American activist Frank Kameny was BOTD in 1925. Born in New York City to a middle-class Jewish family, he decided to become an astronomer at the age of six. He studied physics at the City University of New York, enlisting in the US Army in 1943 to enable him to study mechanical engineering. In 1944, he was sent to Europe where he served as an infantry private. After the war, he completed his degree, then undertook a doctorate in astronomy at Harvard University. While attending a conference in San Francisco in 1956, he was arrested for having sex with another man in a public toilet, avoiding a prison sentence by pleading guilty and paying a fine. he was He took up a teaching position at Georgetown University in Washington D. C., before joining the astronomy team at the US Army Maps Service in 1957. Five months later, he was dismissed as part of a government crackdown on “sexual perversion” in the public service. He appealed his dismissal through the courts, arguing that discrimination on the basis of sexuality was no different from racial or religious discrimination. In 1961, the US Supreme Court declined to hear his appeal, bringing his litigation to an end but generating publicity for his cause. Unable to find employment as an astronomer, he redirected his energies into gay rights activism, co-founding the Mattachine Society of Washington, D. C., and leading a series of campaigns to advocate for law change. He claimed authorship of the phrase “Gay is good”, rejecting apologist arguments about homosexuality being a disability or illness, and lobbied for the American Psychiatric Association to declassify homosexuality as a mental illness. In 1971, he became the first openly gay candidate to stand for US Congress, later creating the Gay and Lesbian Alliance of Washington, D. C., to lobby federal government for gay rights. He also led efforts to reverse the US military’s ban on lesbian and gay soldiers. He continued his activism into his 80s, receiving a formal apology from the US government in 2009 for his dismissal. In 2011, he was invited to the White House to witness President Obama signing the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell Repeal Act into law. He died in 2011, aged 86.