There are two entries for this date: Georges Bizet and Pierre Eugene Marcelin Berthelot.

On this date in 1838, composer Georges Bizet, ne Alexandre Cesar Leopold Bizet, was born in Paris. The musical prodigy entered the Paris Conservatoire at age nine. Over the next decade Bizet won virtually every prize available, including the Prix de Rome. Bizet refused a career as a concert pianist in order to compose operas. He wrote about 30, none particularly successful, until he composed "Carmen" in 1875, based on Prosper Merimee's book about a Spanish gypsy girl. "Carmen" was controversial not only because of its humble subject matter and passionate sweep, but for the fact that the libretto was written in French, and (scandalously) could be understood by the audience. Criticism and a lukewarm reception closed the play after a brief run, although the composers of Bizet's day praised it. The dejected composer, who suffered from ill health, died of a heart attack three months later at the age of 36, never knowing "Carmen" would become the best-known, best-loved and most produced opera in history. Bizet also wrote "Jeux d'Enfants," 12 charming piano duets. Bizet was a rationalist. As a young man, struggling with his religious and philosophical views, Bizet was asked by his Academy to write a Mass. Preferring to write a comedy, he replied: "I don't want to write a mass before being in a state to do it well, that is a Christian. I have therefore taken a singular course to reconcile my ideas with the exigencies of Academy rules. They ask me for something religious: very well, I shall do something religious, but of the pagan religion. . . . I have always read the ancient pagans with infinite pleasure, while in Christian writers I find only system, egoism, intolerance, and a complete lack of artistic taste." D. 1875.

On this date (some sources give Oct. 29) in 1827, the founder of organic chemistry, Pierre Eugene Marcelin Berthelot, was born in Paris, the son of a doctor. Educated at College Henry IV, Berthelot became professor of chemistry at the School of Pharmacy in 1859, where he completed his greatest work, the 2-volume Chimie organique fondee sur la synthese (1860), the basis of modern organic chemistry. Berthelot was one of the first to produce organic compounds synthetically. He argued and demonstrated that chemical phenomena are not governed by any peculiar law subject only to chemicals. The College de France created a chair of organic chemistry for him in 1865. He was admitted to the Academy of Sciences in 1873. Berthelot was elected a life senator in 1881, was given the Legion of Honor in 1886, and made Perpetual Secretary of the Academy of Sciences in 1889, succeeding Louis Pasteur. An honorary associate of the Rationalist Press Association, "He would listen to no compromise whatever with religion," wrote freethought historian Joseph McCabe: "See his Science et Morale (1897) and Science et Libre Pensee (1905)." When he died abruptly after his wife's death, he was buried at the Pantheon. D. 1907.