1817 births

G.F._Watts

George Frederic Watts (23 February 1817 – 1 July 1904) was a British painter and sculptor associated with the Symbolist movement. He said "I paint ideas, not things." Watts became famous in his lifetime for his allegorical works, such as Hope and Love and Life. These paintings were intended to form part of an epic symbolic cycle called the "House of Life", in which the emotions and aspirations of life would all be represented in a universal symbolic language.

Paul-Quentin_Desains

Paul-Quentin Desains (12 July 1817 – 3 May 1885) was a French physicist.
He was born at Saint-Quentin, Aisne, France. He studied literature at the Collège des Bons-Enfants in his native town and then entered the Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris. Here he distinguished himself, taking the first prize in physics. In 1835 he entered the science section of the Ecole Normale where his brother Edouard had preceded him. He made the acquaintance there of La Provostaye who was at the time a surveillant and who became his lifelong friend and his associate in his researches. After completing his course, he accepted a professorship in 1839 at Caen, and in 1841 returned to Paris where he received similar appointments, first at the Lycée St-Louis and later at the Lycée Condorcet, where he succeeded La Provostaye who was forced to retire on account of ill-health. His growing reputation won for him in 1853 the chair of physics at the Sorbonne which he held for thirty-two years.
Between 1858 and 1861 he made many observations in connexion with terrestrial magnetism. His most important contributions to physics, however, were his researches on radiant heat made in conjunction with La Provostaye. The two physicists concluded that radiant heat, like light, was a disturbance set up in what was then called the ether and propagated in all directions by transverse waves. They showed in a series of "Mémoires" published in the Annales de Chimie et de Physique that it manifests the characteristic phenomena of reflection, refraction, and polarization, as well as of emission and absorption. They also made a study of the latent heat of fusion of ice, and a careful investigation of the range of applicability of the Dulong-Petit law representing the law of cooling.
He also worked in connexion with the establishment and development of laboratory instruction in physics. When the Ecole pratique des hautes études was founded in 1869 he was commissioned to organize the physical laboratory. During the Siege of Paris (1870–1871), he succeeded after many difficulties in establishing electrical communication with d'Alméida who was outside the lines. The exposure he underwent brought on rheumatism which greatly weakened his constitution. He died in Paris. Desains published a Traité de Physique (Paris, 1855) and numerous articles, chiefly with La Provostaye.

Louis_Hubené

Louis Hubené (9 November 1817 in Bruges – 23 March 1871) was a pianist, a city carillonneur of Brugges and a composer.
He was a nephew of the city carillonneur Dominique II Berger and had been raised and given a musical education by him, after being orphaned at an early age. In 1847 Hubené became a teacher of piano at the newly founded Music School of Bruges, which he remained until 1850. For more than 30 years, he was a music teacher at the English Convent, and he also gave a lot of private lessons.
As of 1832 Hubené became the assistant of his uncle, whom he succeeded as city carillonneur in 1838. He remained in this position until 1864, the year in which he was succeeded by Remi Berragan.
After having been organist at the St. Salvator's Cathedral, he was appointed as organist of the St. James's Church in 1870.

Niklaus_Riggenbach

Niklaus Riggenbach (21 May 1817 – 25 July 1899) was an Alsatian-born Swiss mechanic, railway engineer, politician and inventor of the rack railway system as well as the counter-pressure brake. Riggenbach was primarily known for introducing his railway system and using it within the tourism industry such as on the Rigi, Pilatus or even on the Nilgiri Mountain Railway in India. In 1878 he was the recipient of a gold medal at the World Exhibition in Paris. He served on the Cantonal Council of Solothurn from 1866 to 1868.

Willem_Jozef_Andreas_Jonckbloet

Willem Jozef Andreas Jonckbloet (6 July 1817, The Hague – 19 October 1885, Wiesbaden) was a Dutch historian, best known for work on medieval poetry.
From 1835 he was a student at the University of Leiden. After pursuing medicine and law, he turned to Low German literature. From 1847 at Deventer, he became a professor at Leiden in 1878.
In 1855 he became member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Anthony_Winkler_Prins

Anthony Winkler Prins (30 or 31 January 1817 in Voorst – 4 January 1908 in Voorburg) was a Dutch writer. He is remembered mostly for being chief editor of the Winkler Prins encyclopedia.
Besides being an encyclopedist, Winkler Prins (a double surname) was a "Doopsgezind" (Mennonite) preacher. He also wrote editorials for many newspapers, as well as poetry.
Winkler Prins studied science and literature in Utrecht and later studied theology at the Doopsgezind Seminarium (Mennonite Seminary) in Amsterdam. From 1841 to 1850, he preached in the village of Tjalleberd.
From 1850 to 1882, Winkler Prins preached in the northern town of Veendam, where he completed his encyclopedia in 1882. He was very important to the community, not just as a preacher, but also because he founded a high school, a seafaring school and a Masonic Lodge.
After he retired as a preacher in 1882, he went to live with his daughter in Voorburg, where he died and was interred in 1908. A statue of Winkler Prins was erected outside the Veenkoloniaal Museum ("Peat Colony Museum") in Veendam in 1991; see photo. On 9 September 2005, the Museum had the remains of Winkler Prins and his wife Henderika reburied in the graveyard of the Reformed Church in Veendam.Winkler Prins' son Jacob (born in Tjalleberd on 5 February 1849, died at sea on 25 November 1907) was a poet (mostly of sonnets) and a painter.

Josep_Maria_Ventura_i_Casas

Josep Maria Ventura i Casas (Alcalá la Real (Jaén), 1817 – Figueres (Catalonia), 1875), popularly known as Pep Ventura, was a Spanish musician and composer from Catalonia who consolidated the long sardana and reformed the cobla, adding instruments to give it its current formation.
He is considered the father of the modern Sardana by the profound transformation that he printed to these compositions, based on giving it greater musical extension, in the inclusion of new instruments, especially the tenora (instrument creation of Andreu Turon) from 1849 and its arrangement in the cobla, which will imitate another musical formations of this type. His performance before the Queen Isabella II of Spain in the Monastery of Montserrat together with other artists of the Renaixença consecrated him as a figure in the Catalan cultural world.