Engineer Husband is the science and math person in this family. I tend to gravitate towards the humanities–history, literature and languages. So this edition of daily birthdays is dedicated to my Engineer Husband, who sometimes reads my blog.

Sir John Frederick William Herschel, scientist, b. 1792. John Herschel was the son of William Herschel, the astronomer who discovered Uranus. The father was a skilled astronomer and a musician, but the son excelled in so many areas that he hardly had time to pursue all his interests. John Herschel was a mathemetician (helped write a textbook on the calculus), an astonomer and a chemist. He studied law, but decided that he was not suited for the legal profession. He published a number of papers on photography and the chemical processes related to photography. He also wrote poetry. John Herschel said, “All human discoveries seem to be made only for the purpose of confirming more and more strongly the truths [that] come from on high and [that are] contained in the sacred writings.” He also disbelieved Darwin’s theory of evolution, calling it “the law of higgledy-piggledy.” Herschel died in 1871 and was buried in Westminster Abbey; a few years later Charles Darwin was buried next to him.
Luther Burbank, American botanist and author, b. 1849. Burbank was a bit more focused than Herschel. “Despite receiving only an elementary education, Burbank developed more than 800 strains and varieties of plants, including 113 varieties of plums and prunes, 10 varieties of berries, 50 varieties of lilies, and the Freestone peach. ” Burbank was also a Darwinian evolutionist and a freethinker. He called himself “an infidel,” and said he would believe in life after death only if it were proved to him. In an essay called “Why I Am an Infidel“, he wrote, “There is no personal salvation, there is no national salvation, except through science.” He died in 1926.