Born on September 9

Aurelian was Roman emperor from 270 to 275, nicknamed “restorer of the world” (restitutor orbis). A general of Illyrian origin, he reunified the Roman Empire by reconquering the Gallic Empire and the kingdom of Palmyra, putting an end to the Crisis of the Third Century.

A Persian polymath (973–1048), Al-Biruni was one of the greatest minds of the medieval Islamic world. Astronomer, mathematician, geographer, and historian, he wrote more than 150 works and was one of the first scholars to study India in a systematic, scientific way.

Cardinal and chief minister to Louis XIII, Richelieu strengthened royal authority and centralized power in France. He fought against the rebellious nobility and the Protestants, while drawing France into the Thirty Years' War.

Russian writer, 19th - early 20th c.

Cesare Pavese was an Italian writer, poet, and translator, a major figure in 20th-century literature. Author of novels and poems marked by solitude and fate, he was also a great translator of American literature. He took his own life in 1950, shortly after receiving the Strega Prize.

An American computer scientist, Dennis Ritchie is the creator of the C programming language and co-creator of the Unix operating system. His work at Bell Labs in the 1970s laid the foundations of modern computing.

Otis Redding (1941-1967) was an American singer and songwriter, a major figure in 1960s soul music. An iconic voice on the Stax label in Memphis, he died prematurely in a plane crash at age 26, shortly after recording his greatest hit.

Bryan Sykes (1947-2020) was a British geneticist and professor of human genetics at the University of Oxford. A pioneer in the study of ancient DNA and mitochondrial DNA, he popularized the use of genetics to trace the origins of human populations.