Born on July 4, 1980

He wrote *Le Bon Usage* in 1936, and French teachers have been citing it ever since. Maurice Grevisse never attended university—he learned Latin and Greek on his own, then became a schoolteacher in Belgium. His grammar guide ran 1,200 pages in its first edition. Dense. Uncompromising. It became the definitive reference for French grammar across Europe and Africa, outselling every competitor for decades. He revised it obsessively until his death at 85, never satisfied that he'd captured every exception, every rule. The book's still in print, now in its seventeenth edition.