1837 births

Célestine Galli-Marié (15 March 1837 – 22 September 1905) was a French mezzo-soprano who is most famous for creating the title role in the opera Carmen.

François Lenormant (17 January 1837 – 9 December 1883) was a 19th-century French Hellenist, Assyriologist and archaeologist.

Caspar Mathias Spoo (7 January 1837 – 17 March 1914) was a Luxembourgish industrialist and politician.
Spoo was born in Echternach in 1837. His parents were workers in the earthenware factory, and died early. He joined the civil service from a young age, to make a living for himself and his siblings. He gave up his position in the postal service in order to open the Société Duchscher Frères et Spoo with André Duchscher, his old friend. From 1886, he worked for two years as an accountant at the Dudelange foundry; he then struck out on his own in 1888 to open an ironmongery in Esch-Alzette with a workshop constructing ovens, cauldrons, etc.: the Maschinenfabrik Spoo & Co.
Additionally, he was politically active. He was elected to the communal council of Esch in 1893 and to the Chamber of Deputies in 1896. Along with Michel Welter, he was one of the first people to engage in modern election campaigning in Luxembourg, by drafting and publishing a manifesto and giving speeches. Politically, he belonged to the left-liberal middle-class. Influenced by André Duchscher, he campaigned for universal suffrage, progressive taxation and social security. He also called for the construction of an industrial school and a secondary school for girls in Esch, and demanded that the canton of Esch, whose economic and demographic importance had increased due to industrialisation, should receive more seats in the Chamber. His social campaigning, in the paternalistic tradition of the 19th century, earned him the nickname "Pappa Spoo".
He was married to Barbe Kiesel, and was the father of Armand Spoo. At his funeral in Esch, Michel Welter gave a eulogy, calling Spoo the "conscience of Luxembourgish socialism."

Karl Gottlieb Mauch (7 May 1837 – 4 April 1875) was a German explorer and geographer of Africa. He reported on the archaeological ruins of Great Zimbabwe in 1871 during his search for the biblical land of Ophir.

Colonel John Herschel (29 October 1837 – 31 May 1921) was an English military engineer, surveyor and astronomer. He was the son of Sir John Herschel, 1st Baronet, and grandson of William Herschel.

Emil Ludwig Schmidt (7 April 1837 – 22 October 1906) was a German anthropologist and ethnologist. He was son-in-law to art historian Johannes Adolph Overbeck (1826–1895).
Schmidt was born in Upper Eichstätt. Originally trained as a doctor, he studied medicine at the Universities of Jena, Leipzig and Bonn. From 1862 to 1865 he served as a surgical assistant to Wilhelm Busch at Bonn, afterwards working as a physician in Essen (He served as head of the Krupp Hospital and as family physician to the Krupp family).In 1869–70 and 1876 he took anthropological study trips to North America, and in 1875 performed research in Egypt. In 1885 he received habilitation at the University of Leipzig, where in 1889 he became an associate professor of anthropology and ethnography. In 1889–90 he performed research in Ceylon and southern India.
In 1900 Schmidt donated his collection of more than 1000 human skulls to the University of Leipzig.

Charles Jacques Bouchard (6 September 1837 – 28 October 1915) was a French pathologist and an esperantist born in Montier-en-Der, a commune the department of Haute-Marne.

Petrus van der Velden (5 May 1837 – 11 November 1913), who is also known as Paulus van der Velden, was a Dutch artist who spent much of his later career in New Zealand.

Joseph Marie de Tilly (16 August 1837 – 4 August 1906) was a Belgian military man and mathematician.
He was born in Ypres, Belgium. In 1858, he became a teacher in mathematics at the regimental school. He began with studying geometry, particularly Euclid's fifth postulate and non-Euclidean geometry. He found similar results as Lobachevsky in 1860, but the Russian mathematician was already dead at that time. Tilly is more known for his work on non-Euclidean mechanics, as he was the one who invented it. He worked thus alone on this topic until a French mathematician, Jules Hoüel, showed interest in that field. Tilly also wrote on military science and history of mathematics. He died in München, Germany.

Jacques Rose Ferdinand Émile Sarrau (Perpignan 24 June 1837 – Saint-Yrieix 10 May 1904) was a French chemist. He worked most of his career at the laboratory in the Dépôt Central des Poudres et Salpêtres (Central Depot for Powder and Saltpetre). He did research on explosive shock waves, the effects of explosives and he developed new explosives. The Mach number was sometimes called in French the Nombre de Sarrau (Sarrau number).