Joseph-Ignace Guillotin

Joseph-Ignace Guillotin was born on 28 May 1738 and trained as a doctor and freemason before entering politics. On 10 October 1789, amid the Revolution's ferment, he stood before the National Assembly and proposed adopting a mechanical device for executions, believing it would be less cruel than the botched hangings and brutal practices then in use. He never built the apparatus - that work fell to another physician, Antoine Louis - and Guillotin himself opposed the death penalty outright. The irony sealed itself: his name fused to the blade, an eponym he never sought. He died on 26 March 1814, decades after the machine made his surname a verb.