Sir Isaac Pitman (4 January 1813 – 22 January 1897) was a teacher of the English language who developed the most widely used system of shorthand, known now as Pitman shorthand. He first proposed this in Stenographic Soundhand in 1837. He was also the vice-president of the Vegetarian Society. Pitman was knighted by Queen Victoria in 1894.
Charles-Valentin Alkan (French: [ʃaʁl valɑ̃tɛ̃ alkɑ̃]; 30 November 1813 – 29 March 1888) was a French composer and virtuoso pianist. At the height of his fame in the 1830s and 1840s he was, alongside his friends and colleagues Frédéric Chopin and Franz Liszt, among the leading pianists in Paris, a city in which he spent virtually his entire life.
Alkan earned many awards at the Conservatoire de Paris, which he entered before he was six. His career in the salons and concert halls of Paris was marked by his occasional long withdrawals from public performance, for personal reasons. Although he had a wide circle of friends and acquaintances in the Parisian artistic world, including Eugène Delacroix and George Sand, from 1848 he began to adopt a reclusive life style, while continuing with his compositions – virtually all of which are for the keyboard. During this period he published, among other works, his collections of large-scale studies in all the major keys (Op. 35) and all the minor keys (Op. 39). The latter includes his Symphony for Solo Piano (Op. 39, nos. 4–7) and Concerto for Solo Piano (Op. 39, nos. 8–10), which are often considered among his masterpieces and are of great musical and technical complexity. Alkan emerged from self-imposed retirement in the 1870s to give a series of recitals that were attended by a new generation of French musicians.
Alkan's attachment to his Jewish origins is displayed both in his life and his work. He was the first composer to incorporate Jewish melodies in art music. Fluent in Hebrew and Greek, he devoted much time to a complete new translation of the Bible into French. This work, like many of his musical compositions, is now lost. Alkan never married, but his presumed son Élie-Miriam Delaborde was, like Alkan, a virtuoso performer on both the piano and the pedal piano, and edited a number of the elder composer's works.
Following his death (which according to persistent but unfounded legend was caused by a falling bookcase), Alkan's music became neglected, supported by only a few musicians including Ferruccio Busoni, Egon Petri and Kaikhosru Sorabji. From the late 1960s onwards, led by Raymond Lewenthal and Ronald Smith, many pianists have recorded his music and brought it back into the repertoire.
Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi (Italian: [dʒuˈzɛppe ˈverdi]; 9 or 10 October 1813 – 27 January 1901) was an Italian composer best known for his operas. He was born near Busseto to a provincial family of moderate means, receiving a musical education with the help of a local patron, Antonio Barezzi. Verdi came to dominate the Italian opera scene after the era of Gioachino Rossini, Vincenzo Bellini, and Gaetano Donizetti, whose works significantly influenced him.
In his early operas, Verdi demonstrated sympathy with the Risorgimento movement which sought the unification of Italy. He also participated briefly as an elected politician. The chorus "Va, pensiero" from his early opera Nabucco (1842), and similar choruses in later operas, were much in the spirit of the unification movement, and the composer himself became esteemed as a representative of these ideals. An intensely private person, Verdi did not seek to ingratiate himself with popular movements. As he became professionally successful, he was able to reduce his operatic workload and sought to establish himself as a landowner in his native region. He surprised the musical world by returning, after his success with the opera Aida (1871), with three late masterpieces: his Requiem (1874), and the operas Otello (1887) and Falstaff (1893).
His operas remain extremely popular, especially the three peaks of his 'middle period': Rigoletto, Il trovatore and La traviata. The bicentenary of his birth in 2013 was widely celebrated in broadcasts and performances.
Pierre-Auguste Sarrus (March 14 or 15, 1813 – May 3, 1876) was a French musician and inventor.
Hermann Kurz (30 November 1813 – 10 October 1873) was a German poet and novelist.
He was born at Reutlingen. Having studied at the theological seminary at Maulbronn and at the University of Tübingen, he became assistant pastor at Ehningen. He then entered upon a literary career and lived in Stuttgart. In 1863 he was appointed university librarian at Tübingen, where he remained until his death.Kurz's collections of poems, Gedichte (1836) and Dichtungen (1839), were less successful than his historical novels, Schiller's Heimatjahre (1843) and Der Sonnenwirt (1854), and his excellent translations from English, Italian and Spanish. He also published a successful modern German version of Gottfried von Strassburg's Tristan and Iseult (1844). His collected works were published in ten volumes (Stuttgart, 1874).His daughter, Isolde Kurz, was also a poet.
Gérard Daniel Westendorp (8 March 1813, The Hague – 31 January 1869, Dendermonde) was a Dutch born, Belgian military physician and botanist.
He studied medicine at the Ecole de Médecine de Bruxelles, later working as a student-physician in Antwerp. Around 1834, he became a naturalized citizen of Belgium, subsequently serving as an assistant army and navy physician, later spending his career as a "regular doctor" in the Belgian army.As a botanist, he specialized in cryptogamic flora, being the co-publisher (with A.C.F. Wallays) of a cryptogamic exsiccatae series of Belgium. He also made significant contributions towards the "Prodromus Florae Batavae" project (1850-1866). In the field of zoology, he published a treatise on Bryozoa and sponges of Belgium.Westendorp's botanical specimens are preserved in the Jardin Botanique National de Belgique.
Marco Manuel Avellaneda (18 June 1813 – 3 October 1841) was the governor of Tucumán Province in Argentina, and father of the Argentine President Nicolás Avellaneda.
He was executed after an unsuccessful revolt against the Federal government, and his head was displayed on a pike.
Samuel Sarphati (31 January 1813 – 23 June 1866) was a Dutch physician and Amsterdam city planner.
Gaspard Adolphe Chatin (30 November 1813, Tullins – 13 January 1901) was a French physician, mycologist and botanist who was born in Tullins Isère, and died in Les Essarts-le-Roi. He was the first to prove that goiter was related to iodine deficiency.
He studied at the Faculté de Médecine in Paris and received his doctorate in May 1840. In 1841, he became Chief Pharmacist at the Beaujon Hospital in Paris, and in 1859 at the Hôtel-Dieu de Paris. He taught botany at the Ecole Superieure de Pharmacie, which he directed from 1874. In April 1886, there were student riots at the school, and his dismissal was demanded. He retired in August 1886 with the title of honorary director.
He was a member of the Académie Nationale de Médecine (1853) and the Académie des Sciences (1874). He was a member of the Société Botanique de France, which he led in 1862, 1878, 1886 and 1896. In 1878, he became an Officer of the Legion d'honneur.
He was the father of the botanist and zoologist Joannes Charles Melchior Chatin (1847–1912).
Maximilien Joseph Moll (14 October 1813 – 16 June 1849) was a German labour leader and revolutionary. He was a pioneer of the German labour movement and a figure in early German socialism. Moll was an early associate of Karl Marx.