BIOGRAPHY OF FAMOUS PEOPLE

Arthur Edward Anderson: Founder of Arthur Andersen & Company

2012-01-14T09:42:00.000-08:00

Arthur Edward Anderson was born in 1885 to Norwegian immigrant John Andersen and his Danish wife-born wife Mary. Andersen was orphaned at the age of 16.

Working as a mailboy for the manufacturing firm of Fraser & Chalmers by day he attended night class and graduated from Chicago’s Athenaeum High School in 1903.

He attended night class at Northwestern University, where he studied accounting. After graduating, he worked at Price Waterhouse and Joseph Schlitz, a brewery and taught accounting class at Northwestern.

In 1915, Anderson became a full professor at Northwestern, where he wrote a textbook titled The Complete Accounting Course.

In 1913, Andersen and another Price Warehouse employee purchased a small public accounting practice for $4,000 and renamed it Andersen, DeLany & Company.

From the beginning, Andersen sought to compete with the large, established accounting firms. His strategy was to take a comprehensive, quality centered approach that went beyond number crunching.

In 1918, the company was renamed Arthur Andersen & Company after one of the partner left the company.

The Arthur Andersen firm grew over the years. By 1928, the firm employed 400 people, which increased to 700 by 1940.

By the mid of 1940s, Arthur Anderson & Company had offices scattered across the eastern one-half of the United States and employed more than 1,000 accountants.

Not only did he grow his business into one of the world’s largest accounting firms, Andersen also developed innovative accounting systems and training programs, and was a charitable supporter of educational institutions, servings terms on the Northwestern University Board of Trustees and as the University’s president.

Arthur died in January 10, 1947 at the age of 61. The company renamed again and this time as Arthur Andersen LLP.
Arthur Edward Anderson: Founder of Arthur Andersen & Company

Raymond, Henry Jarvis (1820-1869)

2011-11-24T22:58:00.001-08:00

Raymond, Henry Jarvis was born on January 24, 1820 near Lima, New York. He graduated from the Genesee Wesleyan Seminary, later to be known as Syracuse University and the University of Vermont.

Raymond is probably best remembered as the founder and editor of the New York Times. He founded the New York Times, with George Jones in 1851. He also known as American politician.

He began working for the press by contributing to the New Yorker, edited by Horace Greeley, and when Horace Greeley founded the New York Tribune, in 1841, he was made assistant editor of it.

From 1843 to 1851 he was in the editorial staff of the New York Courier and Enquirer.

Raymond was elected to the state assembly in 1849 and after his reelection to a second term, became speaker in 1851.

In 1851 he founded the New York Times which he edited until his death.

During the American Civil War Raymond again acted as war correspondent for his own paper. He was often at the front supervising the activities of his reports while contributing coverage of his own.

He was lieutenant-governor of New York from 1855 to 1857 and in 1864, Raymond was elected member of congress, Raymond ranks among the foremost newspaper editors of his time and notably elevated journalism.
Raymond, Henry Jarvis (1820-1869)

Abbe, Cleveland

2011-09-25T23:31:00.001-07:00

Cleveland Abbe (1838-1916) was an American meteorologist and founder of the Weather Bulletin, the first daily periodical to include weather forecast.

Born in New York City, he published work on the atmosphere and climate, and was responsible for the introduction of the US system of standard time.

Abbe was educated at The New York Free University and the University of Michigan. Graduated in 1860 before working with United States Coast Survey until 1864.

From 1865 until 1866, he was research assistant to Otto Struve at Pulkova Observatory in Russia.

In 1868, Abbe became the director of the Cincinnati, Ohio, Observatory. He expanded the scope of interests of the observatory and proposed that observatory become the American Center for collecting, analyzing and publishing telegraphic weather observations from around the word.

Abbe began on September 1, 1869, to publish the daily “Weather Bulletin of the Cincinnati Observatory.”

His most important papers included “Treatise on Meteorological Apparatus and Methods” Published in1887, and “Preparatory Studies for Deductive Methods in Storm and Weather Prediction” published in 1889.

He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1879.
Abbe, Cleveland

John Jacob Astor

2011-08-23T20:40:00.001-07:00

John Jacob Astir was first multimillionaire in the United States. He also was the America’s first millionaire Real Estate Investor.

He was known as the wealthiest American in his day and his fortune was one of the first significant ones to be accumulated in the 19th century.

He arrived in New York practically penniless in the spring of 1784, and when he died in 1848 he left a fortune of some twenty millions.

He was born into poor family in Germany in 1763.

John Jacob Astor, earned a massive fortune through fur trade. He dealt directly with Native Americans and in just six years, he made fortune.

When the rise of the Chinese trade, he began in 1808 with the American Fur Company, then bought five clipper ships and held a monopoly on the fur trade to China.

He carried beaver and otter pelts to China and returned with silk, tea and tea ware.

Astor increased his wealth with this Chinese trade. His ships returned from China with tea that provided profits of as much as $100,000 for a single cargo.

When the fur trade began declining in 1810 and tea from India began to cut into his China profits, Astor turned his attention to real estate in New York , where he made even more money.

His most profitable investments were in New York City, and before long the man known as ‘Manhattan’s landlord’ was widely acknowledged as the wealthiest person of his time.

When he died in 1848, John Jacob Astor has a net worth of $20 million. In his will, he bequeathed $400,000 for the establishment of a reference library in New York City.
John Jacob Astor

Steve Wozniak and Born of Apple Computer

2011-07-20T17:47:00.000-07:00

Stephen Gary Wozniak was born in San Jose, California, on August 11, 1950. His parents encourage their son’s interest in electronics from an early age. By the sixth grade, Wozniak had built a computer that could play a tic-tac-toe game.

Beginning in 1968, Wozniak studied electrical engineering for several semesters at the University of Colorado in Boulder; the in 1969 he moved back to the Bay Area where he took general education classes at De Anza College in Cupertino.

Steve Wozniak can be a person to have set of the personal computer revolution. He designed the machine that crystallized what a desktop computer was: Apple II

On 1st April, 1876, Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs released the Apple 1 computer and started Apple Computers. At that time Wozniak was 26, had written a Basic programming language interpreter for a new microprocessor from MOS Technology, the 6502m and designed a computer to run it.

The first computer they built was an engineering marvel for its time. In simplicity of use it was years ahead of the Altair 8800, its only competitor which was introduced early in 1975.

The easy to use Apple 11 computer was introduced in 1978, complete with a floppy disk drive, sold for $1,300 and in just six years, the Apple Computer Company grew to a $500 million a year.

Wozniak design of the Apple 11 became the genesis of the personal computer revolution and even would probably admit that he underestimated the power of his design.
Steve Wozniak and Born of Apple Computer

Theodore Gericault (1791-1824)

2011-06-21T05:46:00.000-07:00

Jean Louis Theodore Gericault was born in 1791 at Rouen. In 1796 his family moved to Paris, where he attended the Lycee Imperial.

The death of his mother left Gericault with an annuity that allowed him to pursue a career in painting.

He spent in Rome (1816-17), where he admired Michelangelo and Caravaggio and it was here that he prepared a set of studies for the Race of the Barbari Horses which interpreted the ancient world in an innovative and dramatic manner.

In 1819, his enormous painting The Raft of Medusa became instant sensation, not just because of its size (23-1/2 feet wide by 16 feet high), but also because of its tragic subject. At that time he was twenty seven years old.

In this huge painting, it took him eight months to complete, he sought to confront viewers with horror, chaos, and emotion of the tragedy while invoking the grandeur and impact of large scale history painting.
Theodore Gericault (1791-1824)

Biography of Soranus of Ephesus

2011-06-15T23:20:00.000-07:00

Among many Greek immigrant surgeons was Soranus of Ephesus (AD 90 – 138), who studied in Alexandria where he practiced as a physician. His name flourished under the Roman emperor Hadrian.

He was celebrated both as a teacher and practitioner; and is admitted to have been the blest exponent of the Methodic doctrines, which h carried to their highest degree of popularity.

As well as writing on fractures and skull injuries, Soranus can be regarded as one of the founders of obstetrics.

He introduced the birth stool, which had supports for the back and arms and crescent shaped aperture.

He also described the necessity of emptying the bladder before delivery of the baby. He was the first to advocate washing the eyes of the new born with oil; he also instructs on tying the umbilical cord with a double knot before cutting it.

He writes on nursing and weaning: he recommends that only boiled honey be given the infant on the first two days, with nursing only to begin on the third day.
Biography of Soranus of Ephesus

Biography of Julius Robert Oppenheimer (1904 – 67)

2011-04-28T19:21:00.000-07:00

Julius Robert Oppenheimer directed the Los Alamos National Laboratory for Manhattan Project during Word War II.

He over saw the production of the atomic bomb dropped in Japan in August 1945.

Robert was born into a life of wealthy Jewish and attended excellent private schools in New York. He educated at Harvard, Cambridge, and Gottingen, where he gained his PhD in 1927.

In 1929 Oppenheimer accepted academic positions at both University of California, Berkeley and California Institute of Technology. Throughout the 1930s Oppenheimer built up a reputation as a theoretical physicist, making several important contributions to quantum theory. Outside science his interests included literature and politics.

Oppenheimer’s early research was devoted in a particular to energy processes of subatomic particles, including electrons, positrons and cosmic rays.

He trained a whole generations of US physicist, who were greatly affected by his qualities of leadership and intellectual dependent.
When in 1942, the United States government decided to build atom bomb. Oppenheimer was chosen to direct the project. He helped to select the site for the laboratory in Los Alamos and proved to be a director with sufficient intellectual authority to command the support of several hundred scientists and sufficient diplomatic skill to deal with the politicians and general.

Oppenheimer was undoubtedly successful, for on 16 July 1945 and atom bomb was exploded in nearby New Mexico desert. Oppenheimer was involved in and supported the decision to drop the first bomb in Japanese town rather than on an uninhabited area as a threat.

After the war, Oppenheimer served as director of the Institute for Advanced Study at Prince University.

Oppenheimer retired to the Institute of Advanced Studies at Princeton, where he had been appointed director in 1947.

In 1963 he was given the Enrico Fermi Award by the AEC and in 1964 he was invited to Los Alamos to lecture to a packed audience. He died of cancer of the throat on February 18, 1967.
Biography of Julius Robert Oppenheimer (1904 – 67)

Andreas Vesalius

2011-04-15T05:53:00.000-07:00

The magnificent De humani corporis fabrica of Andreas Vesalius was published in 1543, fifty years after Leonardo’s drawings.

De humani corporis fabrica was one of the first anatomy texts to systemically provide descriptions derived from actual dissection of the human body.

Its brilliantly detailed drawing represented a break with the scholastic model of the body based on the work of Galen.

Born in Brussels in 1514 December 31, Vesalius studied medicine at Louvain, in his native Belgium, before travelling to France.

Vesalius claimed to have dissected, boiled and reassembled his first skeleton from the corpse of an executed criminals stolen from a gibbet.

He then moved to Padua near Venice where he was awarded a doctorate in medicine. He was appointed Professor of Surgery at the age of twenty three, Vesalius then began anatomical teaching in earnest.

Andreas Vesalius was the first modern anatomist who based his anatomical description on personal observation.

The kidney was fascinating organ to Vesalius, whose function, particularly regarding the production of urine, he did not fully grasp.

He died in Zante in 1564.
Andreas Vesalius

Avenzoar

2011-04-12T19:28:00.000-07:00

Avenzoar or his full name Abu Merwan Abdal Malik ibn Zuhr was an Arabian physician of the 12th century, born at Seville, in Spain where his father practiced medicine.

He became imminent in his profession, travelled much and passed through many adventures, among which was a long imprisonment at Seville.

The large estate he inherited from his ancestor placed him above the necessity of practicing for gain; he therefore took no fees form the poor, or form artificers, though he did not refuse the presents of the rich and powerful.

From certain of his works showed that he practiced both surgery and pharmacy, as well as medicine.

Avenzoar wrote a widely acclaimed text on tumors, abscesses and therapeutics while serving as a court physician to both the Almoravid and Almohad courts.

His death occurred at the age of 92 in 1162.
Avenzoar

Claude Monet

2011-01-22T09:47:00.000-08:00

Claude Monet
Born in 1840, Claude Monet lived all his life along the River Seine. He always preferred to paint outdoors and is often described as the father of Impressionism.

Second only to his passion for painting was his love of nature and gardening; he once paid a woodcutter to spare a row of trees he was painting.

In 1883, while still very poor Monet rented the green and pink house at Giverny which became a beautiful home for his extended family.

Over the years his fame increased and he became very rich indeed eventually buying his house and employing gardeners to help create the water gardens, the subject of much of his later work.

Monet was immensely disciplined, usually rising at 4 a.m and always insisting that the house ran like clockwork.

He set equally high standard for his work: on one occasion a gardener was ordered to burn several paintings which Monet considered unsuccessful; on another, Monet threw his canvas, easel and brushes into the water.

During the First World War, fighting went on so near Monet’s house that he could hear the guns, but although his son was skilled in action, Monet refused to leaved his garden.

Monet died in Giverny on December 5, 1926.
Claude Monet

Ampere, Andre-Marie

2010-12-15T18:18:00.000-08:00

Ampere, Andre-Marie
He was a French physicist and mathematician who established laws and principles relating magnetism and electricity to each other.

Ampere was repeated to have mastered all the then-known mathematics by the age of 12. He became Professor of Physics and Chemistry at Bourg in 1801 and a Professor of mathematics at the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris in 1809.

Observing a demonstration in 1820 of Oersted’s discovery that a magnetic needle was deflected when placed near a current carrying wire, Ampere was inspired to investigate the subject of electricity, of which he had no previous experience.

Within a week he had prepared the first of several important communications on his discoveries to the Academy of Sciences in Paris.

Included was a new hypothesis formed on the basis of his experiments on the relation between electricity and magnetism.

He investigated the forces exerted on each other by current carrying conductors and the properties of a solenoid.

His mathematical theory describing these phenomenon provided the foundations for the development of electrodynamics and his classic work Theorie mathematique des phenomenes electrodynamiques was published in 1827.

The name ‘ampere’ was adopted to replace the name ‘weber’ as a unit of current after Helmholtz proposed such as a change in 1881.
Ampere, Andre-Marie

Galen on Herophilus

2010-12-01T04:26:00.000-08:00

Galen on Herophilus
Herophilus ‘attained the highest degree of accuracy in things which became known by dissection and he obtained the greater part of his knowledge, not like the majority from irrational animals, but from human beings themselves.’ – by Galen

Galen was born in 129 AD in Pergamum, on the Aegean coasts of modern Turkey, but he lived much of his live in Rome. He deplored the laws that forbade human dissection: at least three of his many treatise were devoted to human anatomy, ostensibly as understood by the Alexandrians.

He received medical training in Smyma and Alexandria.

Galen served as a physician to the gladiators, and he may have taken advantage of gaping wounds to observe internal structure.

A great experimenter, he dissected animals, both living and dead, his preferred subjects being a pig and the rhesus monkey.

He extrapolated from animals to humans and devised elaborate theories concerning anatomical strictures, the motion of blood, and the origin and sustenance of life.

Galen’s genius was evident in the physiological experiments he conducted on animals. The work On the Use of the Parts of the Human Body comprised seventeen books concerning this topic. To study the function of the kidneys in producing urine, he tied the ureters and observed the swelling of the kidneys.

Some observations were accurate for animals but missed their marked when applied or humans; for example, he ascribed five lobes to the liver and a vascular network in the brain called the rete mirable.

Galen’s writings are authoritative and bragging, and his teleological perspective allowed him to conceive of all structures as having been created for a purpose.

His immediate successors may have carried out some human dissection, but anatomies became rare and ritualized exercise for endorsing Galen’s authority, not for seeking truth.

Galen spent the rest of his life at the Court writing an enormous corpus of medical works until his death in 201 AD.
Galen on Herophilus

Archimedes of Syracuse

2010-10-06T02:31:00.000-07:00

Archimedes of Syracuse established a reputation as an inventor of practical machines but became more famous for his discoveries in mathematics and physics.

Archimedes (287-212 BC) was born in Syracuse, the large Greek settlement in Sicily. He was born into a wealthy family and well connected.

His father, Pheidias, was well known as a respected astronomer. As a son of a scientist and member of the upper class, Archimedes received good education.

He studied in Alexandria as a young man, but presently return to Syracuse in Sicily, where he lived on close terms with king of that city.

The king was a relative. He had plenty of time to indulge his passion – mathematics, physics and engineering.

Archimedes quickly established his reputation as a creative inventor.

Archimedes did much of his work for King Hero. On one famous story, the king suspected that a goldsmith had not made a new coin of pure gold, but had mixed in some less costly silver.

The king asked Archimedes t find out if the goldsmith has cheated. Archimedes used the law of displacement to compare the amount of water displaced by the coin to the amount of water displaced by an equal weight of pure gold.

The coin displaced less water and so it was not pure gold. The goldsmith had cheated.

Archimedes devised all sorts of amazing devices based on scientific principles.

In 212 the Romans attacked Syracuse and Archimedes was urged to help defend the town. He is said to be invented machines for hurling enormous weights at the Roman ships, great cranes which could pluck them out of the water.

He even used huge mirror to focus the heat of the sun on approaching Roman ships and set them on fire.

He is one of the earliest but also most important scientist who ever lived.

His mathematical discoveries were much more important. He wrote more than 20 books about his discoveries in diverse branches of mathematics and physics.

One of Archimedes’ finest mathematical achievements was his perfection of the method of exhaustion.
Archimedes of Syracuse

Aristotle (384-322 BC)

2010-08-10T02:02:00.001-07:00

Aristotle (384-322 BC)
Aristotle born in 384 BC at Stagira, a Greek town not far from the borders of the semi barbarian kingdom of Macedonia.

Aristotle grew up under the influence of the Hippocratic tradition of medicine which is father practiced and which may well have influenced him but its emphasis on empirical investigation and respect for the evidence of concrete particularities.

Aristotle arrived in Athens in 367 to join Plato’s Academy as a student. He stayed, so the tradition goes, for twenty years and these two decades formed the first great phase of his intellectual career.

Aristotle followed closely after Hippocrates and although not himself a physician, had a profound effect on medical thought and practice for succeeding centuries.

Indeed he can regarded as one of the greatest scientific geniuses the world has ever seen.

Although Aristotle never dissected a human being, he carried out anatomical studies of a wide range of animals, laid the foundation of embryology by studying the developing chick, and gave an accurate account of the life of bees.

He laid the basis of the doctrine of evolution, describe a ladder of nature ascending through lower plants, higher plants, insects, fish, mammals to man.

This period of Aristotle’s life came to an end with the death of Plato and the succession of Plato’s nephew Speusippus to the headship of the academy.

He left Athens, accompanied by Xenocrates and went to Atarnea, in Mysia, to his friend and fellow disciple, Hermias, the ruler of that town , whose sister or niece, Pyhtias, h subsequently married.

After the fall and death of Hermias (345 BC) Aristotle went to Mytilene. From there he returned to Athens and open the school of rhetoric, in which he set up as an opponent to Isocrates.
Aristotle (384-322 BC)

Burra, Edward John (1905 – 76) British painter

2010-07-24T21:36:00.000-07:00

Burra, Edward John (1905 – 76) British painter
Burra left school early due to chronic ill health but later study art the Riyal College in Art of London.

His early work falls into the category of social realism and shows a fascination with the squalid and seedy. Harlem (1934), now in the Tate Gallery, London is an example.

Burra rarely left his home in Rye, Sussex, using post cards and and photographs on which to base many of his paintings.

In the mid 1930s social context became less important in his work than grotesque and bizarre subject matter, as in Dancing Skeletons (1934). Skeletons and birdmen became favorite images.

Some of his painting leant towards surrealism while others, such as Christ Mocked, were of a religious nature.

In 1950s and 1960s he also produced landscape of a mysterious and menacing nature.
Burra, Edward John (1905 – 76) British painter

Anderson, John

2010-06-20T18:33:00.000-07:00

John Anderson
Born in Roseneath manse, Scotland in 1726, son of minister, he was educated after his father’s death by an aunt, a Mrs. Turner to whom he later paid back the cost and was later an officer in the corps that was raised to resist the rebellion of 1745.

He was studied at Glasgow, where in 1756 he became Professor of Oriental Languages and in 1760, Professor of Natural Philosophy; he is made for allowing artisans to attends his lectures in their working clothes.

He planned the fortifications set up to attend Greenock in 1759 and was sympathetic with the French Revolution.

He invented the cannon in which the coil was counteracted by the condensation of air in the carriage.

After unsuccessfully trying to the interest the Government in this gun, he went to Paris in 1791 and offered it to the National Convention.

While there he invented a means of smuggling French newspaper into Germany by the use of small balloons. He lost in lawsuit with the other professors.

In 1786, he published Institute of Physics which he ran to five editions in ten years and in 1800 he wrote on Roman antiquities.

Upon his death he left all his library and apparatus to an educational institute which was later renamed after his but has now become the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow.
John Anderson

Ernst Abbe (1840 – 1905)

2010-05-19T00:50:00.000-07:00

Ernst Abbe (1840 – 1905)
Born in Eisenach, he became professor at the University of Jena in 1870 and in 1878 director of the astronomical and meteorological observatories there.

Consumed by the Jena optical instrument – maker Carl Zeiss in the 1860s, Abbe studied the resolution limit and manufacturing process of microscope. He developed instruments for measuring refractive indices of glass and focometer to control the performance of the optical workshop.

Zeiss took Abbe into partnership, and following Zeiss’s death in 1888 Abbe became owner of the company.

He invented the arrangement later known as “Abbe’s homogenous immersion,” and arising out of his work on the microscope, he founded the diffraction theory of optical imaging from which modern optical imaging techniques have developed.
Ernst Abbe (1840 – 1905)

Magdalena Abakanowicz

2010-04-22T18:59:00.000-07:00

Magdalena Abakanowicz
She was born in Falenty in 1930 near Warsaw and her privileged upbringing was cut short by the Nazi invasion of Poland and the subsequent Russian “Liberation”.

Educated at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts (1950-55) during the repressive period of Socialist Realism, she sought to escape from conventional art forms through weaving.

In the 1960s, she achieved international recognition with her monumental woven fiber installations the ‘Abakans.’

He later works include primitive and disturbing figurative groups made from burlap sacking.

In 1978 she took part in the pioneering exhibition “Soft Art” in Zurich and in 1980, represented Poland at the Venice Biennale.

From 1965 she taught at the Academy of Fine Arts, Poznan, becoming professor in 1979 until 1990.

Her work has been featured in exhibitions throughout the world and she has been the recipient of numerous awards.
Magdalena Abakanowicz

Anne (1665 – 1714) – Queen of Great Britain and Ireland from 1702

2010-03-26T03:13:00.000-07:00

Anne (1665 – 1714) – Queen of Great Britain and Ireland from 1702
Anne was born at St James’s Palace in London, the second daughter of the Duke of York (later James VII and II) and his first wife, Anne Hyde.

She was the younger sister of Mary II (wife of William III). Although her father became a Catholic and married the Catholic Mary of Modena in 1672, Anne was brought up a staunch Protestant.

In 1663 she married Prince George of Denmark (1653 – 1708); she born him 17 children, only one whom survived infancy but died at the age of 12.

For much of her life she was greatly influenced by her close friend and confidante Sarah Churchill, the future Duchess of Marlborough.

During her father’s reign, Anne took no part in politics. When he was overthrown in the Glorious Revolution of 1688, she supported the accession of her sister Mary and her brother in law William and was placed in the succession, but after quarrelling with Mary she was drawn by the Marlboroughs into Jacobite intrigues for the restoration of her father or to secure the succession of his son, James Stuart the Old Pretender.

In 1701, however, after the death of her own son, she signed the Act of Settlement designing the Hanoverian descendents of James VI and I as her successors and in 19702 she succeeded William III on the throne.
Anne (1665 – 1714) – Queen of Great Britain and Ireland from 1702

Wilson (Thomas) Woodrow (1856 – 1924)

2010-03-19T03:10:00.000-07:00

Wilson (Thomas) Woodrow (1856 – 1924)
He was 28th President of the United States and Nobel prize winner. Born in Staunton, Virginia he studied at Princeton and Johns Hopkins Universities.

He then practiced law, lectured at Bryn Mawr and Princeton, became president of Princeton in 1902 and governor of New Jersey in 1911.

In 1912 and 1916, as Democratic candidate he was elected president of the United States. Wilson’s administration, ending in tragic failure and his own physical breakdown, is memorable for the Prohibition and women’s suffrage amendments to the Constitution, trouble with Mexico, US participation in World War 1, his part in the peace conference, his “fourteen points” plan for peace, which lead to the Armistice, his championship of the League of Nations and Senate’s rejection of the Treaty of Versailles which led to his breakdown.

He wrote History of the American People (1902) and other works and was awarded the 1919 Nobel Peace Prize.
Wilson (Thomas) Woodrow (1856 – 1924)

Muhammad Abduh (1849-1905)

2010-03-01T02:21:00.001-08:00

Muhammad Abduh (1849-1905)
An initiator of the reform in late 18th century Egypt he became convinced of the need for educational reorganization and a reappraisal of Islam’s position in the modern word.

Exile after the suppression of the Urabi Revolt he went eventually to Paris where he renewed his acquaintance with Jamal al-Din al-Afghani.

Permitted to return to Cairo, by 1889 he had been appointed the state mufti, the highest (clerical) post.

He was fervently patriotic and was thus opposed to Egyptian control being vested in either European or Asian despots.

He was, however primarily a theologian, and the maintenance of the true religion of Islam, shorn of falsifying abuses was his prime motivation.
Muhammad Abduh (1849-1905)

Henry Julius Wetenhall Tillyard (1881-1968)

2010-02-16T15:17:00.000-08:00

Henry Julius Wetenhall Tillyard (1881-1968)
Henry Julius Wetenhall Tillyard a pioneer in the modern study of medieval Byzantine music, was born in Cambridge, England, in November 1881, the son of a former mayor of the borough.

His brother, Eustace Mandeville Wetenhall )1889-1962), a professor of English literature at Cambridge, University, became one of the most respected literary scholars and critics of the twentieth century, honored for his work by an O.B.E.

Tillyard began his university studies in 1900 at Gonville and Caius College in Cambridge and graduated in 1904 as a classic fluent in ancient Greek and Latin.

Immediately after graduation, Tillyard were first went to Rome and then to Athens, when he stayed with some interruption for three years (1904-07) at the British School of Archeology.

In the winter of 1904, Tillyard first heard Byzantine music chant in the Metropolis (Cathedral) of Athens and has his first discussion on Byzantine chant with Argues Eftaliores, his brother in law.

These two incidents inspired Tillyard to begin the study of Byzantine music at this time with Joannes T. Sakellarides (1853-1938), teacher, composer and precentor.

In the spring of 1909, in addition to continuing his studies and research in Athens and Lesbos, Tillyard visited Moscow where he examined Byzantine musical manuscripts at the National Museum of Moscow.

In 1917, Tillyard began work on his doctorate at the University of Edinburgh. His dissertation, Byzantine Music and Hymnography, was published in 1923 in London.
Henry Julius Wetenhall Tillyard (1881-1968)

Sir Winston Churchill

2010-01-27T08:25:00.000-08:00

Sir Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill was born at Blenheim Palace, Woodstock, the eldest son of Lord Randolph Churchill and a descendent of John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough.

Educated at Harrow and Sandhurst, he was commissioned in the 4th Queens’s Own Hussars in 1895.

He served in the 1897 Malakand and 1898 Nile campaign and as a London newspaper correspondent in the Boer War was captured but escaped with a $25 reward offered for his recapture.

In 1900, he entered parliament as a Conservative MP, but crossed the flour of the House to join the Liberal majority in 1906.

He was Secretary of State for War and Air from 1919 to 1921, but then found himself out of favor and was excluded from the Cabinet.

Neville Chamberlain at last steeped down and Churchill began his “walk with destiny” as Prime Minster of the coalition.

He was the first premier since the Duke of Wellington to have first hand experience of battle, and also he was an accomplished orator, able to convince the people by a parliamentary statement or radio broadcast, that even in the blackest moments Great Britain would eventually be victorious.

In the general election of 1945 Churchill was rejected by the British electorate; but by 1951 at the age of 77, he was Prime Minster again.

In 1955 he finally relinquished the premiership to Anthony Eden at the age of 81, its post war recovery was nearly complete.
Sir Winston Churchill

Anwar Sadat

2010-01-14T15:54:00.000-08:00

Anwar Sadat
On October 6th, 1981, Egyptian President Mohamed Anwar El-Sadat was shot by gunmen who open fire at a military parade for the eight anniversary of the Yom Kippur war.

Winners of the Nobel Peace Prize are not, as a rule, assassinated, but there is always the fatal exception.

Anwar Sadat is best remembered as the first Arab leader to make an official visit to Israel, where he met with Israeli prime minister and spoke before the Knesset in Jerusalem on November 19th, 1977, creating an unprecedented rapport between former enemies.

He had not however, always played the peacemaker.

He ascent to world renown began when, as a career officer in the Egyptian Army, he took part in the 1952 coup which dethroned King Farouk and led to the appointment of Gamal Abdal Nasser as president of Egypt.

He was a key figure in the wars with Israel in 1950s and 1960s and after Nasser died in 1970, succeeded by Him as president.

In 1973, he launched the final Yom Kippur War against Israel and although Israel emerged victorious, some initial successes helped restore the Egyptian morale, and paved the way for the peace settlement several years later that would be both Sadat’s crowning historical achievement and also the direct cause of his death.
Anwar Sadat