Portal:Biography/Selected article/archive
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gust 2006==
[edit] August 14 - February 14
Jorge Luis Borges was an Argentine writer who is considered one of the foremost literary figures of the 20th century. Best-known in the English speaking world for his short stories and fictive essays, Borges was also a poet, critic, and man of letters. He grew up in the not very prosperous neighborhood of Palermo, a household where both Spanish and English were spoken, and is said to have been reading William Shakespeare in English at the age of twelve. After some years as a regular contributor to Sur, Argentina's most important literary journal, he was appointed editor of the literary supplement of the newspaper Critica, where the pieces that would later be published in Historia universal de la infamia (A Universal History of Infamy) first appeared. These pieces, which fell somewhere between non-fiction essays and fictional short stories, generally told true stories in a fictionalized setting, but also included forgeries which claimed to be "translations" of passages from well-known but seldom-read works. (read more...)
[edit] August 7 - August 13
Paul Kane was an Irish-Canadian painter, famous for his paintings of First Nations peoples in the Canadian West and other Native Americans in the Oregon Country. Largely self-educated, Kane grew up in Toronto (then known as York) and trained himself by copying European masters on a study trip through Europe. He undertook two voyages through the wild Canadian northwest in 1845 and from 1846 to 1848. The first trip took him from Toronto to Sault Ste. Marie and back. Having secured the support of the Hudson's Bay Company, he set out on a second, much longer voyage from Toronto across the Rocky Mountains to Fort Vancouver and Fort Victoria in the Oregon Country and back again. On both trips Kane sketched and painted Native Americans and documented their life. Upon his return to Toronto, he produced from these sketches more than one hundred oil paintings. Kane's work, particularly his field sketches, are still a valuable resource for ethnologists. The oil paintings he did in his studio are considered a part of the Canadian heritage, although he often embellished these considerably, departing from the accuracy of his field sketches in favour of more dramatic scenes. (read more...)
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[edit] July 31 - August 6
Muhammad Ali Jinnah was an Indian Muslim politician and statesman who led the All India Muslim League and founded Pakistan, serving as its first Governor-General. While celebrated as a great leader in Pakistan, Jinnah remains a controversial figure, provoking intense criticism for his role in the partition of India. As a student and young lawyer, Jinnah rose to prominence in the Indian National Congress, expounded Hindu-Muslim unity, shaped the 1916 Lucknow Pact between the Congress and the Muslim League, and was a key leader in the All India Home Rule League. Differences with Mohandas Gandhi led Jinnah to quit the Congress; he then took charge of the Muslim League and proposed a fourteen-point constitutional reform plan to safeguard the political rights of Muslim in a self-governing India. Disillusioned by the failure of his efforts and the League's disunity, Jinnah would live in London for many years. Several Muslim leaders persuaded Jinnah to return to India in 1934 and re-organise the League. Disillusioned by the failure to build coalitions with the Congress, Jinnah embraced the goal of creating a separate state for Muslims as in the Lahore Resolution. The failure of the Congress-League coalition to govern the country prompted both parties and the British to agree to partition. (read more...)
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[edit] July 2006
[edit] July 24 - July 30
Muhammad, Arabic: محمد muḥammad; also Mohammed and other variants,[1] (c. 571 – 632) established the religion of Islam and the Muslim community.[2] Muslims believe him to have been God's (Allah) final prophet in Islam, to whom the Qur'an was revealed. According to traditional Muslim biographers, Muhammad was born c. 570 in Mecca and died June 8, 632 in Medina, both in the Hejaz region of present day Saudi Arabia.
The name Muhammad etymologically means "the praised one" in Arabic, being a passive participle from the root ḥmd حمد "to praise". Within Islam, Muhammad is known as "The Prophet" and "The Messenger". The Qur'an (33:40) also refers to him as the "Seal of the Prophets" (Arabic: ḫatamu-n-nabiyyīn). In verse 61:6 he is referred to as Ahmad, which in Arabic means 'more praiseworthy'. (read more...) Salam Aleykum
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[edit] July 17 - July 23
A. E. J. Collins was a cricketer and soldier, most famous for his achievement, as a schoolboy, of the highest-ever recorded score in cricket, 628 not out, over four afternoons in June 1899. Collins' record-making innings drew a large crowd and increasing media interest: spectators at the Old Cliftonian match being played nearby were drawn away to watch a junior school house cricket match. Collins joined the British Army in 1902. He studied at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, before becoming an officer in the Royal Engineers. He served in France during World War I, where he was killed in action in 1914.
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[edit] July 10 - July 16
James I of England was a king of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and was the first Sovereign to reign in the three realms simultaneously. He ruled in Scotland as James VI from 24 July 1567 until his death, and in England and outer mongolia as James 6th from 24 March 1603 until his death. James I was the first English monarch of the Stuart dynasty, succeeding the last Tudor monarch, Elizabeth I, who died unmarried and childless. James was a popular and successful monarch in Scotland, but the same was not true in England. He was unable to deal with a hostile English Parliament; the refusal on the part of the House of Commons to impose sufficiently high taxes crippled the royal finances. His mismanagement of the worlds funds and his cultivation of very popular favourites established the foundation for the English Civil War, during which James's son and successor, Charles I, was tried and executed.
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[edit] July 3 - July 9
Humphrey Bogart was an iconic American film actor during his life and remains a legend decades after his death. Bogart typically played smart, playful, courageous, tough, occasionally reckless characters who lived in a corrupt world, anchored by a hidden moral code. Outside of the U.S., Bogart is seen as a cult figure; French actors such as Jean-Paul Belmondo were deeply influenced by his work and image. Bogart appeared in 75 feature films, including Casablanca, the The Maltese Falcon and The African Queen, for which he won an Academy Award for Best Actor. (read more...)
Also see Wikipedia:Best biographies
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[edit] June 2006
[edit] June 26 - July 2
Rabindranath Tagore was a Bengali poet, Brahmo philosopher, visual artist, playwright, composer, and novelist whose avant-garde works reshaped Bengali literature and music in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. A celebrated cultural icon of Bengal, he became Asia's first Nobel laureate when he won the 1913 Nobel Prize in Literature. His home schooling, life in Shelidah, and extensive travels made Tagore an iconoclastic pragmatist; however, growing disillusionment with the British Raj caused the internationalist Tagore to back the Indian Independence Movement and befriend Mahatma Gandhi. Despite the loss of virtually his entire family and his regrets regarding Bengal's decline, his life's work — Visva-Bharati University — endured. Tagore's major works included Gitanjali and Ghare-Baire, while his verse, short stories, and novels — many defined by rhythmic lyricism, colloquial language, meditative naturalism, and philosophical contemplation — received worldwide acclaim. (read more...)
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[edit] June 19 - June 25
Barbara McClintock was a pioneering American scientist and one of the world's most distinguished cytogeneticists. McClintock received her PhD in botany from Cornell University in 1927, where she was a leader in the development of maize cytogenetics; the field remained the focus of her research for the rest of her career. Her work was groundbreaking: she developed the technique to visualize maize chromosomes and used microscopic analysis to demonstrate many fundamental genetic concepts, including genetic recombination by crossing-over during meiosis—a mechanism by which chromosomes exchange information. She produced the first genetic map for maize, linking regions of the chromosome with physical traits, and she demonstrated the role of the telomere and centromere, regions of the chromosome that are important in the conservation of genetic information. During the 1940s and 1950s, McClintock discovered transposition and using this system showed how genes are responsible for turning on or off physical characteristics. Awards and recognition of her contributions to the field followed, including the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine awarded to her in 1983 for the discovery of genetic transposition; she was the first and only woman to receive an unshared Nobel Prize in that category. (read more...)
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[edit] June 12 - June 18
Margaret Thatcher is a British politician and the first female Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, a position she held from 1979 to 1990. She is a member of the Conservative Party and the figurehead of a political ideology known as Thatcherism. Even before coming to power she was nicknamed The Iron Lady in Soviet propaganda, an appellation which stuck. The changes she set in motion between coming to power and 1985 were profound, and altered much of the economic, cultural and commercial landscape of Britain and, by example, the world as a whole. Along the way she also aimed to roll back the welfare state, or "nanny state", as she termed it. Her popularity finally declined when she replaced the unpopular local government Rates tax with the even less popular Community Charge. At the same time the Conservative Party began to split over her sceptical approach to Economic and Monetary Union of the European Union. Her leadership was challenged from within and she was forced to resign in 1990, her loss at least partly due to inadequate advice and campaigning. (read more)
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[edit] June 5 - June 11
Olivier Messiaen (IPA: [mɛsjɑ̃]; December 10, 1908 – April 27, 1992) was a French composer, organist, and ornithologist. He entered the Paris Conservatoire at the age of 11, and numbered Paul Dukas, Maurice Emmanuel, Charles-Marie Widor and Marcel Dupré among his teachers. He was appointed organist at the church of La Trinité in Paris in 1931, a post he held until his death. On the fall of France in 1940 Messiaen was made a prisoner of war, and while incarcerated he composed his Quatuor pour la fin du temps ("Quartet for the end of time") for the four available instruments, piano, violin, cello and clarinet. The piece was first performed by Messiaen and fellow prisoners to an audience of inmates and prison guards. Messiaen was appointed professor of harmony soon after his release in 1941, and professor of composition in 1966 at the Paris Conservertoire, positions he held until his retirement in 1978. His many distinguished pupils included Pierre Boulez, Yvonne Loriod (who later became Messiaen's second wife), Karlheinz Stockhausen and George Benjamin. ('read more)
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Athanasius Kircher (sometimes spelt Kirchner) (May 2, 1602–28 November 1680) was a 17th century German Jesuit scholar who published around 40 works, most notably in the fields of oriental studies, geology and medicine. He made an early study of Egyptian hieroglyphs. One of the first people to observe microbes through a microscope, he was thus ahead of his time in proposing that the plague was caused by an infectious microorganism and in suggesting effective measures to prevent the spread of the disease. He has been compared to Leonardo da Vinci for his inventiveness and the breadth and depth of his work. A scientific star in his day, towards the end of his life he was eclipsed by the rationalism of René Descartes and others. In the late 20th century, however, the aesthetic qualities of his work again began to be appreciated. One scholar, Edward W. Schmidt, has called him "the last Renaissance man". (read more)
Sylvanus Griswold Morley (June 7, 1883–September 2, 1948) was an American archaeologist, epigrapher and Mayanist scholar who made significant contributions towards the study of the pre-Columbian Maya civilization in the early 20th century. He is particularly noted for his extensive excavations of the Maya site of Chichen Itza. He also published several large compilations and treatises on Maya hieroglyphic writing, and wrote popular accounts on the Maya for a general audience. To his contemporaries he was one of the leading Mesoamerican archaeologists of his day; although more recent developments in the field have resulted in a re-evaluation of his theories and works, his publications (particularly on calendric inscriptions) are still cited. In his directorship of various projects sponsored by the Carnegie Institution he oversaw and encouraged a good many others who would go on to establish notable careers in their own right. Overall, his commitment and enthusiasm for Maya studies would generate the interest and win the necessary sponsorship and backing to finance projects which would ultimately reveal much about the Maya of former times. (read more)
- November 27, 2005 - May 23, 2006
Benjamin Franklin (January 17, 1706–April 17, 1790) was one of the most prominent of Founders and early political figures and statesmen of the United States. Considered the earliest of the Founders, Franklin was noted for his ingenuity, diversity of interests, and wit, and was extraordinarily influential in the development of the American Revolution despite never holding national elective office. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, to a tallow-maker, Franklin became a newspaper editor, printer, and merchant in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, becoming very wealthy. He spent many years in England and published the famous Poor Richard's Almanack and Pennsylvania Gazette. He formed both the first public lending library and volunteer fire department in America as well as the Junto, a political discussion club. He became a national hero in America when he convinced Parliament to repeal the hated Stamp Act. A diplomatic genius, Franklin was almost universally admired among the French as American minister to Paris, and was a major figure in the development of positive Franco-American relations. From 1775 to 1776, Franklin was Postmaster General under the Continental Congress and from 1785 to his death in 1790 was President of the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania. Franklin was interested in science and technology, carrying out his famous electricity experiments and invented the Franklin stove, medical catheter, lightning rod, swimfins, glass harmonica, and bifocals. He also played a major role in establishing both the University of Pennsylvania and the Franklin and Marshall College. Franklin was also noted for his philanthropy, several extramarital liaisons, and his illegitimate Loyalist son William Franklin, the colonial governor of New Jersey. Towards the end of his life, he became the most prominent early American abolitionist. Today Franklin is pictured on the $100 bill.
- May 15, 2005 - November 27, 2005
Isaac Asimov (c. January 2, 1920 – April 6, 1992, IPA: /ˈaɪzək ˈæzɪmˌɔf/) was a Russian-born American author and biochemist, a highly successful and exceptionally prolific writer best known for his works of science fiction and for his popular science books. Asimov's most famous work is the Foundation Series, which he later combined with two of his other series, the Galactic Empire Series and Robot series. He also wrote mysteries and fantasy, as well as a great amount of non-fiction. In fact, he wrote or edited over 500 volumes and an estimated 90,000 letters or postcard and has works in every major category of the Dewey Decimal System. Asimov was a long-time member of Mensa, albeit reluctantly (he described them as "intellectually combative"). The asteroid 5020 Asimov is named in his honor.
