February 8

Martin Buber, the philosopher of dialogue known for 'I and Thou' and his retellings of Hasidic tales, was born in Vienna.

Immanuel Jakobovits, later Chief Rabbi of the British Commonwealth and an early authority on Jewish medical ethics, was born in Konigsberg.

The general Constantius III was elevated to co-emperor of the West by Honorius; he reigned only seven months before his death that September.

Dmitri Mendeleev, the Russian chemist who arranged the elements into the periodic table and predicted properties of ones yet undiscovered, was born at Tobolsk in Siberia.

John von Neumann, the Hungarian-American mathematician whose ideas shaped game theory, quantum mechanics and the architecture of the modern computer, died in Washington, D.C.