematicians. A Fields Medal recipient in 2006, he has made major contributions to harmonic analysis, number theory, and partial differential equations.