Lillian Leitzel (born Leopoldina Alitza Pelikan; 2 January 1892 – 15 February 1931) was a German-born acrobat who specialized in performing on the Roman rings, for the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus. The inaugural (posthumous) inductee to the International Circus Hall of Fame, Leitzel died in hospital two days after a fall during a live performance.
Étienne Bazeries (21 August 1846, in Port Vendres – 7 November 1931, in Noyon) was a French military cryptanalyst active between 1890 and the First World War. He is best known for developing the "Bazeries Cylinder", an improved version of Thomas Jefferson's cipher cylinder. It was later refined into the US Army M-94 cipher device. Historian David Kahn describes him as "the great pragmatist of cryptology. His theoretical contributions are negligible, but he was one of the greatest natural cryptanalysts the science has seen." (Kahn 1996, p244)
Bazeries was born in Port-Vendres, France, the son of a mounted policeman. In 1863 he enlisted in the army, and fought in the Franco-Prussian War, where he was taken prisoner, although he later managed to escape disguised as a bricklayer. In 1874 he was promoted to lieutenant, and sent to Algeria in 1875. He returned to France the following year and married Marie-Louise-Elodie Berthon, with whom he would father three daughters: Césarine, Fernande and Paule.
He apparently became interested in cryptography through solving cryptograms in newspapers' personal columns, and soon applied his cryptanalytic skills in a military context when, in 1890, he solved messages enciphered with the official French military transposition system, causing the War Ministry to change to a new scheme. In an effort to prompt reform within the government and enhance national security, Bazeries further exposed weaknesses in French cipher systems. In 1891, news of his talent had spread, and he began work for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' Bureau du Chiffre. Bazeries continued his cryptanalytic work there even after he retired from the Army in 1899, assisting in solving German military ciphers during World War I. However, many of Bazeries recommendations to the government for improvements in official cipher systems met severe bureaucracy and rebuffs, which became a constant source of frustration for him in an otherwise illustrious career. He retired in 1924, aged 78.
In the 1890s he broke a famous nomenclator system called the "Great Cipher", created by the Rossignols in the 17th century. One of the messages referred to the famous Man in the Iron Mask and provided a possible solution to the mystery. His influential 1901 text Les Chiffres secrets dévoilés ("Secret ciphers unveiled") is considered a landmark in cryptographic literature.
Hermann Dessau (6 April 1856, Frankfurt am Main – 12 April 1931, Berlin) was a German ancient historian and epigrapher. He is noted for a key work of textual criticism published in 1889 on the Historia Augusta, which uncovered reasons to believe that this surviving text of ancient Roman imperial history had been written under circumstances very different from those previously believed.
He studied at the University of Berlin as a pupil of Theodor Mommsen, receiving his doctorate in 1877 from the University of Strasbourg. On behalf of the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (CIL) he travelled to Italy and North Africa. In 1884 he was habilitated as a historian in Berlin, where he subsequently became an associate honorary professor (1912) and full honorary professor (1917). From 1900 to 1922 he served as a scientific officer for the Prussian Academy of Sciences.
Juan Zorrilla de San Martín (28 December 1855 – 3 November 1931) was an Uruguayan epic poet and political figure. He is referred to as the "National Poet of Uruguay".
Paul Trendelenburg (24 March 1884, Bonn – 4 February 1931, Berlin) was a German pharmacologist.
He studied medicine at the universities of Grenoble, Leipzig and Freiburg, where from 1909 to 1918, he worked as an assistant in the pharmacological institute and at the surgical clinic. In 1912 he received his habilitation in pharmacology and toxicology, and from 1916 was an associate professor. In 1919 he became a full professor at the University of Rostock and later on, he served as a professor of pharmacology at the universities of Freiburg (from 1923) and Berlin (from 1927).He is known for his research of adrenaline, for the development of biological measurement procedures for the standardization of hormone preparations and for his investigations regarding the role of the hypothalamic hormones vasopressin and oxytocin. His name is associated with the so-called "Trendelenburg preparation", a preparation used in determining the actions of pharmacological agents on peristalsis.He was the son of surgeon Friedrich Trendelenburg and the brother of physiologist Wilhelm Trendelenburg. His son, Ullrich Georg Trendelenburg, was also a pharmacologist.
Frédéric Paulhan (21 April 1856, Nîmes – 14 March 1931) was a French philosopher. He came from a family of merchants of Huguenot ancestry, and was a brilliant student at school in Nîmes. He left without graduating, and spent a few years without a recognised profession, studying and writing and developing an interest in philosophy and Republican political movements. In 1877 Paulhan contributed to the Revue Philosophique of Théodule Ribot. Paulhan became liable for military service when his assigned number was drawn in a lottery, but he was released from serving because of his stutter, which also made it difficult for him to teach.
After a political upset in the Nîmes city administration, which favoured Republicans, Paulhan was appointed librarian in 1881. During the years he held this post, Paulhan applied positivist methods to the institution, modernising it. He married Jeanne Thérond in 1884, and that same year their son was born, the future writer and editor Jean Paulhan. Frédéric Paulhan resigned his post in December 1896, affected by political instability in the municipality, and he moved to Paris. Here he continued to write, and he also built up an art collection of etchings, drawings, pastels along with a few paintings, purchased at auction. This collection was sold in 1934.
Paulhan entered the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences in 1902, sponsored by Ribot. He was awarded the Prix Jean-Reynaud in 1928. Paulhan was a freethinker, a Dreyfusard and possibly a Freemason; his work has importance in the current of French psychology. Among his books are Les caractères (1894), Les mensonges du caractère (1905), Le mensonge dans l'art (1907) and Le mensonge du monde (1921).
Frédéric Paulhan died on 14 March 1931. He is buried in the cemetery at Bagneux under a headstone carved with Masonic symbols.
Eduard Kaufmann (24 March 1860, Bonn – 15 December 1931, Göttingen) was a German physician.
The disease Abderhalden–Kaufmann–Lignac syndrome is named for him.
Jacques Marie Gaston Onfroy de Bréville, known by the pen name Job after his initials (25 November 1858, Bar-le-Duc – 15 September 1931, Neuilly-sur-Seine) was a French artist and illustrator.
Théophile Cart (March 31, 1855 in Saint-Antoine-de-Breuilh - May 21, 1931 in Paris) was a French Esperantist professor and linguist.
Beginning in 1907, Cart was an editor for Lingvo Internacia.
Martin Feuerstein (after 1914, Martin Ritter von Feuerstein; 6 January 1856, Barr - 13 February 1931, Munich) was a German painter and art teacher. He was a late adherent of the Nazarene movement, but was also heavily influenced by impressionism and Art Nouveau.