February 24, 1946

1946Grigory Margulis, Russian mathematician and academic^[†]

Grigory Aleksandrovich Margulis is a Russian-American mathematician known for his work on lattices in Lie groups, and the introduction of methods from ergodic theory into diophantine approximation. He was awarded a Fields Medal in 1978, a Wolf Prize in Mathematics in 2005, and an Abel Prize in 2020, becoming the fifth mathematician to receive the three prizes. In 1991, he joined the faculty of Yale University, where he is currently the Erastus L. De Forest Professor of Mathematics.

1946Colonel Juan Perón, founder of the political movement that became known as Peronism, is elected to his first term as President of Argentina.^[†]

Juan Domingo Perón was an Argentine military officer and statesman who served as the 29th president of Argentina from 1946 to his overthrow in 1955 and again as the 40th president from 1973 to his death in 1974. He is the only Argentine president elected three times and holds the highest percentage of votes in clean elections with universal suffrage. Perón is arguably the most important and controversial Argentine politician of the 20th century and his influence extends to the present day. Perón's ideas, policies and movement are known as Peronism, which continues to be one of the major forces in Argentine politics.