Thanks Caleb,

1955 - Me ! NZ
1879-1955 Albert Einstein, physicist German
1845-1879 William Clifford, mathematician English

Clifford in 1870 published a book called 'On The Space Theory Of Matter' in which he suggested that energy and matter are simply different types of curvature in space - 45 years ahead of Einstein's theory of general relativity.
Clifford could apparently do one-hand chin-ups but dies of overwork and exhaustion (from the maths or the physical stuff ?)

Perhaps we should all have super-chains in which all members of the chain are famous for the same reason (unfortunately I'm the weaklink in the above chain as I failed science (and maths) at school !

I'll have a search to get back beyond 1845.

My encyclopedia has Anne Boleyn born in 1507 ? (& my cheap Dictionary of Biography has 1507)

Well-done to get back to the early 16th C. I've been stuck on 1756 for some time with my list above.

Wild Kid Nick

In the 1930s there were massive purges in the Soviet Union. Conservative estimates of the people executed in 1937 were 353, 074 (I wonder who the 4 were?). There were several major show trials between 1936-37 when Stalin 'got rid off' many senior members of government, old communists (veterans of the 1917 revolution etc.), senior military staff, as well as artists and intellectuals.

Therefore if you used Peter Cooke in your chain it could then break off into several other ones in 1937 (unfortunately the books I have here don't list those executed in that year). (Other possible good years for deaths would be 1945, 1946 (many of the leading Nazis executed)). Do you think there are any good years for famous people being born ?

One could imagine an inverted tree of chains of famous people. At the top would be a person, ie., you (famous to be !). On the next-to-top would be more than one person, each born in a different year. And so forth.

Such a chain would create a fascinating picture as further levels were added - one of the interesting characteristics would be that the levels on the different chains would get out of synchrony. In the 1970s I investigated writing music using constrained chance. In one of my 'systems' of composing I had a very obvious cyclical structure, except that as the basic 'unit' was repeated it got stretched in different ways so that its different parts got out of synchrony with each other.

Wild Kid Nick

Thanks for your latest comments. I look out for someone born in 44BC (someone must have been born that year). Perhaps there was an epidemic that caused massive infertility for a year !

Are you coming to the April Seminars ? Can't wait to hear the evil laugh ?
Maybe you could 'scan' it and send it for everyone on the website to hear.

Wild Kid NIck

Two books I checked gave me several men who died in 1937 - women and children were also persecuted in the purges. The most important of these were:

1883 - 1937 Lev Kamenev Member of Soviet Politburo
1886 - 1937 Grigory Ordjonikidze Politician
1883 - 1937 Alexander Voronsky Essayist, literary critic and theorist
1893 - 1937 Yuri Tukhachevsky* On Army General Staff
1896 - 1937 Iona Yakir ON Army General Staff
1877 - 1937 Arel Yenokidze Ex comrade of Stalin's
1884 - 1937 Yegeny Zamyatin * Novelist

Of these, only Zamyatin died of natural causes - heart attack in Paris.
The * are the most famous.

The above birth-years immediately made me think of 4 famous 19thC musicians:

1819-1893 Charles Gounod Composer French
1811-1886 Franz Liszt Composer & Pianist Hungary
1819-1896 Clara Schumann Pianist & Composer German
(Wife of Robert Schumann)
1813-1883 Richard Wagner Composer & Conductor German

BY the way I've worked out who were the 4 of the 353,074 people executed in 1937 - the last 4 executed in 1937.

And while looking through the books for the victims of Stalinist purges I read that when a person was arrested often his wife and children were also executed. Throughout this period people were arrested and imprisoned and / or executed if Stalin thought you may be plotting against him. People arrested were interrrogated and forced to sign 'confessions' (of false deeds)
and were often tortured to do so. A 10 year old boy was arrested and 'confessed' almost immediately - which meant after being interrogated for one night (I wouldn't have lasted that longl). Another boy (12 I think) was arrested and sentences to several years in a Soviet Gulag (prison camps in Siberia) because he had fired a catupult at a picture of Stalin !

Wild Kid Nick

A famous person born in 1995. What about a kid moviestar - Macaulay Calkin had a younger brother, Rory I saw in a movie - but's he prob. a bit older. Maybe there's other kids in popular culture I don't know about.

Guess if you want to go prior to 1536 you'll need someone other than Anne Boleyn.

I've been looking for infor. about William Stanhope, Jacques Cassinet, or
Giacomo Perti without success. There's a James Stanhope (1675-1721) who commanded British forces in Spain during the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1713) & a Hestor Lucy Stanhope (1776-1839) who travelled in the Levant with Bedouins and settled there. Perhaps William was related to them.

Wild Kid Nick