December 16

Viktor Yakovlevich Bunyakovsky (Russian: Ви́ктор Я́ковлевич Буняко́вский; December 16 [O.S. December 4] 1804, Bar, Russian Empire – December 12 [O.S. November 30] 1889, St. Petersburg, Russian Empire) was a Russian mathematician, member and later vice president of the Petersburg Academy of Sciences.

He worked in theoretical mechanics and number theory (see: Bunyakovsky conjecture), and is credited with an early discovery of the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality, proving it for the infinite dimensional case in 1859, many years prior to Hermann Schwarz's works on the subject.

Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky /kænˈdɪnski/ (Russian: Васи́лий Васи́льевич Канди́нский, Vasiliy Vasil’yevich Kandinskiy, Russian pronunciation: [vaˈsʲilʲɪj kɐnˈdʲinskʲɪj]; 16 December [O.S. 4 December] 1866 – 13 December 1944) was an influentialRussian painter and art theorist. He is credited with painting the first purely abstract works. Born in Moscow, Kandinsky spent his childhood in Odessa. He enrolled at the University of Moscow, studying law and economics. Successful in his profession—he was offered a professorship (chair of Roman Law) at the University of Dorpat—he began painting studies (life-drawing, sketching and anatomy) at the age of 30.

In 1896 Kandinsky settled in Munich, studying first at Anton Ažbe's private school and then at the Academy of Fine Arts. He returned to Moscow in 1914, after the outbreak of World War I. Kandinsky was unsympathetic to the official theories on art in Moscow, and returned to Germany in 1921. There, he taught at the Bauhaus school of art and architecture from 1922 until the Nazis closed it in 1933. He then moved to France where he lived the rest of his life, became a French citizen in 1939, and produced some of his most prominent art. He died at Neuilly-sur-Seine in 1944.

Anton Ivanovich Denikin (Russian: Анто́н Ива́нович Дени́кин; IPA: [ɐnˈton ɪˈvanəvʲɪt͡ɕ dʲɪˈnʲikʲɪn]; December 16 [O.S. December 4] 1872 – August 8, 1947) was Lieutenant General of the Imperial Russian Army (1916) and one of the foremost generals of the White movement in the Russian Civil War.

Rodion Konstantinovich Shchedrin (Russian: Родио́н Константи́нович Щедри́н, Scientific transliteration: Rodion Konstantinovič Ščedrin, Russian pronunciation: [rə̥dʲɪˌon kə̥nstɐnˌtʲinə̥vʲɪ̥ʨ ɕːɪ̥dˈrʲin]; born December 16, 1932) is a Russian composer and pianist. Winner of the Lenin (1984), USSR State Prize (1972) and the State Prize of the Russian Federation (1992). A member of the Interregional Deputy Group (1989–1991).