Brynn Holland writes for The History Channel: “James Barry began his military career on July 6, 1813, as a Hospital Assistant in the British Army, and was soon promoted to Assistant Staff Surgeon, equivalent to lieutenant. He then served in Cape Town, South Africa, for 10 years where he befriended the governor, Lord Charles Somerset. Barry was known for his short, hot temper. Patients, superiors, army captains and even Florence Nightingale herself were on the receiving end of his anger. He threw medicine bottles and even participated in a duel. But his medical skills were unprecedented. He was the first to perform a successful caesarean section in the British Empire where both the mother and child survived. Dr. Barry died from dysentery on July 25, 1865. His last wishes were to be buried in the clothes he died in, without his body being washed—wishes that were not followed. When the nurse undressed the body, she discovered female anatomy and tell-tale stretch marks from pregnancy.”
How an accountant in India was recognized as a mathematical prodigy
Stephen Wolfram, who published his first scientific paper at 15 and got a PhD in theoretical physics at the age of 20, writes about the man known as Ramanujan: “I have for many years received a steady trickle of messages that make bold claims but give little or no backup for what they say. But in the end I try to at least skim them—in large part because I remember the story of Ramanujan. On about January 31, 1913 a mathematician named G. H. Hardy in Cambridge received a package of papers with a cover letter that began: “Dear Sir, I beg to introduce myself to you as a clerk in the Accounts Department of the Port Trust Office at Madras on a salary of only £20 per annum. I am now about 23 years of age….” and went on to say that its author had made “startling” progress on a theory of divergent series in mathematics, and had all but solved the longstanding problem of the distribution of prime numbers.”
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