Born on September 30

Persian Sufi poet, Masnavi, founder of the Whirling Dervishes

Italian Dominican friar (1452–1498), Savonarola seized control of Florence after the expulsion of the Medici in 1494. A fiery preacher, he imposed a rigorist theocracy before being excommunicated and executed.

French physicist (1870–1942), he experimentally demonstrated the existence of atoms through the study of Brownian motion. Winner of the 1926 Nobel Prize in Physics, he founded the CNRS in 1939.

German physicist (1882–1945), Hans Geiger is famous for inventing the Geiger counter, an instrument for detecting ionizing radiation. He worked with Ernest Rutherford and contributed to the alpha particle scattering experiment that revealed the structure of the atomic nucleus.

Martina Hingis is a Swiss tennis player, one of the most precocious in history. World number one at sixteen, she won five Grand Slam singles titles in the late 1990s before becoming a major doubles champion.