René Descartes (March 31, 1596 – 11 February 1650) was a French philosopher, mathematician and scientist. Dubbed the father of modern western philosophy, much of subsequent Western philosophy is a response to his writings, which are studied closely to this day. Descartes’s Meditations on First Philosophy (1641) continues to be a standard text at most university philosophy departments. Descartes’s influence in mathematics is equally apparent; the Cartesian coordinate system was named after him and he is credited as the father of analytic geometry. Descartes was also one of the key figures in the scientific revolution and laid the foundation for 17th-century continental rationalism. His best known philosophical statement is “Cogito ergo sum” (I think, therefore I am), first found in Discourse on the Method (1637).
Jules Verne (February 8, 1828 – March 24, 1905) was a French novelist, poet and playwright best known for his adventure novels and his profound influence on the literary genre of science fiction. Early in life Verne wrote for magazines and the stage. His collaboration with the publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel led to the creation of the Voyages extraordinaires, a widely popular series of scrupulously researched adventure novels including Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870) and Around the World in Eighty Days (1873). Verne has had a wide influence on the literary avant-garde and on surrealism in France and most of Europe. Verne has been the second most-translated author in the world since 1979, ranking between Agatha Christie and William Shakespeare.
Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 – July 27, 1946) was an American novelist, poet, playwright and art collector. Born in Pittsburgh and raised in Oakland, Stein moved to Paris in 1903, and made France her home for the remainder of her life. She hosted a Paris salon, where the leading figures in modernism in literature and art would meet, such as Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sinclair Lewis, Ezra Pound and Henri Matisse. Stein’s books include Q.E.D. (1903), Fernhurst (1904), Three Lives (1905-06), The Making of Americans (1902-1911) and Tender Buttons (1912). In the latter work, Stein comments on lesbian sexuality. In 1933, Stein published a kind of memoir of her Paris years, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, written in the voice of Alice B. Toklas, her life partner. As a Jew living in Nazi-occupied France during World War II, Stein may have been able to save her life and sustain her lifestyle as an art collector through the protection of powerful Vichy government official Bernard Faÿ.
Marjane Satrapi is an Iranian-born French graphic novelist, illustrator, film director and children’s book author. She became famous worldwide because of her critically acclaimed autobiographical graphic novels, Persepolis and Persepolis 2. The series describes her childhood in Iran, during and after the Islamic Revolution, and her adolescence in Europe. Satrapi and comic artist Vincent Paronnaud co-directed an animated adaptation, also called Persepolis (2007). Satrapi was born on November 22, 1969.
Brigitte Bardot is a French former actress, singer and fashion model. She was one of the best known sex symbols of the 1950s and 1960s and was widely referred to by her initials. During her career in show business, she starred in 47 films, performed in several musical shows and recorded over 60 songs. Bardot started her acting career in 1952 and became world-famous in 1957 with the controversial film And God Created Woman. She later starred in the 1963 film Contempt by Jean-Luc Godard. French photographer Sam Lévin was instrumental in creating Bardot’s image, particularly with The Towel Session shoot in 1959. Bardot caught the attention of French intellectuals and was the subject of a famous essay, Brigitte Bardot and the Lolita Syndrome by Simone de Beauvoir. Bardot retired from the entertainment industry in 1973. After her retirement, she established herself as an animal rights activist. During the 1990s, she generated controversy by criticizing immigration and Islam in France and has been fined five times for inciting racial hatred. Bardot was born on September 28, 1934.
F. Scott Fitzgerald was an American author of novels and short stories, whose works are the paradigmatic writings of the Jazz Age. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. Fitzgerald is considered a member of the “Lost Generation” of the 1920s. He finished four novels: This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and Damned, The Great Gatsby (his best known) and Tender Is the Night. A fifth, unfinished novel, The Love of the Last Tycoon, was published posthumously. Fitzgerald also wrote many short stories that treat themes of youth and promise along with age and despair. He was born on September 24, 1896 and died on December 21, 1940.
Margaretha MacLeod, better known by the stage name Mata Hari, was a Frisian exotic dancer and courtesan who was convicted of being a spy and executed by firing squad in France under charges of espionage for Germany during World War I. The idea of an exotic dancer working as a lethal double agent using her powers of seduction to extract military secrets from her many lovers made Mata Hari an enduring archetype of the femme fatale. Her life inspired multiple films, including Mata Hari (1931) starring Greta Garbo, which further popularized the Mata Hari legend. Mata Hari was born on August 7, 1876 and died on October 15, 1917.
Jacques-Yves Cousteau was a French naval officer, explorer, conservationist, filmmaker, innovator, scientist, photographer, author and researcher who studied the sea and all forms of life in water. He co-developed the Aqua-Lung, pioneered marine conservation and was a member of the French Academy. Cousteau described his underwater world research in series of books, perhaps most successful being his first book, The Silent World: A Story of Undersea Discovery and Adventure, published in 1953. He also directed films, most notably the documentary adaptation of the book, The Silent World, which won a Palme d’or at the 1956 Cannes Film Festival. Cousteau was born on June 11, 1910 and died on June 25, 1997.
Niall Ó Glacáin, or Nellanus Glacanus (c. 1563-1653) was an Irish physician during the time of the Bubonic plague. Of all documented plague doctors, Ó Glacáin was the most notable. He treated victims throughout France, Spain and Italy. Bubonic plague is commonly believed to be the cause of the Black Death that swept through Europe. Sometime before 1600, Ó Glacáin made his way to Spain, possibly to treat victims of an outbreak of the plague, which was rampant from 1595 to 1602. The beak doctor costume was invented around 1619 (during the second plague pandemic); the beak-like mask was filled with aromatic items for air purification. In 1627, Ó Glacáin moved to France to assist during another plague outbreak. In 1629, as a respected authority on plague treatment, Ó Glacáin published his most famous work, Tractatus de Peste, which contained his concise descriptions of the plague, its various effects on patients, and treatment and prevention recommendations.
I’ve been saving this 8-bit plague doctor character for a long time. I wanted Ó Glacáin to be No. 800, which meant waiting until this year’s All Hallows’ Eve. On that note, I have now drawn 800 of these primitive pixel art characters over the past four years. Here are seven other individuals that I chose to honor numerically: No. 100 (Benjamin Franklin), No. 200 (Johnny Cash), No. 300 (Leonidas I), No. 400 (Charles Darwin), No. 500 (William Gibson), No. 600 (Jeff Mangum), No. 700 (J. D. Salinger). Happy Halloween! Also, Ebola. As previously tweeted, the following is the plot of Absolute Zero, a book published in 1999: “A man with Ebola flew to Dallas and began the Ebola pandemic in America.” Creepy.
Tony Parker is a French professional basketball point guard for the NBA’s San Antonio Spurs. He played for two years in the French basketball league before being selected by the San Antonio Spurs in the 2001 NBA Draft. Parker helped the Spurs win three NBA championships in 2003, 2005 and 2007—and was the 2007 NBA Finals MVP. Employing his pace and high field goal percentage to great effect, Parker has been named to six NBA All-Star games. He was also named the FIBA EuroBasket 2013 MVP following his team’s victory over Lithuania in the gold medal game. Parker is also a music artist with his own music album TP.
Grace Kelly was an American film actress and Princess of Monaco as the wife of Prince Rainier III. After embarking on an acting career in 1950, at the age of 20, she appeared in New York City theatrical productions and more than 40 episodes of live drama productions broadcast during the early 1950s Golden Age of Television. She starred in films from 1953 to 1956, including Dial M for Murder, Rear Window and The Country Girl (in which she gave a deglamorized, Academy Award-winning performance). She retired from acting at the age of 26 to marry Prince Rainier and enter upon her duties in Monaco. She retained her American roots, maintaining dual U.S. and Monégasque citizenship. She was born on November 12, 1929 and died on September 14, 1982.
Jean-Pierre Jeunet is a French film director. His feature films include Delicatessen (1991), The City of Lost Children (1995), Amélie (2001) and A Very Long Engagement (2004). Jeunet often uses wide camera angles and elaborate camera movements, and makes extensive use of color grading in order to give his movies the desired (often fantastic) ambiance. He was born on this day in 1953.
I have drawn 8-bit Jean-Pierre Jeunet wearing “the third eye,” which is a mechanical monocle from The City of Lost Children. These steampunk-style devices are worn by the Cyclops, a cult of blind religious zealots who kidnap children so that an aging scientist may steal their dreams. The City of Lost Children is one of my three favorite films of all time (the others being Lost Highway and Chungking Express).
Josephine Baker was an American-born French dancer, singer and actress. Born in St. Louis, she became a citizen of France in 1937. Fluent in both English and French, Baker was an international icon, perhaps best known for her infamous banana dance. She was the first African-American female to star in a major motion picture, Zouzou (1934), integrate an American concert hall and become a world-famous entertainer. Baker is also noted for her contributions to the civil rights movement in the United States, for assisting the French Resistance during World War II and for receiving the French military honor, the Croix de guerre.
Note: Baker was offered the unofficial leadership of the civil rights movement by Coretta Scott King in 1968 following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., but turned it down.
Marcel Proust was a French novelist, critic and essayist. He is best known for his monumental novel In Search of Lost Time, which explores involuntary memory and was published in seven volumes between 1913 and 1927. Proust was one of the wordiest men in literature: “The length of individual Proustian sentences, snakelike constructions, the very longest of which, located in the fifth volume, would, if arranged along a single line in standard-sized text, run on for a little short of four meters and stretch around the base of a bottle of wine seventeen times,” wrote Alain de Botton. The reclusive Proust wrote the one-and-a-quarter-million words of his epic novel while bedridden. Proust was born on this day in 1871.
Heidi and I visited Proust’s grave in the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris last October during our trip to Europe. A visitor had charmingly set out a tea cup and saucer for him. Oh, the involuntary memories elicited by the cue of tea biscuit dunking. Proust is one of Heidi’s favorite dead people, though that list is quite long.
Luis Buñuel was a Spanish filmmaker who worked in Spain, Mexico and France. When Buñuel died at age 83, his obituary in The New York Times called him “an iconoclast, moralist and revolutionary who was a leader of avant-garde surrealism in his youth and a dominant international movie director half a century later.” Often associated with the Surrealist movement of the 1920s, Buñuel created acclaimed films in six decades, from the 1920s through the 1970s. Still, he is perhaps best known for his first film, Un Chien Andalou (1929), a 16-minute silent short made with Salvador Dalí. Buñuel was born on this day in 1900.
Alejandro Jodorowsky is a Chilean-French filmmaker, playwright, actor, author and comics writer. A hero of the underground film circuit, he is best known for his violently surreal avant-garde films, including cult classics Fando y Lis (1967), the acid western El Topo (1970) and The Holy Mountain (1973). Jodorowsky’s “psychoshamanism” spiritual system borrows from his interests in alchemy, the tarot, Zen Buddhism and shamanism. He was born on this day in 1929.
Jacques Dominique Wilkins is a retired American professional basketball player (born in France) who primarily played for the Atlanta Hawks of the NBA. Wilkins was a nine-time NBA All-Star, and one of the best dunkers in NBA history, earning the nickname “The Human Highlight Film.” Wilkins participated in five slam dunk contests (1984, 1985, 1986, 1988 and 1990), winning two. In 1985, he beat rookie Michael Jordan in the finals. In 1986, Wilkins was defeated by his 5′ 7″ teammate, Spud Webb. In 1988, the highly anticipated rematch of Wilkins vs. Jordan resulted in Jordan winning 147 to 145, controversially.
As a kid, I tried to imitate the 1988 NBA Slam Dunk Contest dunks on the NERF basketball hoop attached above my bedroom door. Or, even better, on the metal basketball hoop mounted in my late grandparents’ basement that my dad built from Erector Set pieces in the late 1950s. These dunks were essentially the practice of accidentally slamming my nine-year-old extremities into the door frame or doorknob as I contorted my body to get a foam ball to pass through an orange plastic hoop. And the crowd goes wild.
Nostradamus was a French apothecary and reputed seer who published collections of prophecies that have since become famous worldwide. He is best known for his book Les Propheties, the first edition of which appeared in 1555. Despite loads of academic whining about popular misinterpretations and deliberate mistranslations of his vague quatrains, Nostradamus has still been credited with predicting many major world events. He was also a famous plague doctor who gave medical advice about preventive measures.
Note: Nostradamus was born on December 14 or 21, 1503. This means his birthday is either today or next week, which precisely coincides with the so-called end of the Maya calendar. So, Happy 509th Birthday, Dr. Apocalypse.
Leeloo is the perfect, supreme being in The Fifth Element, a 1997 French science fiction film directed by Luc Besson. In the 23rd century, Korben Dallas (Bruce Willis), a taxicab driver and retired military officer, teams up with Leeloo (Milla Jovovich) to defend the world from an evil presence that enters the galaxy every 5,000 years. They must overcome the evil Zorg and locate four ancient stones representing the four basic elements of earth, air, fire and water. Positioning the stones around the Fifth Element will create a legendary cosmic weapon. Leeloo’s ancient language and strange customs are entertaining.
Marie Curie was a French-Polish physicist and chemist, famous for her pioneering research on radioactivity. She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize and the only person to win in multiple sciences (1903 in Physics and 1911 in Chemistry). She studied at Warsaw’s clandestine Flying University before moving to Paris. Her achievements include a theory of radioactivity, techniques for isolating radioactive isotopes and the discovery of polonium and radium. Curie was born on this day in 1867 and died in 1934 of aplastic anemia from years of exposure to radiation.
Note: After more than 100 years, all of Curie’s papers are still incredibly radioactive. Opening the lead-lined boxes that contain her manuscripts requires radiation gear.
Niall Ó Glacáin – No. 800
Niall Ó Glacáin, or Nellanus Glacanus (c. 1563-1653) was an Irish physician during the time of the Bubonic plague. Of all documented plague doctors, Ó Glacáin was the most notable. He treated victims throughout France, Spain and Italy. Bubonic plague is commonly believed to be the cause of the Black Death that swept through Europe. Sometime before 1600, Ó Glacáin made his way to Spain, possibly to treat victims of an outbreak of the plague, which was rampant from 1595 to 1602. The beak doctor costume was invented around 1619 (during the second plague pandemic); the beak-like mask was filled with aromatic items for air purification. In 1627, Ó Glacáin moved to France to assist during another plague outbreak. In 1629, as a respected authority on plague treatment, Ó Glacáin published his most famous work, Tractatus de Peste, which contained his concise descriptions of the plague, its various effects on patients, and treatment and prevention recommendations.
I’ve been saving this 8-bit plague doctor character for a long time. I wanted Ó Glacáin to be No. 800, which meant waiting until this year’s All Hallows’ Eve. On that note, I have now drawn 800 of these primitive pixel art characters over the past four years. Here are seven other individuals that I chose to honor numerically: No. 100 (Benjamin Franklin), No. 200 (Johnny Cash), No. 300 (Leonidas I), No. 400 (Charles Darwin), No. 500 (William Gibson), No. 600 (Jeff Mangum), No. 700 (J. D. Salinger). Happy Halloween! Also, Ebola. As previously tweeted, the following is the plot of Absolute Zero, a book published in 1999: “A man with Ebola flew to Dallas and began the Ebola pandemic in America.” Creepy.