James Naismith (1861-1939) was a Canadian-American physical education instructor who invented the game of basketball in December 1891 while teaching at the International YMCA Training School in Springfield, Massachusetts. Tasked with devising an indoor game to keep athletes active during winter, he nailed a peach basket to an elevated track and wrote out thirteen original rules, most of which still shape the game today. He later became the first basketball coach at the University of Kansas, and though his own coaching record there was a losing one, the program he founded became one of the sport's most storied. Naismith lived to see basketball included as an Olympic demonstration sport, and the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield is named in his honor.
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