From History: Today's Famous Birthdays - 22/Jan/2018

Hi Steemians,

This is an effort to provide some information on Five selected famous personalities born on this day.

Courtesy of this information goes to onthisday.com, famousbirthdays.com and wikipedia.org and image source is mentioned under "Source" just below each image.

1. John Hurt

Source

John Hurt was an English actor with an acting career over 50 years.

He was regarded as one of the finest actors.

He was a 2 time nominee for Academy Awards and winner of Golden Globe and BAFTA awards.

Some of his notable movies include A Man for All Seasons, The Elephant Man, Champions, The Hit, The Field, Harry Potter series, Helloboy and it's sequel, Indian Jones and the Kingdom of Crystal Skull.

2. U Thant

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U Thant was a Burmese diplomat and third Secretory General of United Nations for 2 terms with a period of 1961 to 1971.

He was the first non European Secretory General.

Before being secretory general of UN, U Thant served in various positions under Burma's first prime minister U Nu and was a close friend of him.

He was known for his decisions as part of being secretory general of UN, either it's negotiations between the then President of US John F Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev during Cuban missile crisis or Operation Grandslam to end secessionist insurgency in Congo.

He was intimated by Nobel Prize body that he will be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 1965 for his efforts on Cuban crisis and other peace keeping works, for which he said "Is not the Secretary-General merely doing his job when he works for peace?".

Eventually the Nobel Prize was awarded to UNICEF because of the lobbying of Chairman of Nobel Peace Prize committee.

3. Lord Byron

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Lord Byron was an English poet, politician and is regarded as the leading person in the romantic movement amd one of the greatest British poets.

His most notable works include Don Juan, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Manfred, Mazeppa.

His only legitimate daughter Ada Lovelace is considered as the first computer programmer.

4. Alan J. Heeger

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Alan J. Heeger is an American physicist and academic who is a Nobel prize laureate in Chemistry in 2000 (along with Alan G. MacDiarmid and Hideki Shirakawa) for the discovery and development of conductive polymers.

He completed his PhD from University of California and worked as faculty for University of Pennsylvania and currently working as professor in University of California.

5. Lev D Landau

Source

Lev D Landau was an Azerbaizan-Soviet physicist who was a contributor to many areas of theoretical physics.

Some of his inventions/discoveries include the quantum mechanical theory of diamagnetism, the theory of superfluidity, the theory of second-order phase transitions, the theory of Fermi liquid to name a few.

For his theory of superfluidity, he won Nobel Prize in physics in 1962.