Born on April 22

Born around 571 in Mecca, Muhammad is the founder of Islam and the prophet of the Muslim faith. A merchant turned preacher, he received what he believed to be a divine revelation at the age of 40 and united the Arab tribes under a new monotheistic religion.

Henry Fielding (1707-1754) was an English novelist, playwright and magistrate, regarded as one of the fathers of the modern novel. His masterpiece, *Tom Jones* (1749), is a comic and moral panorama of eighteenth-century English society.

German Enlightenment philosopher (1724–1804), Kant revolutionized metaphysics by proposing a radical critique of human reason. Author of the Critique of Pure Reason, he founded transcendental idealism and developed a universal moral theory based on the categorical imperative.

Germaine de Staël, daughter of minister Necker, was one of the great intellectual voices of her era. A novelist, essayist, and salon hostess, she stood up to Napoleon, who exiled her, and helped introduce German Romanticism to France with her work *De l'Allemagne*.

A pioneering British composer (1858–1944), Ethel Smyth was the first woman to have an opera performed at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. A suffragist activist, she composed the suffragette anthem 'The March of the Women' (1911).

Russian revolutionary and Marxist theorist (1870–1924), Lenin led the Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917 and founded the Soviet Union. He developed Leninism, an adaptation of Marxism to Russian conditions.

An Italian-American neurologist, Rita Levi-Montalcini discovered nerve growth factor (NGF), revolutionizing neurobiology. She won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1986, and continued her research despite fascist racial laws that forced her to work in secret. She remained active in science past the age of 100.

Charles Mingus (1922-1979) was an American jazz double bassist, composer, and bandleader. A major figure in modern jazz, he is renowned for his virtuoso playing and his ambitious compositions blending gospel, blues, and collective improvisation.

Jack Nicholson is an American actor, director, and screenwriter born in 1937. A major figure of New Hollywood, he is one of the most awarded actors in American cinema, with three Oscars.