Jozef Miloslav Hurban was born in Beckov on 19 March 1817. As a young Lutheran pastor he became one of three men — with Ľudovít Štúr and Michal Miloslav Hodža — who agreed in 1843 to codify a written Slovak based on central Slovak speech; that is the ancestor of the Slovak written today. In 1848, when revolution broke out across the Habsburg empire, Hurban helped raise and lead the Slovak volunteer campaigns, which demanded that Slovaks be recognised as a nation with their own schools and administration. The rising was defeated and the demands were refused, but the language survived and so did the idea. Beckov also produced Dionýz Štúr, born 1827, who became one of the leading geologists of the empire, and the physician Ján Ambro, born the same year, a pioneer of modern midwifery in Slovakia.Jozef Miloslav Hurban sa narodil v Beckove 19. marca 1817. Ako mladý evanjelický kňaz sa stal jedným z trojice — spolu s Ľudovítom Štúrom a Michalom Miloslavom Hodžom —, ktorá sa roku 1843 dohodla na kodifikácii spisovnej slovenčiny na základe stredoslovenských nárečí; z nej vyrástla slovenčina, ktorou sa píše dodnes. V revolučnom roku 1848 pomáhal Hurban postaviť a viesť slovenské dobrovoľnícke výpravy, ktoré žiadali, aby boli Slováci uznaní za národ s vlastnými školami a správou. Povstanie porazili a požiadavky odmietli, no jazyk zostal — a zostala aj tá myšlienka. Z Beckova pochádza aj Dionýz Štúr (nar. 1827), z ktorého sa stal jeden z popredných geológov monarchie, a lekár Ján Ambro, narodený v tom istom roku, priekopník moderného pôrodníctva na Slovensku.
