Great Minds Born in December

 Here are all the "Great Minds" Posts made in December, 2021

December 1

• Black Elk (1863-1950) Native American elder and writer; Black Elk Speaks (with John Neihardt)
• Woody Allen (1935 - ) American filmmaker; Annie Hall; Interiors; Manhattan; The Purple Rose of Cairo; Hannah and Her Sisters; Bullets over Broadway; Mighty Aphrodite; Stardust Memories; Match Point; numerous Academy Awards

December 2

• Björnstjerne Björnson (1832-1910) Norwegian writer and Nobel winner (1903) known for his "peasant tales" such as A Happy Boy; with Ibsen, Lie, and Kielland, one of Norway's "Four Greats."
• Georges Seurat (1859-1891) French painter; Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte; Bathers at Asnières; Jeune femme se poudrant

December 3

• Joseph Conrad (1857-1924) Polish-British novelist; The Nigger of the "Narcissus"; Heart of Darkness; Lord Jim; Typhoon; Nostromo; The Secret Agent; Under Western Eyes
• Nagai Kafu (1879-1959) Japanese novelist, short-story writer, playwright, essayist, and diarist; Ude Kurabe (Geisha in Rivalry); Amerika Monogatari (American Stories); Sumidagawa (Sumida River); Bokuto Kidan (A Strange Tale from East of the River); films The Strange Story of Oyuki; Bungō: Sasayaka na yokubō; Yume no onna (Yearning)
• Taneda Santoka (1882-1940) Japanese poet; Somokuto (Grass and Tree Cairn); For All My Walking

December 4

• Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) Scottish philosopher; On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and The Heroic in History; The French Revolution: A History; Sartor Resartus
• Samuel Butler (1835-1902) English author; Erewhon; The Way of All Flesh
• Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) Bohemian-Austrian poet and novelist; poetry collections Duineser Elegien (Duino Elegies) and Die Sonette an Orpheus (Sonnets to Orpheus); novel Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge (The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge); and a collection of Letters to a Young Poet

December 5

• Christina Rossetti (1830-1894) English poet; Goblin Market; Remember
• Fritz Lang (1890-1976) Austrian-German filmmaker; Metropolis; M; The Big Heat; Fury; You Only Live Once; The Woman in the Window; While the City Sleeps
• Walt Disney (1901-1966) American filmmaker and entrepreneur responsible for dozens of animated and live-action films (which earned a record 22 Academy Awards, plus four honoraries) as well as theme parks and other enterprises. His films include Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs; Fantasia; Pinocchio; Dumbo; Bambi; Cinderella; and Mary Poppins.
• Werner Heisenberg (1901-1976) German physicist; The Physical Principles of the Quantum Theory; Nobel Prize in Physics (1932)
• Otto Preminger (1905-1986) Austrian American filmmaker; Laura; Fallen Angel; The Man with the Golden Arm; Anatomy of a Murder; Exodus; Advise and Consent; The Cardinal

December 6

• Baldassare Castiglione (1478-1529) Italian courtier and author; Il Cortegiano (The Courtier)

December 7

• Johan Huizinga (1872-1945) Dutch historian; The Autumn of the Middle Ages (a.k.a. The Waning of the Middle Ages); Erasmus; Homo Ludens
• Willa Cather (1873-1947) American author; O Pioneers!; Death Comes for the Archbishop; The Song of the Lark; My Ántonia; Pulitzer Prize in Literature (1923)

December 8

• Horace (65-8 BCE) Roman lyric poet who wrote Odes
• Padraic Colum (1881-1972) Irish poet, novelist, dramatist, playwright, children's author, and folklorist; The Saxon Shillin'; The King of Ireland's Son; The Children's Homer; Children of Odin: Nordic Gods and Heroes; The Golden Fleece and the Heroes Who Lived Before Achilles
• Diego Rivera (1886-1957) Mexican painter and muralist; murals Man, Controller of the Universe; The History of Mexico; paintings The Fecund Earth; The Flower Seller
• James Thurber (1894-1961) American cartoonist, author, journalist, and playwright; short stories "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty"; "The Catbird Seat"; "The Unicorn in the Garden"; play The Male Animal; autobiography My Life and Hard Times; children's books The White Deer; The 13 Clocks; The Wonderful O
• Delmore Schwartz (1913-1966) American poet and short story writer; "In Dreams Begin Responsibilities"; Summer Knowledge: New and Selected Poems
• Bill Bryson (1951 - ) Anglo-American author; The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America; Notes from a Small Island; A Walk in the Woods; A Short History of Nearly Everything

December 9

• John Milton (1608-1674) English poet and man of letters; Paradise Lost; Tractate on Education; Areopagitica; and minor poems in English (including "Lycidas" and "On the Morning of Christ's Nativity"; "Sonnets")
• Richard Lovelace (1617-1657) English poet; "To Althea, from Prison," "To Lucasta, Going to the Warres"
• Joel Chandler Harris (1848-1908) American journalist and folklorist; the Uncle Remus series

December 10

• George MacDonald (1824-1905) Scottish writer and cleric who inspired a myriad of writers, from Lewis Carroll to W. H. Auden, Mark Twain to J. R. R. Tolkien, Neil Gaiman to Madeleine L'Engle.. Known for Lilith; Phantastes; David Elginbrod; The Princess and the Goblin; At the Back of the North Wind
• Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) American poet; short pieces numbering close to 1800; "There is no frigate like a book"; "Because I could not stop for death"; "I taste a liquor never brewed"; "I'm Nobody! Who are you?"; "I like to see it lap the Miles"; etc.

December 11

• Hector Berlioz (1803-1869) French composer; Damnation of Faust; Symphonie Fantastique; Requiem
• Horace Bell (1830-1918) American author and lawman; Reminiscences of a Ranger
• Naguib Mahfouz (1911-2006) Egyptian writer; 34 novels (including Midaq Alley and the "Cairo Trilogy"), over 350 short stories, and more; Nobel Prize in Literature (1988)
• Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008) Russian novelist, historian, and short story writer; The First Circle; One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich; Cancer Ward; August 1914; The Gulag Archipelago; Nobel Prize in Literature (1970)

December 12

• Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880) French novelist; novel Madame Bovary; stories "A Simple Heart," "Saint Julian the Hospitalier," and "Hérodias"
• Edvard Munch (1863-1944) Norwegian painter; The Scream; Madonna; The Sick Child

December 13

• Heinrich Heine (1797-1856) German poet; Buch der Lieder (Book of Songs), many set to music by the likes of Robert Schumann and Franz Schubert; also, Reisebilder (Travel Pictures); Deutschland: Ein Wintermärchen (Germany: A Winter's Tale); Atta Troll: Ein Sommernachtstraum (Atta Troll: A Midsummer Night's Dream); Romanzero (a collection)
• Marc Connelly (1890-1980) American playwright; best known for his play The Green Pastures, which tells Bible stories as visualized by black characters, and won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1930
• Ross Macdonald (1915-1983) American-Canadian author of crime stories, including the Lew Archer series

December 14

• Shirley Jackson (1916-1965) American novelist and short story writer; The Haunting of Hill House; "Charles"; "The Lottery"

December 15

• Maurice Wilkins (1916-2004) New Zealand-English biophysicist and co-laureate of the 1962 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine along with the better-known James Watson and Francis Crick for their work in unraveling the secrets of DNA.
• Freeman Dyson (1923-2020) groundbreaking English-American theoretical physicist and mathematician who originated several concepts that bear his name, none of which I understand
• Edna O'Brien (1930 - ) prolific Irish novelist, playwright, poet, and short story writer best known for The Country Girls, a trilogy which broke the taboo on discussing sexual matters in Ireland after WWII. The novels were censored and faced significant public disdain in Ireland.

December 16

• Jane Austen (1775-1817) revered English novelist; Sense and Sensibility; Pride and Prejudice; Mansfield Park; Emma; Northanger Abbey; Persuasion
• George Santayana (1863-1952) Spanish-American philosopher, essayist, poet, and novelist who said, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." His many works include The Sense of Beauty; The Life of Reason; Scepticism and Animal Faith; The Last Puritan
• Margaret Mead (1901-1978) American cultural anthropologist who became a media darling during the 1960s and 1970s. Coming of Age in Samoa put her on the map; Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies extended her influence.
• Noel Coward (1899-1973) witty, flamboyant English playwright of Hay Fever; Private Lives; Design for Living; Present Laughter; Blithe Spirit; Academy Honorary Award (1943)
• Arthur C. Clarke (1917-2008) visionary British author of science fiction; 2001: A Space Odyssey; Profiles of the Future; Rendezvous with Rama; The Fountains of Paradise
• Philip K. Dick (1928-1982) American author of science fiction; Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (better known as Blade Runner); The Man in the High Castle; A Scanner Darkly; Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said; the VALIS trilogy; We Can Remember It For You Wholesale

December 17

• Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) prototypical German composer best known for his Fifth and Ninth Symphonies (the other seven are pretty good, too); Concertos (Emperor); sonatas (Moonlight, Pathetique); opera Fidelio; "Fur Elise"
• John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892) American poet, known for Barbara Frietchie and Snow-Bound; anti-slavery writings
• Ford Madox Ford (1873-1939) English novelist, poet, critic and editor known for his novels The Good Soldier; Parade's End (tetralogy); The Fifth Queen (trilogy)
• Erskine Caldwell (1903-1987) trashy-seeming American novelist and social critic; Tobacco Road (ironically, he died of complications from smoking); God's Little Acre

December 18

• Charles Wesley (1707-1788) English leader of the Methodist movement (brother of John) who wrote somewhere between 6,500 and 10,000 hymns, including "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing," "Christ the Lord Is Risen Today," "Christ, Whose Glory Fills the Skies," "Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus," "Love Divine, All Loves Excelling"
• Saki (1870-1916), pen name for H. H. Munro, light-hearted British short story writer, playwright, and novelist; "The Storyteller"; "The Open Window"; "The East Wing"; The Westminster Alice; The Chronicles of Clovis
• Christopher Fry (1907-2005) English poet and playwright; best-known for his play about the Middle Ages, The Lady's Not for Burning, in which a soldier wants to die and a supposed witch wants to live.
• Steven Spielberg (1946 - ) ubiquitous American filmmaker; Jaws; Close Encounters of the Third Kind; Raiders of the Lost Ark; E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial; The Color Purple; Empire of the Sun; Schindler's List (Oscar for Best Picture and Best Director); Amistad; Saving Private Ryan (Oscar for Best Director; Munich; Lincoln; Jurassic Park; 14 more Academy Award nominations to date

December 19

• Italo Svevo (1861-1928) Italian novelist, playwright, and short story writer, a close friend of James Joyce. He wrote The Confession of Zeno and As a Man Grows Older.
• Oliver La Farge (1901-1963) American novelist and anthropologist who wrote about Native American culture; Laughing Boy, about the assimilation of the Navajos, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1930)
• Jean Genet (1910-1986) French writer--once a vagabond and petty criminal--who became novelist, playwright, poet, essayist, and political activist; novels Our Lady of the Flowers, The Thief's Journal; play The Balcony

December 20

• George Roy Hill (1922-2002) American film director of such films as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (nominated: Best Director Oscar) and The Sting (won: Best Director Oscar), both with Paul Newman and Robert Redford; as well as Slaughterhouse-Five, The World According to Garp, and others.
• Sandra Cisneros (1954 - ) American author and poet best known for her first novel, a coming-of-age story called The House on Mango Street, and her short story collection Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories.
• Alain de Botton (1969 - ) Swiss-born British philosopher and author who explores philosophy's relevance to everyday life in books like Essays in Love, How Proust Can Change Your Life, etc. Founder of The School of Life.

December 21

• Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) English lawyer, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, who wrote over 15 novels--some of them while in office--as well as poetry, a drama, and non-fiction books.
• Albert Payson Terhune (1872-1942) American author, dog breeder, and journalist who wrote around 70 books, many of them about dogs, specifically his collies, including Lad: A Dog.
• Rebecca West, pen name of Cicily Isabel Fairfield (1892-1983) English journalist and novelist called by Time Magazine in 1947, "indisputably the world's number one woman writer."
• Anthony Powell (1905-2000) English novelist best known for his 12-volume A Dance to the Music of Time (1951-1975), an examination of mid-20th century English politics, culture, and military, and one of the longest novels ever written in English.
• Jeffrey Katzenberg (1950 - ) American movie exec, chairman of Walt Disney Studios for a decade (during which Roger Rabbit, The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Lion King were produced), and co-founder and CEO of DreamWorks Animation (overseeing Shrek, Madagascar, Kung Fu Panda).

December 22

• Jean Racine (1639-1699) French writer of elegant, hard-edged plays; Phèdre; Andromaque; Athalie
• Jean-Henri Fabre (1823-1915) French scientist who wrote lively works on insects, especially for younger readers; try Fabre's Book of Insects.
• Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924) Italian composer of operas; La Boheme; Manon Lescaut; Tosca; Madama Butterfly; Turandot
• Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869-1935) American poet; three Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry in one decade: Collected Poems (1922); The Man Who Died Twice (1925); Tristram (1928). He was also nominated four times for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

December 23

• Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve (1804-1869) French literary critic widely translated into English; "What Is a Classic?" (the answer may surprise you!); "Montaigne."

December 24

• Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) English poet and critic, as well as school inspector; "Dover Beach"; "The Scholar-Gipsy"; "Thyrsis"; Culture and Anarchy; Literature and Dogma
• Michael Curtiz (1886-1962) Hungarian-American filmmaker of some of the best:; Casablanca (Best Director Oscar); Angels with Dirty Faces; Yankee Doodle Dandy; Mildred Pierce; White Christmas
• Fritz Leiber (1910-1992) amusing American fantasy and science fiction writer, most famous for stories starring his characters Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser

December 25

• Isaac Newton (1642-1727) English natural philosopher (scientist), and something of a mystic to boot; Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy)
• William Collins (1721-1759) English poet second in influence in his time only to Thomas Gray (see December 26); Persian Eclogues
• Cab Calloway (1907-1994) larger-than-life American performer and bandleader; "Minnie the Moocher"; "Saint James Infirmary"; "Kicking the Gong Around"; "Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea"; Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award (2008)

December 26

• Thomas Gray (1716-1771) English poet; "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard"; "Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes"
• Jean Toomer (1894-1967) American poet and novelist who resisted being classified as a "Negro writer," best known for the novel Cane. He was later a follower spiritual teacher G.I. Gurdjieff.
• Henry Miller (1891-1980) American writer of notoriously naughty books; Tropic of Cancer; Black Spring; Tropic of Capricorn; The Colossus of Maroussi; The Rosy Crucifixion (Sexus, Plexus, and Nexus)

December 27

• Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) German astronomer and mathematician who codified the laws of planetary motion; writings Astronomia Nova (New Astronomy); Harmonices Mundi (The Harmony of the World); Epitome Astronomiae Copernicanae (Epitome of Copernican Astronomy)
• Louis Pasteur (1822-1895) French chemist and microbiologist, a pioneer of vaccination development and the inventor of pasteurization. He wrote Germ Theory and Its Applications to Medicine.
• Juan Felipe Herrera (1948 - ) bilingual American Chicano poet, Poet Laureate of the USA (2015-2017); works include Calling the Doves/Canto a Las Palomas; CrashBoomLove: A Novel in Verse; Grandma & Me at the Flea/Los Meros Meros Remateros; and Super Cilantro Girl/La Superniña del Cilantro.

December 28

• Arthur Eddington (1882-1944) English astronomer, physicist, mathematician, philosopher and (most importantly for many of us) popularizer of science; The Mathematical Theory of Relativity; The Nature of the Physical World; New Pathways in Science

December 29

• Charles Macintosh (1766-1843) Scottish chemist and the inventor of waterproof fabric; the Mackintosh [sic; the "k" was added] raincoat is named after him, leading to great confusion for this American boy when the Beatles sang, "The man in the mac said 'You've got to go back'" in "The Ballad of John and Yoko."
• Charles Goodyear (1800-1860) American chemist and manufacturing engineer who developed vulcanized rubber, leading to the formation of the company that sponsored a fleet of airships ("blimps") used for advertising and, later, aerial coverage of sporting events (while advertising).
• Pablo Casals (1876-1973) Catalan cellist and conductor, one of the greatest cellists of all time, who gave a solo recital in Barcelona at the age of fourteen. Best remembered for recordings of the Bach Cello Suites made from 1936 to 1939; Presidential Medal of Freedom, 1963, among many honors.
• Robert Ruark (1915-1965) American author, syndicated columnist, and big game hunter. Though called "ruthless" and "a tough and cruel rogue," his fame today rests on two collections of columns from Field & Stream, titled The Old Man and the Boy and The Old Man's Boy Grows Older, fictionalized conversations embodying the wisdom his grandfathers taught him.

December 30

• Theodor Fontane (1819-1898) German novelist and poet who, after a career in journalism, published his first novel at age 58; this is what he is best remembered for today. He was often critical of the German society of his day, and was known for his strongly drawn female characters, his tender irony, and the quality of the dialogues in his work. Best-remembered novels include Trials and Tribulations, Frau Jenny Treibel, and Effi Briest.
• Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) English journalist, short-story writer, poet, and novelist, whose "children's books" say more than many "adult books" these days; The Jungle Book; Just So Stories; Kim; Captains Courageous; poems "If—"; "Gunga Din"; "The White Man's Burden"; Nobel Prize in Literature (1907)
• Paul Bowles (1910-1999) American expat (52 years in Tangiers) composer, translator, and author of novels like The Sheltering Sky and short story collections like The Delicate Prey and Other Stories.

December 31

• Jean de Crèvecoeur (1735-1813) French-American author; At age 20 he immigrated to America, became a citizen, and took the name John Hector St. John; he later married an American woman. He returned to France (after many trials) around 1780. In London he wrote Letters from an American Farmer, on which his fame rests today. He would move between the US and France for the rest of his life.
• Henri Matisse (1869-1954) French artist, one of the Fauves (wild beasts) known for their use of intense color. He is commonly regarded, with Picasso, as one of the artists responsible for significant developments in 20th-century arts. Representative works include Woman with a Hat; The Joy of Life; Nu bleu; and La Danse.