1879 births

Waldemar Erfurth (4 August 1879 – 2 May 1971) was a German general of infantry, a writer and liaison officer to Finland during World War II
Erfurth was born in Berlin. He served in World War I, winning the Iron Cross 1st Class and the Knight's Cross of the Royal House Order of Hohenzollern. After the war, he continued in the Reichswehr of the Weimar Republic. During the Second World War, he was a liaison officer in the Finnish headquarters 1941–44. He wrote a book about the Murmansk railroad and a war journal from 1944. He died in Tübingen.

Julius Wilford "Nicky" Arnstein (born Arndstein; July 1, 1879 – October 2, 1965) was an American professional gambler and con artist. He was known primarily as Julius Arnold, but among his aliases were "Jules Arndtsteyn", "Nick Arnold," "Nicholas Arnold", "Wallace Ames", "John Adams", and "J. Willard Adair". He was best known as the second husband of entertainer Fanny Brice.

Lucio Blanco (July 21, 1879 – June 1922) was a Mexican military officer and revolutionary, noteworthy for his participation in the Mexican Revolution of 1910 to 1920.

Hans Meerwein (May 20, 1879 in Hamburg, Germany – October 24, 1965 in Marburg, Germany) was a German chemist.
Several reactions and reagents bear his name, most notably the Meerwein–Ponndorf–Verley reduction, the Wagner–Meerwein rearrangement, the Meerwein arylation reaction, and Meerwein's salt.

Hugo Merton (18 November 1879 in Frankfurt am Main – 23 March 1940 in Edinburgh) was a German zoologist.
He studied sciences at the University of Heidelberg. From October 1907 to August 1908, with herpetologist Jean Roux, he conducted scientific investigations in the Aru and Kei Islands. In 1913 he obtained his habilitation at Heidelberg with a dissertation on the flatworm genus Temnocephala. Because of the 1935 Nuremberg Laws imposed by the Nazis, he was forced to relinquish his position as deputy director at the Senckenberg Museum in Frankfurt as well as his professorship at the University of Heidelberg.In 1937, by way of an invitation from Professor F. A. E. Crew, he went to the University of Edinburgh, where he spent time working in the institute of animal genetics. Upon this return to Germany in 1938, he was arrested and imprisoned in the concentration camp at Dachau. During the following year, he was deported to Scotland, where he resumed his work at the university. Due to deteriorated health, he died soon afterwards in March 1940.Organisms with the specific epithet of mertoni are named in his honor, an example being the sea snake species Parahydrophis mertoni. In 1911, Max Carl Wilhelm Weber named the fish species Pseudomugil gertrudae after Merton's wife, Gertrude.

Lina Abarbanell (January 3, 1879 – January 6, 1963) was an American soprano who performed in grand and light opera and musical comedy. She made her debut at fourteen as Adele in the operetta DIE FLEDERMAUS, at the Royal Opera House in Berlin. She was first introduced to American theatergoers in 1905 as the soubrette in the Josef Strauss operetta Frühlingsluft (Spring Air). Abarbanell made opera history later that year as Hänsel in The Met's debut production of Engelbert Humperdinck's Hänsel und Gretel. Abarbanell spent the following near thirty years performing on Broadway and at venues across America. After her husband's death in 1934, Abarbanell left the stage, but remained active over virtually the remainder of her life as a Broadway casting director, producer, and stage director.

Paul Theodor Range (1 May 1879 in Lübeck – 29 August 1952 in Lübeck) was a German geologist and naturalist.
He studied natural sciences at the universities of Würzburg and Leipzig, receiving his doctorate in 1903. From 1906 to 1914 he worked as a government geologist in German South-West Africa, and afterwards performed scientific studies in the Sinai Peninsula. From 1921 he gave lectures in geology at the University of Berlin, becoming an associate professor in 1934. In 1936, he was named president of the Deutschen Geologischen Gesellschaft.Range is commemorated in the scientific name of the Namib sand gecko (Pachydactylus rangei), which was described as a species new to science by herpetologist Lars Gabriel Andersson in 1908.

Marie Haps (1879–1939) was a Luxembourg-born Belgian educationalist, the founder of what subsequently became the Institut Libre Marie Haps (now part of the Haute École Léonard de Vinci) and the Marie Haps Faculty of Translation and Interpreting (Saint-Louis University, Brussels).

Gaetano Pietra (10 August 1879, in Castiglione delle Stiviere, Italy – 1961, in Villanova dello Iudrio, Udine, Italy) was an Italian statistician.

Friedrich Hermann Leuchs (8 August 1879 – 2 May 1945) was a German chemist.