1878 births

Samuel James Cameron (7 January 1878 – 29 October 1959) was Regius Professor of Midwifery at the University of Glasgow from 1934 until 1942. The son of Caesarean Section pioneer Prof Murdoch Cameron, S.J. Cameron was a foundation Fellow of Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists in 1929, and for many years a member of the Gynaecological Visiting Society. A lifelong champion of the reputation of the founder of professional midwifery in the British isles, William Smellie, Cameron both named a maternity hospital at Lanark, Scotland, after him and saved Smellie's library from permanent loss.

Jean Bosler (24 March 1878, Angers – 25 September 1973, Marseille) was a French astronomer and author of several books.
Recruited by Deslandres as an astronomer at l’observatoire de Paris, Bosler discovered in 1908 in the spectrum of Comet Morehouse the spectral lines of ionized nitrogen, which was the first evidence of that element in comets. Much of his research was on the physical properties and orbits of comets. He made a report on progress in astrophysics in the United States for the 1910 annual report of the Smithsonian Institution. In 1912, he showed in his doctoral dissertation (supervised by Henri Poincaré) that the Sun’s magnetic field, by means of the intermediary of the solar wind, explains many aspects of cometary tails, the aurora borealis and aurora australis, solar storms and telluric currents. During a solar eclipse in 1914, Bosler observed in the corona a spectral band “nouvelle, intense et unique” which he suggested was spectral evidence for coronium; however, in the 1930s subsequent research showed that the cause was a highly ionized form of iron. In 1916, he published an analysis of the circular form of lunar craters as caused by the impact of meteors.
In 1923 Bosler was named director of Marseille Observatory, a post he occupied until his retirement in 1948. Simultaneously with his directorship, he taught at the University of Marseille from 1923 to 1948. Bosler made important contributions to the theory of the evolution of stars and published the first textbook in French that dealt with the then recent discoveries of Hubble and the work on optical phenomena of such physicists as Michelson, Fabry and Perot.
Bosler won the Prix Jules Janssen in 1911 from the Société astronomique de France, the French astronomical society, and the Prix Lalande from l'Académie des sciences in 1913.
He came from the French branch of the Hessian family Boßler.Books

Les théories modernes du soleil (1910)
L’évolution des étoiles (1923)
Cours d’astronomie (1928)

Louis Florimond Joseph Blaringhem (1 February 1878 in Locon – 1 January 1958 in Paris) was a French agronomist and botanist.

Renato Biasutti (San Daniele del Friuli, 22 March 1878 – Florence, 3 March 1965) was a notable Italian geographer, who published many works on physical anthropology.

Marguerite Jeanne Emilie Marguerite Lebrun (née Nivoit; October 12, 1878 - October 25, 1947) was the wife of Albert Lebrun, who was President of France from 1932 to 1940.
Together Lebrun and her husband had two children: son Jean Lebrun and daughter Marie Lebrun. Jean Lebrun married Bernadette Marin, the daughter of a retired army captain, in the town hall in Rambouillet, France, on 17 October 1932.She was the "godmother" of the legendary ocean liner SS Normandie and the ship Paul Doumer, named for the previous French president. She wrote God, Work, Family, and Fatherland in 1941.

Gaston Mauger (13 March 1878 – 18 October 1954) was a French stage and film actor. He made around forty film appearances, including the 1932 thriller Narcotics.

Bleuette Bernon (6 June 1878 – 15 June 1937) was a French press actress who appeared in at least five films made by Georges Méliès around the turn of the 20th century. The early films, made before 1900, were usually without plot and had a runtime of just a few minutes. However, Méliès evolved the genre of the fictional motion picture, and Bernon became one of the early character actors in movies. In 1899, she played the title character in Méliès's Jeanne d'Arc, and Cinderella in Cendrillon. In 1901, she appeared in Barbe-bleue. In 1902 she appeared in a minor role in A Trip to the Moon, which is the best known film of Méliès, as one "lady in the Moon". In 1903 she appeared as Aurora in Le Royaume des fées.

Joseph Joos (1878–1965) was a prominent German intellectual and politician. As a Member of Parliament in Weimar, Joseph Joos grew to become one of the leading voices of the Christian Democratic Union in Germany. His convictions led him to become a political prisoner in the Dachau concentration camp from 1941 to 1945. After World War II, Joseph Joos became a close advisor to West Germany's Chancellor Konrad Adenauer.

Paul Robert Bing (5 May 1878 in Strasbourg – 15 March 1956 in Basel) was a Swiss neurologist remembered for Bing's sign.

Gabriel Signoret (November 15, 1878 – March 16, 1937, in Paris, France) was a French silent film actor.
He starred in some 70 films between 1910 and 1938.
In 1920 he appeared in Guy du Fresnay's Flipotte.
His brother Jean Signoret (born 1886) was also an actor.