January 4

Moses Mendelssohn, the Berlin philosopher whose writings were central to the Haskalah, the Jewish Enlightenment, died in Berlin.

Mohammad Ali Jauhar, an Indian Muslim scholar, journalist, and Urdu poet who helped found Jamia Millia Islamia, died in London.

Isaac Newton, who set out the laws of motion and universal gravitation and shares the invention of calculus, was born at Woolsthorpe in Lincolnshire.

Erwin Schrödinger, whose wave equation became a foundation of quantum mechanics, died in Vienna at the age of 73.