January 24, 2010
Economist Oskar Morgenstern, 1902
Playwright Pierre de Beaumarchais, 1732
Duke of Milano Galeazzo Maria Sforza, 1444


Oskar Morgenstern was born on January 24, 1902 in Görlitz, Germany. He graduated from the University of Vienna, earning a doctorate in political science in 1925. He received a scholarship from the Rockefeller Foundation to further his studies in the United States. Upon his return to Austria in 1929, Morgenstern started work at the University of Vienna, first as a lecturer and then a professor in economics. During that time he belonged to the so-called "Austrian circus," a group of Austrian economists including Gottfried Haberler and Friedrich von Hayek, who met regularly with Ludwig von Mises to discuss different issues in the field. The group was the Austrian equivalent of Keynes's "Cambridge Circus."

In 1938 Morgenstern traveled to the United States as a visiting professor in economics at Princeton University in New Jersey. It was there that he heard the news that Adolf Hitler had occupied Vienna, and that it would probably be unwise to return to Austria. Morgenstern decided to stay in the United States, becoming a naturalized citizen in 1944. After Morgenstern became a member of the faculty at Princeton he started to work closely with mathematician John von Neumann, developing a theory of predicting economic behavior. In 1944, they wrote Theory of Games and Economic Behavior, recognized as the first book on game theory.

Morgenstern married Dorothy Young in 1948.

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s Morgenstern continued to write on different economic issues, publishing On the Accuracy of Economic Observations in 1950, Prolegomena to a Theory of Organization in 1951, and The Question of National Defense and International Transactions and Business Cycles in 1959. He retired from Princeton in 1970.

Morgenstern accepted the position of professor in economics at New York University in 1970, where he remained until his death in 1977. New York University appointed Morgenstern its distinguished professor of game theory and mathematical economics just before his death.

Morgenstern died in Princeton, New Jersey, on July 26, 1977.

 
Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais (24 January 1732 – 18 May 1799) was a watchmaker, inventor, musician, diplomat, fugitive, spy, publisher, arms dealer, and revolutionary (both French and American). He was best known, however, for his theatrical works, especially the three Figaro plays.

Beaumarchais was born Pierre-Augustin Caron, the only boy among the six children of a watchmaker. Caron left school at the age of 13 to apprentice under his father. In July of 1753, at the age of 21, he invented an escape mechanism for watches that allowed them to be made substantially more accurate and compact. One of his greatest feats was a watch mounted on a ring, made for Madame de Pompadour, a mistress of Louis XV. The invention was later recognised by the Académie des sciences, but only after a dispute with M. Lepaute, the royal watchmaker, who attempted to pass off the invention as his own.

In 1758-59, Caron became the harp tutor to King Louis XV's daughters. In 1759-60, Caron met Joseph Pâris-Duverney, an older and wealthy entrepreneur. The two became very close friends and collaborated on many business ventures. Shortly after his first marriage in 1756, Caron adopted the name "Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais", which he derived from "le Bois Marchais", the name of a piece of land inherited by his first wife. Assisted by Pâris-Duverney, Beaumarchais acquired the title of secretary-councillor to the King in 1760-61, thereby gaining access to French nobility. This was followed by the purchase of a second title, the office of lieutenant general of hunting in 1763. The following year, Beaumarchais began a 10-month sojourn in Madrid, supposedly to help his sister, Lisette, who had been abandoned by her fiancé, Clavijo.

The passing of Pâris-Duverney in July 17, 1770 triggered a decade of turmoil for Beaumarchais. A few months before his death, the two signed a statement which cancelled all debts Beaumarchais owed Pâris-Duverney (about 75,000 pounds), and granting Beaumarchais the modest sum of 15,000 pounds. Pâris-Duverney's sole heir, Count de la Blache, took Beaumarchais to court, claiming the signed statement was a forgery. Although the 1772 verdict favoured Beaumarchais, it was overturned on appeal in the following year by a judge, magistrate Goezman, whose favour La Blache had managed to win over. At the same time, Beaumarchais was also involved in a dispute with Duke de Chaulnes over the Duke's mistress, which resulted in Beaumarchais's being thrown into jail from February to May, 1773. La Blache, took advantage of Beaumarchais's court absence and persuaded Goezman to order Beaumarchais to repay all his debts with Pâris-Duverney, plus interest and all legal expenses. To garner public support, Beaumarchais published a four-part pamphlet entitled Mémoires contre Goezman. The action made Beaumarchais an instant celebrity, for the public at the time perceived Beaumarchais as a champion for social justice and liberty. Goezman countered Beaumarchais's accusations by launching a law suit of his own. The verdict was equivocal. On February 26, 1774, both Beaumarchais and Mme. Goezman (who sympathised with Beaumarchais) were deprived of their civil rights, while Magistrate Goezman was removed from his post. To restore his civil rights, Beaumarchais pledged his services to Louis XV and Louis XVI. He travelled to London, Amsterdam and Vienna on various secret missions. His first mission was to travel to London to destroy a pamphlet, Les mémoires secrets d'une femme publique, that Louis XV considered a libel of one of his mistresses, Madame du Barry.

Beaumarchais was also remembered for his essential support for the American Revolution. Louis XVI, who did not want to break openly with England, allowed Beaumarchais to found a commercial enterprise, Roderigue Hortalez and Co., supported by the French and Spanish crowns, who supplied the American rebels with weapons, munitions, clothes, and provisions, which would never be paid for. Beaumarchais would deal with Silas Deane, an acting member of the Second Continental Congress's Committee of Secret Correspondence. For these services, the French Parliament reinstated his civil rights in 1776. Shortly after the death of Voltaire in 1778, Beaumarchais set out to publish Voltaire's complete works, many of which were banned in France.

It was not long before Beaumarchais crossed paths again with the French legal system. In 1787, he became acquainted with Mme. Korman, who was implicated and imprisoned in an adultery suit, which was filed by her husband to expropriate her dowry. The matter went to court, with Beaumarchais siding with Mme. Korman, and M. Korman assisted by a celebrity lawyer, Nicolas Bergasse. On April 2, 1790, M. Korman and Bergasse were found guilty of calumny (slander), but Beaumarchais's reputation was also tarnished.

Meanwhile, the French Revolution broke out. Beaumarchais was no longer the idol he had been a few years before. He was financially successful, mainly from supplying drinking water to Paris, and had acquired ranks in the French nobility. In 1791, he took up a lavish residence across from where the Bastille once stood. He spent under a week in prison during August 1792, and was released only three days before a massacre took place in the prison where he had been detained. Nevertheless, he pledged his services to the new Republic. He attempted to purchase 60,000 rifles for the French Revolutionary army from Holland, but was unable to complete the deal. While he was out of the country, Beaumarchais was declared an émigré (loyalists to the old regime) by his enemies. He spent two and a half years in exile, mostly in Germany, before his name was removed from the list of proscribed émigrés. He returned to Paris in 1796, where he lived out the remainder of his life in relative peace. He is buried in the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.

Beaumarchais married three times. His first wife was Madeleine-Catherine Franquet (née Aubertin), whom he married on November 22, 1756, but died under mysterious circumstances only 10 months following the marriage. He later married Geneviève-Madeleine Lévêque (née Wattebled) in 1768. Again, the second Mme. de Beaumarchais died under mysterious circumstances two years later, though most scholars believed she actually suffered from tuberculosis. Beaumarchais had a son in 1770, Augustin, from his second marriage in 1770, but he also died in 1772. Beaumarchais lived with his lover, Marie-Thérèse de Willer-Mawlaz, for twelve years, before she became Beaumarchais's third wife, in 1786. Together they had a daughter, Eugénie. In his first two marriages, Beaumarchais was accused by his enemies of poisoning them in order to lay claim to their family inheritance. Beaumarchais, though having no shortage of lovers throughout his life, was known to be caring for both his family and close friends. However, Beaumarchais also had a reputation of marrying for financial gain, and both Franquet and Lévêque were previously married to wealthy families prior to Beaumarchais. While there was insufficient evidence to support the accusations, whether or not the poisonings took place is still subject of debate.


Galeazzo Maria Sforza (January 24, 1444 – December 26, 1476) was Duke of Milan from 1466 until his death. He was famous for being lustful, cruel and tyrannical.

He was born to Francesco Sforza, a popular condottiero and ally of Cosimo de' Medici who had gained the dukedom of Milan, and Bianca Maria Visconti. He married into the Gonzaga family, and on the death of his wife Dorotea, married Bona di Savoia.

Gian Galeazzo was born in Fermo, near the family's castle of Girifalco, the first son of Francesco Sforza and Bianca Maria Visconti. At the death of his father (March 8, 1466), Gian Galeazzo was in France at the head of a military expedition to help King Louis XI of France against Charles I of Burgundy. Called back home by his mother, Galeazzo returned to Italy by an adventurous trip under a false name, as he had to pass by the territories of the family enemy, the Duke of Savoy, who made an unsuccessful attempt on his life. He entered Milan on March 20, acclaimed by the populace.

Sforza was famous as a patron of music. Under his direction, financial backing and encouragement, his chapel grew into one of the most famous and historically significant musical ensembles in Europe. Some of the figures associated with the Sforza chapel include Alexander Agricola, Johannes Martini, Loyset Compère, and Gaspar van Weerbeke. Most of the singers at the chapel fled after Galeazzo's murder, however, and took positions elsewhere; soon there was a rise in musical standards in other cities, such as Ferrara, as a result.

Despite his love of music, Sforza is also known to have had a cruel streak. He was a notorious womanizer who often passed his women on to his courtiers once he was tired of them. He once had a poacher executed by forcing him to swallow an entire hare (with fur intact), had another man nailed alive to his coffin, and a priest who had predicted a short reign was punished by being starved to death. This made him many enemies in Milan. It was also said of Sforza that he had raped the wives and daughters of numerous Milanese nobles; that he took sadistic pleasure in devising tortures for men who had offended him and that he enjoyed in pulling apart the limbs of his enemies with his own hands.

There were three principal assassins involved in Sforza's death: Carlo Visconti, Gerolamo Olgiati and Giovanni Andrea Lampugnani, all fairly high-ranking officials in the Milan court. Lampugnani, descended from Milanese nobility is recognized as the leader of the conspiracy, his motives based primarily on a land dispute, in which Galeazzo failed to intervene in a matter which saw the Lampugnani family lose considerable properties. Visconti and Olgiati also bore the duke enmity - Olgiati was a Republican idealist, whereas Visconti believed Sforza to have taken his sister's virginity. After carefully studying Sforza's movements, the conspirators made their move on the day after Christmas, 1476, the official day of Santo Stefano, the namesake of the church where the deed was to be committed. Supported by about thirty friends, the three men waited in the church for the duke to arrive for mass. When he arrived, Lampugnani knelt before him, and after some words were exchanged, rose suddenly, stabbing him in the groin and breast. Olgiati and Visconti soon joined in, as did a servant of Lampugnani's. Sforza was dead within a matter of seconds, and all the assassins quickly escaped the ensuing mayhem, save for Lampugnani, who became entangled in some of the church's cloth and was killed. His body soon fell into the hands of a mob, which dragged it through the streets, slashing and beating at it and in the end, hanging it upside-down outside his house. The beheaded corpse was cut down the next day and, in an act of symbolism, the "sinning" right hand was removed, burnt and put on display. The conspirators had given little thought as to the repercussions of their crime, and were apprehended within days. Visconti and Olgiati were soon found and executed, as was the servant of Lampugnani who had participated in the slaying, in a public ceremony which culminated in their corpses being displayed as warnings to others.

Evidence from the conspirators' confessions indicated that the assassins had been encouraged by the humanist Cola Montano, who had left Milan some months before, and who bore malice against the duke for a public whipping some years before. Olgiati also uttered the famous words, while being tortured, "Death is bitter, but glory is eternal." Similar elements indicate that this assassination was likely influential in the Pazzi Conspiracy, a subsequent attempt to dethrone the Medici family in Florence and to replace them with Girolamo Riario.