September 8

Swami Sivananda Saraswati, physician-turned-monk and founder of the Divine Life Society, was born on this day in 1887 in Tamil Nadu.

Alexandra David-Néel, the French explorer and writer whose accounts of Tibetan Buddhism reached wide Western audiences, died at Digne-les-Bains, France.

Nisargadatta Maharaj, the Mumbai teacher of non-dual Advaita whose talks became the book 'I Am That,' died on this day in 1981.

Zakī Najīb Maḥmūd, an Egyptian philosopher who brought modern analytic thought into Arabic letters, died on this day in 1993.

The German physicist and physiologist Hermann von Helmholtz, remembered for stating the conservation of energy and for wide-ranging work on vision, hearing and electrodynamics, died near Berlin.