Famous People Who Died In 1826

The 2nd Vice President and the 3rd President of America, Thomas Jefferson was one of the Founding Fathers of USA and the principal draftsman of the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson was a staunch advocate of democracy and a strong believer of individual rights and religious freedom, despite the fact that he himself owned nearly 600 slaves.

One of the Founding Fathers of America, John Adams was a statesman, attorney, and diplomat who served as the second president of the United States. He was a principal leader of the American Revolution. As a lawyer, he was devoted to the right to counsel and presumption of innocence. His administration has been favorably ranked by historians and scholars.

Stamford Raffles was a British statesman who served as the Lieutenant-Governor of the Dutch East Indies from 1811 to 1816. From 1818 to 1824, he served as the Lieutenant-Governor of Bencoolen. Raffles is best remembered for founding the Straits Settlements and modern Singapore. He also played a major role in the invasion of Java in 1811 during the Napoleonic Wars.

Carl Maria von Weber was a German composer, virtuoso pianist, guitarist, and conductor. A significant musical figure in the Romantic era, he played a key role in the development of the German Romantische Oper (German Romantic opera). He also made significant contributions to vocal and choral music. He was a music critic as well and wrote music journalism. 

Joseph von Fraunhofer was a Bavarian optical lens manufacturer and physicist. He is credited with developing diffraction grating and inventing the spectroscope. He is also credited with discovering the Fraunhofer lines, the dark absorption lines produced in the spectrum of the sun. The Fraunhofer Society, Europe's biggest Society for the Advancement of Applied Research, is named in his honor.

Initially training to be an apothecary like his father, Joseph Proust later deviated to pharmacy and then to chemistry. He is best remembered for developing the law of definite proportions, also known as the Proust's law, which states that pure chemical compounds always consist of constant proportions of constituent elements.

John Flaxman was a British sculptor. He was a key figure in British and European Neoclassicism. Largely self-educated, he began his career as a modeler for potter Josiah Wedgwood's pottery. He then began sculpting grave monuments and earned a reputation as a prolific maker of funerary monuments. He was married to Anne Denman, who assisted him throughout his career. 

Johann Bode was a German astronomer best remembered for popularizing the Titius–Bode law. He is also credited with determining the orbit of planet Uranus and also suggested the name Uranus. He also served as the director of the Berlin Observatory.

Jedidiah Morse was a geographer best remembered for his textbooks, which became primary study materials for students in the US. His textbooks earned him the nickname father of American geography. Jedidiah Morse also served as a teacher and pastor during his illustrious career.

Best remembered for the long poem Maria, which was his only written work in Polish literature, Antoni Malczewski is regarded as a pioneer of Polish Romantic poetry. Initially part of the Napoleonic Polish army, he later settled in Ukraine and then went back to Poland.

Stanisław Staszic was a Polish philosopher who played a leading role in the Polish Enlightenment. He was also a Catholic priest, geologist, writer, and translator. He supported many reforms in Poland and was the co-founder of the Warsaw Society of Friends of Learning. He later served as the minister of trade and industry in Congress Poland. 

After quitting school at 14, Matthew Murray apprenticed to be a blacksmith or a whitesmith. He then worked for a Leeds-based flax spinner and later established his own factory, developing innovations in the domain of steam engines. His locomotives for collieries were the first to be commercially successful.

Born the Archduchess of Austria, Maria Leopoldina was a great painter and also grew up studying subjects such as botany and mineralogy. By virtue of her marriage to Pedro I of Brazil and IV of Portugal, she became the queen of Portugal and the empress of Brazil.

Conrad Malte-Brun was a Dano-French journalist and geographer. Malte-Brun is best remembered for coining the name Indo-China as well as the name Oceania, a geographic region that includes Melanesia, Micronesia, Australasia, and Polynesia, around 1812. Conrad Malte-Brun is also known as the father of Victor Adolphe Malte-Brun, who was also a famous geographer.

Popularly known as Madame Placide, Suzanne Douvillier is regarded by some as the first trained female choreographer to perform in the US. Not much is known about her childhood apart from the fact that she was an illegitimate child. She made history with her debut in The Bird Catcher.

Italian Theatine priest, astronomer and mathematician Giuseppe Piazzi discovered and identified the first asteroid Ceres at Palermo Astronomical Observatory that he established in Palermo, Sicily. He first demonstrated the large proper motion of the binary star system 61 Cygni in the constellation Cygnus. He also supervised compilation of the Palermo Catalogue of stars and completion of the Capodimonte (Naples) Observatory.

Nicolas Fuss was mathematically gifted and became an assistant to mathematician Leonhard Euler, who needed a secretary after being rendered partially blind due to a surgery. In course of time, he contributed to areas such as spherical trigonometry, differential geometry, and optics. He was also named to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.