September 4

The polymath al-Bīrūnī, whose work spanned astronomy, mathematics, and the comparative study of India's religions, was born on this day in 973.

The schoolteacher Georg Friedrich Grotefend presented his first decipherment of Old Persian cuneiform to the Göttingen Academy of Sciences, an early key to reading Mesopotamia's ancient scripts.

Albert Schweitzer, the Lutheran theologian, New Testament scholar, organist and physician, died at his hospital in Lambaréné, Gabon.