1852 births

Fulgence Bienvenüe (French pronunciation: [fylʒɑ̃s bjɛ̃v(ə)ny]; 27 January 1852 – 3 August 1936) was a French civil engineer, best known for his role in the construction of the Paris Métro, and has been called "Le Père du Métro" (Father of the Metro).: 162 A native of Uzel in Brittany, and the son of a notary, in 1872 Bienvenüe graduated from the École Polytechnique as a civil engineer: 150  and the same year he began working for the Department of Bridges and Roads at Alençon.: 150  His first assignment was the construction of new railway lines in the Mayenne area, in the course of which his left arm had to be amputated after being crushed in a construction accident.
In 1886, Bienvenüe moved on to Paris to design and supervise the construction of aqueducts for the city, drawing water from the rivers Aube and Loire.: 151  Next, he built a cable railway near the Place de la République and created the park of Buttes-Chaumont.: 151  In 1891, he was appointed as Engineer-in-Chief for Bridges and Roads, the most prestigious engineering job in France.: 151 Paris city officials selected Bienvenüe to become chief engineer for the Paris Métro in 1896. He designed a special way of building new tunnels which allowed the swift repaving of the roads above; this involved (among other things) building the crown of the tunnel first and the floor last, the reverse of the usual method at that time.: 151, 162  Bienvenüe has the credit for the mostly swift and relatively uneventful construction of the Métro through the difficult and heterogenous Parisian soils and rocks.: 150–1, 162  He came up with the idea of freezing wet and unstable soil in order to permit the drilling of tunnels. He was to supervise the Paris Metro construction for more than three decades, finally retiring on 6 December 1932.
Bienvenüe's construction of the Métro was widely praised and has been described admiringly as a work "worthy of the Romans".: 160, 162  He eventually accumulated many honors for his engineering accomplishments, including the Grand Prix Berger of the Academy of Arts and Sciences (1909) and the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor (1929).: 160 On 30 June 1933, the Avenue du Maine station on the Metro was renamed Bienvenüe in his honor. The naming ceremony took place in his presence; there was a last-minute scramble to repaint the station's new nameboards when it was discovered that the unusual diaeresis in his name had been omitted, making it the French word for "welcome". In 1942 the station was linked to the adjacent Montparnasse station, forming a single station named Montparnasse-Bienvenüe.
Bienvenüe was buried in 1936 at the Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris.
Lycée Fulgence Bienvenüe  high school in Loudéac, Brittany is named after Bienvenüe.

Giacomo Bove (23 April 1852 – 9 August 1887) was an Italian explorer. He sailed with Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld on the first voyage through the north-east passage, and later explored Tierra del Fuego and the Congo River.

Leopoldo Enrique García-Alas y Ureña (25 April 1852 – 13 June 1901), also known as Clarín, was a Spanish realist novelist born in Zamora. His inflammatory articles, known as paliques (“chitchat”), as well as his advocacy of liberalism and anti-clericalism, made him a formidable and controversial critical voice. He died in Oviedo.

Pierre Paul François Camille Savorgnan de Brazza (born Pietro Paolo Savorgnan di Brazzà; 26 January 1852 – 14 September 1905) was an Italian-French explorer. With his family's financial help, he explored the Ogooué region of Central Africa, and later with the backing of the Société de Géographie de Paris, he reached far into the interior along the right bank of the Congo River. He has often been depicted as a man of friendly manner, great charm and peaceful approach towards the Africans he met and worked with on his journeys, but recent research has revealed that he in fact alternated this kind of approach with more calculated deceit and at times relentless armed violence towards local populations. Under French colonial rule, the capital of the Republic of the Congo was named Brazzaville after him and the name was retained by the post-colonial rulers, one of the few African nations to do so. (Other exceptions are Pretoria, South Africa, Port Louis, Mauritius, Libreville ,Gabon, and Victoria, Seychelles.)

Jef Lambeaux or Josef Lambeaux (14 January 1852 – 5 June 1908) was a Belgian sculptor. His best known work is Temple of Human Passions, a colossal marble bas-relief.

Hans Vaihinger (German: [hans ˈfaɪɪŋɐ]; September 25, 1852 – December 18, 1933) was a German philosopher, best known as a Kant scholar and for his Die Philosophie des Als Ob (The Philosophy of 'As if'), published in 1911 although its statement of basic principles had been written more than thirty years earlier.