Year 1787 (MDCCLXXXVII) was a common year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar and a common year starting on Friday of the 11-day slower Julian calendar.

Benjamin Solomon "Ben" Carson, Sr., (born September 18, 1951) is an American neurosurgeon and the Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States, by President George W. Bush in 2008.

Carson was born in Detroit, Michigan and was raised by his single mother, Sonya Carson. He struggled academically throughout elementary school, but started to excel in middle school and throughout high school. After graduating with honors from his high school, he attended Yale University, where he earned a degree in Psychology. He chose to go to Yale because in College Bowl, an old TV program, he saw Yale compete against and defeat many other colleges in knowledge, including Harvard. Carson wanted to participate in College Bowl, but the program was discontinued. From Yale, he attended University of Michigan Medical School.

Carson's eye-hand coordination and three-dimensional reasoning skills made him a gifted surgeon. After medical school he became a neurosurgery resident at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. Starting off as an adult neurosurgeon Carson became more interested in pediatrics. With children he believed that "what you see is what you get, ... when they’re in pain they clearly show it with a frown on their face or when they are happy they show it by smiling brightly." Since then he has been the head of the pediatric neurosurgeon department.

Joseph Martin Kraus (20 June 1756 – 15 December 1792), was a composer in the classical era who was born in Miltenberg am Main, Germany. He moved to Sweden at age 21, and died at the age of 36 in Stockholm. He is sometimes referred to as "the Swedish Mozart", and had a life span which was very similar to that of Mozart's.

Kraus was born in the central German town of Miltenberg in Franconia, the son of Joseph Bernhard Kraus, a County clerk in the Archbishopric of Mainz, and Anna Dorothea née Schmidt. His father's family, originally from Augsburg, had a small restaurant in Weilbach near Amorbach, while his mother was a daughter of the master-builder at Miltenberg Johann Martin Schmidt. Joseph had 13 brothers and sisters, but seven of them died during their childhood.

After a short stay in Osterburken, the Kraus family moved to Buchen (Odenwald) (in Baden-Württemberg) in 1761, where the father Joseph Bernhard Kraus found a position as a clerk; Amtsschreiber. In Buchen, Kraus started his earliest formal education. His first music teachers were rector Georg Pfister (1730–1807) and cantor Bernhard Franz Wendler (1702–1782), giving him mainly piano and violin lessons. Kraus showed his musical talent at a very early stage. At the age of 12, Kraus joined the Jesuit Gymnasium and Music Seminar at Mannheim, where he studied German and Latin literature and music. He received a rigorous musical education, especially in violin technique, from P. Alexander Keck (1724–1804) and P. Anton Klein (1748–1810).

Martin Krause (June 17, 1853 – August 2, 1918) was a German concert pianist, piano teacher, music critic, and writer.

Martin Krause was born in Lobstädt, Saxony as the youngest son of the choirmaster and church schoolmaster Johann Carl Friedrich Krause in Lobstädt. He initially attended the teacher training college in Borna, then he became a pupil of Franz Liszt and later established himself as a piano teacher and writer on music in Leipzig, where he founded the Franz-Liszt-Verein (Association). From 1901 Krause worked as a professor at the Royal Academy of Arts in Munich, and from at least 1896 to 1911 at the Stern Conservatory in Berlin. A victim of the flu epidemic, he died on August 2, 1918.

Franz Joseph Haydn (  /ˈdʒoʊzəf ˈhaɪdən/; German pronunciation: [ˈjoːzɛf ˈhaɪdən] ( listen); 31 March 1732 – 31 May 1809), known as Joseph Haydn, was an Austrian composer, one of the most prolific and prominent composers of the Classical period. He is often called the "Father of the Symphony" and "Father of the String Quartet" because of his important contributions to these forms. He was also instrumental in the development of the piano trio and in the evolution of sonata form.

A lifelong resident of Austria, Haydn spent much of his career as a court musician for the wealthy Esterházy family on their remote estate. Isolated from other composers and trends in music until the later part of his long life, he was, as he put it, "forced to become original". At the time of his death, he was one of the most celebrated composers in Europe.

Joseph Haydn was the brother of Michael Haydn, himself a highly regarded composer, and Johann Evangelist Haydn, a tenor. He was also a close friend of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and a teacher of Ludwig van Beethoven.