Year 1861 (MDCCCLXI) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar and a common year starting on Sunday of the 12-day slower Julian calendar.

William Barton Rogers (December 7, 1804 – May 30, 1882) was a geologist, physicist and educator. He is best known for setting down the founding principles for, advocating for, and finally obtaining the incorporation of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1861. The university opened in 1865 after the American Civil War. Mount Rogers, the highest peak in Virginia, is named after him.

Rogers was born on December 7, 1804, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was the second son of Patrick Kerr Rogers and Hannah Blythe and was of Irish, Scottish, and English extraction. Patrick Rogers was born in Ireland and had immigrated at the end of the 18th century to America, where he graduated from the University of Pennsylvania (Penn) and practiced medicine. When William Barton was born, Patrick Rogers was tutor at Penn. In 1819 Patrick Rogers became professor of natural philosophy and mathematics at the College of William and Mary, where he remained until his death in 1828.

William Barton Rogers had three brothers: James Blythe Rogers (1802–1852), Henry Darwin Rogers (1808–1866), and Robert Empie Rogers (1813–1884). The Rogers brothers would each grow up to be distinguished scientists.

Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner (25/27 February 1861 – 30 March 1925) was an Austrian philosopher, social reformer, architect, and esotericist. Steiner gained initial recognition as a literary critic and cultural philosopher. At the beginning of the 20th century, he founded a spiritual movement, Anthroposophy, as an esoteric philosophy growing out of idealist philosophy and with links to Theosophy.

Steiner led this movement through several phases. In the first, more philosophically oriented phase, Steiner attempted to find a synthesis between science and mysticism; his philosophical work of these years, which he termed spiritual science, sought to provide a connection between the cognitive path of Western philosophy and the inner and spiritual needs of the human being. In a second phase, beginning around 1907, he began working collaboratively in a variety of artistic media, including drama, the movement arts (developing a new artistic form, eurythmy) and architecture, culminating in the building of a cultural centre to house all the arts, the Goetheanum. After the First World War, Steiner worked with educators, farmers, doctors, and other professionals to develop numerous practical initiatives, including Waldorf education, biodynamic agriculture, anthroposophical medicine.