John Forbes Nash,Jr.  (born June 13, 1928),

 is an American mathematician and economist. He shared the 1994 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with game theorists Reinhard Selten and John Harsanyi.In Princeton campus legend, Nash became “The Phantom of Fine Hall” (Fine Hall is Princeton’s mathematics center), a shadowy figure who would scribble arcane equations on blackboards in the middle of the night.Nash’s recent work involves ventures in advanced game theory, including partial agency, that show that, as in his early career, he prefers to select his own path and problems. Between 1945 and 1996, he published 23 scientific studies.In 1951, Nash went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a C. L. E. Moore Instructor in the mathematics faculty. There, he met Alicia López-Harrison de Lardé (born January 1, 1933), a physics student from El Salvador, whom he married in February 1957. Alicia admitted Nash to a mental hospital in 1959 for schizophrenia. He began to show signs of extreme paranoia and his wife later described his behavior as becoming increasingly erratic, stating that he began speaking of characters who were putting him in danger. Nash mailed letters to foreign embassies in Washington, D.C. declaring that he was establishing a world government.He was involuntarily admitted into the McLean Hospital, April–May 1959, where he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and mild clinical depression.He was in and out of mental hospitals until 1970, being given insulin shock therapy and antipsychotic medications, usually as a result of being involuntarily committed. After 1970 he was never committed to the hospital again and never took antipsychotic medication again.Nash recovered gradually with the passage of time. Encouraged by his then former wife, Alicia, Nash worked in a communitarian setting where his eccentricities were accepted Nash has suggested his delusional thinking was related to his unhappiness, and his striving to feel important and be recognized, and to his characteristic way of thinking such that “I wouldn’t have had good scientific ideas if I had thought more normally.”Nash is also the subject of the Hollywood movie, A Beautiful Mind, which was nominated for eight Oscars (winning four), and was based on the biography of the same name about him, his mathematical genius and his struggle with schizophrenia. His theories are still used today in market economics, computing, accounting and military theory.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt (January 30, 1882 – April 12, 1945), often referred to by his initialsFDR, was the thirty-second President of the United States.He was a central figure of the 20th century during a time of worldwide economic crisis and world war.He is the only U.S. president to have served more than two terms.In August 1921, while the Roosevelts were vacationing at Campobello Island, New Brunswick, Roosevelt contracted an illness, at the time believed to be polio, which resulted in Roosevelt‘s total and permanent paralysis from the waist down. For the rest of his life, Roosevelt refused to accept that he was permanently paralyzed. He tried a wide range of therapies, including hydrotherapy, and, in 1926, he purchased a resort at Warm Springs, Georgia, where he founded a hydrotherapy center for the treatment of polio patients which still operates as the Roosevelt Warm Springs Institute for Rehabilitation. After he became President, he helped to found the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis (now known as the March of Dimes). His leadership in this organization is one reason he is commemorated on the dime. At the time, Roosevelt was able to convince many people that he was in fact getting better, which he believed was essential if he was to run for public office again. Fitting his hips and legs with iron braces, he laboriously taught himself to walk a short distance by swiveling his torso while supporting himself with a cane. In private, he used a wheelchair, but he was careful never to be seen in it in public. He usually appeared in public standing upright, supported on one side by an aide or one of his sons.Roosevelt, only 62 in 1944, was in declining health since at least 1940. The strain of his paralysis and the physical exertion needed to compensate for it for over 20 years had taken their toll, as had many years of stress and a lifetime of chain-smoking. By this time, Roosevelt had numerous ailments including chronic high blood pressure, emphysema, atherosclerosis, angina pectoris and end-stage heart disease.On March 30, 1945, Roosevelt went to Warm Springs to rest before his anticipated appearance at the founding conference of the United Nations. On the afternoon of April 12, Roosevelt said, “I have a terrific headache” and was carried into his bedroom. The doctor diagnosed that he had suffered a massive cerebral hemorrhage. Later that day, he died. As Allen Drury later said, “so ended an era, and so began another.” An editorial by The New York Times declared, “Men will thank God on their knees a hundred years from now that Franklin D. Roosevelt was in the White House,” after Roosevelt’s death.

Roosevelt’s death was met with shock and grief across the U.S. and around the world. His declining health had not been known to the general public. Roosevelt had been president for more than 12 years, longer than any other person, and had led the country through some of its greatest crises to the impending defeat of Nazi Germany and to within sight of the defeat of Japan as well.At the time he collapsed, Roosevelt had been sitting for a portrait painting by the artist Elizabeth Shoumatoff, resulting in the famous Unfinished Portrait of FDR.

Helen Adams Keller (June 27, 1880 – June 1, 1968) was an American author, activist, and lecturer. She was the first deaf  blind person to graduate from collegeHelen Keller was born at an estate called Ivy Green in Tuscumbia, Alabama, on June 27, 1880, to Captain Arthur H. Keller, a former officer of the Confederate Army, and Kate Adams Keller, Keller had a particular form of the disease that brought blindness and retardation. The illness did not last for a particularly long time, but it left her deaf and blind. Later Keller learned Braille and used it to read not only English but also French, German, Greek, and Latin. Keller went on to become a world-famous speaker and authorOne of Keller’s earliest pieces of writing, at the age of eleven, was The Frost King (1891). Keller wrote The World I Live In in 1908 giving readers an insight into how she felt about the world. Out of the Dark, a series of essays on Socialism, was published in 1913. In total Keller wrote 12 books and numerous articles. Keller suffered a series of strokes in 1961 and spent the last years of her life at her home.

Ludwig van Beethoven , 16 December 1770 – 26 March 1827) was a German composer and pianist. He was a crucial figure in the transitional period between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western classical music, and remains one of the most respected and influential composers of all time.

Beethoven was born in Bonn, Electorate of Cologne, in 1770. Of the seven children born to Johann Beethoven, himself the only survivor of three, only second-born Ludwig and two younger brothers survived infancy. Beethoven’s mother died on 17 July 1787, when Beethoven was 16.

Due to his father’s worsening alcohol addiction, Beethoven became responsible for raising his two younger brothers. 

Around 1796, Beethoven began to lose his hearing. He suffered a severe form of  tinnitus, a “ringing” in his ears that made it hard for him to perceive and appreciate music; he also avoided conversationOver time, his hearing loss became profound: there is a well-attested story that, at the end of the premiere of his Ninth Symphony, he had to be turned around to see the tumultuous applause of the audience; hearing nothing, he began to weep.

Beethoven’s hearing loss did not prevent his composing music, but it made concerts—lucrative sources of income—increasingly hard. Beethoven used a special rod attached to the soundboard on a piano that he could bite—the vibrations would then transfer from the piano to his jaw to increase his perception of the sound. A large collection of his hearing aids such as special ear horns can be viewed at the Beethoven House Museum in Bonn, Germany. Despite his obvious distress, however, Czerny remarked that Beethoven could still hear speech and music normally until 1812. By 1814 however, Beethoven was almost totally deaf. A great Composer who proved that earthly obstacles can be overcome and produced everlasting Musical symphonies.