Friedrich Nietzsche
A philosopher and philologist who became a professor at Basel at twenty-four and left the chair through illness at thirty-four. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Beyond Good and Evil and On the Genealogy of Morals were written across a decade of near-complete solitude, between migraines and removals. In January 1889 his mind gave way in Turin, and he spent his last eleven years in the care of his mother and sister, without knowing himself.
Born in Rocken on 15 October 1844 at 10:00 local mean time: the German lands had no single zone then. The hour was recorded by his father, the pastor Carl Ludwig Nietzsche — the son's birthday fell on that of the Prussian king, and the boy was named after him.