Famous Inventors Born in May!

Maryam Mirzakhani

Date of Birth: May 12, 1977

The Iranian mathematician in 2014 became the first, and to date, the only woman as well as the first Iranian to be awarded the Fields Medal (often referred to as the mathematical equivalent of the Nobel Prize). The citation for her award recognized “her outstanding contributions to the dynamics and geometry of Riemann surfaces and their moduli spaces.”

While a teenager, Mirzakhani won gold medals in the 1994 and 1995 International Mathematical Olympiads for high-school students, attaining a perfect score in 1995. In her professional life, her research topics included Teichmüller theory, hyperbolic geometry, ergodic theory, and symplectic geometry.

Sir Ronald Ross

Date of Birth: May 13, 1857

Ross was the first to show that malarial parasite was transmitted by the bite of infected mosquitoes.

𝑭𝒐𝒓 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒔 𝒅𝒊𝒔𝒄𝒐𝒗𝒆𝒓𝒚 𝒉𝒆 𝒃𝒆𝒄𝒂𝒎𝒆 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒇𝒊𝒓𝒔𝒕 𝑩𝒓𝒊𝒕𝒊𝒔𝒉 𝒂𝒔 𝒘𝒆𝒍𝒍 𝒂𝒔 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒇𝒊𝒓𝒔𝒕 𝑰𝒏𝒅𝒊𝒂𝒏-𝒃𝒐𝒓𝒏 𝒕𝒐 𝒘𝒊𝒏 𝒂 𝑵𝒐𝒃𝒆𝒍 𝑷𝒓𝒊𝒛𝒆 when he was awarded the 1902 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine.

By 1894 he conducted experiments in India to determine the validity of the hypothesis of Alphonse Laveran and Patrick Manson that mosquitoes spread the disease.

Jan Mikulicz-Radecki

Date of Birth: May 16, 1850

He was Polish surgeon whose innovations in operative technique for a wide variety of diseases helped develop modern surgery. Jan contributed prodigiously to cancer surgery, especially on organs of the digestive system. He was first to suture a perforated gastric ulcer (1885), surgically restore part of the oesophagus (1886), remove a malignant part of the colon (1903), and describe what is now known as Mikulicz’ disease. In 1881 he developed improved models of the oesophagoscope and gastroscope. As an ardent advocate of antiseptics, he did much to popularize Joseph Lister’s antiseptic methods. He used a gauze mask and was one of the first to use gloves during surgery.

Fluent in Polish, German, Russian and English.

𝑬𝒅𝒘𝒂𝒓𝒅 𝑱𝒆𝒏𝒏𝒆𝒓

Date of Birth: May 17, 1749

𝑱𝒆𝒏𝒏𝒆𝒓 𝒅𝒊𝒔𝒄𝒐𝒗𝒆𝒓𝒆𝒅 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒗𝒂𝒄𝒄𝒊𝒏𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏 𝒇𝒐𝒓 𝒔𝒎𝒂𝒍𝒍𝒑𝒐𝒙.

There was a common story among farmers that if a person contracted the relatively mild and harmless disease of cattle called cowpox, immunity to smallpox would result. On 14 May 1796 Jenner removed the fluid of a cowpox from dairymaid Sarah Nelmes, and inoculated James Phipps, an eight-year-old boy, who soon came down with cowpox. Six weeks later, he inoculated the boy with smallpox. The boy remained healthy, proving the theory. He called his method vaccination, using the Latin word “vacca”, meaning cow, and “vaccinia”, meaning cowpox. 𝑱𝒆𝒏𝒏𝒆𝒓 𝒂𝒍𝒔𝒐 𝒊𝒏𝒕𝒓𝒐𝒅𝒖𝒄𝒆𝒅 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒘𝒐𝒓𝒅 𝒗𝒊𝒓𝒖𝒔.