crème de la crème

Jai Ganesh · 2022-03-30 00:59:56

1040) Joe Frazier

Summary

Joseph William Frazier (January 12, 1944 – November 7, 2011), nicknamed "Smokin' Joe", was an American professional boxer who competed from 1965 to 1981. He was known for his strength, durability, formidable punching power, and relentless pressure fighting style and was the first boxer to beat Muhammad Ali. Frazier reigned as the undisputed heavyweight champion from 1970 to 1973 and as an amateur won a gold medal at the 1964 Summer Olympics.

Frazier emerged as the top contender in the late 1960s, defeating opponents that included Jerry Quarry, Oscar Bonavena, Buster Mathis, Eddie Machen, Doug Jones, George Chuvalo, and Jimmy Ellis en route to becoming undisputed heavyweight champion in 1970, and he followed up by defeating Ali by unanimous decision in the highly anticipated Fight of the Century in 1971. Two years later, Frazier lost his title to George Foreman. Frazier fought on and beat Joe Bugner, lost a rematch to Ali, and beat Quarry and Ellis again.

Frazier's last world title challenge came in 1975, but he was beaten by Ali in the brutal rubber match, the Thrilla in Manila. Frazier retired in 1976 after a second loss to Foreman but made a comeback in 1981. He fought just once before retiring for good, finishing his career with a record of 32 wins, 4 losses, and 1 draw. The International Boxing Research Organization rates Frazier among the ten greatest heavyweights of all time.

The Ring magazine named him Fighter of the Year in 1967, 1970, and 1971, and the Boxing Writers Association of America (BWAA) named him Fighter of the Year in 1969, 1971, and 1975. In 1999, The Ring ranked him the eighth greatest heavyweight. He is an inductee of both the International Boxing Hall of Fame and the World Boxing Hall of Fame, having been a part of the inaugural induction class of 1990 for the IBHF.

His style was often compared with that of Henry Armstrong and occasionally Rocky Marciano and was dependent on bobbing, weaving, and relentless pressure to wear down his opponents. His best-known punch was a powerful left hook, which accounted for most of his knockouts. In his career, he lost to only two fighters, both former Olympic and world heavyweight champions: twice to Muhammad Ali and twice to George Foreman.

After retiring, Frazier made cameo appearances in several Hollywood movies and two episodes of The Simpsons. His son Marvis became a boxer and was trained by Joe Frazier himself. Marvis lost a title shot to heavyweight champion Larry Holmes in 1983 and was knocked out in the first round by an up-and-coming Mike Tyson in 1986. Marvis ended his career with a record of 19 wins and those 2 losses. Frazier's daughter Jacqui Frazier-Lyde also boxed professionally and is a former WIBA world light-heavyweight champion who ended her career with a record of 13 wins and 1 loss, with her sole loss coming in a majority-decision-points loss to Laila Ali, Ali's daughter, in a fight dubbed as "Ali–Frazier IV".

Frazier continued to train fighters in his gym in Philadelphia. His attitude towards Ali in later life was largely characterized by bitterness and contempt but was interspersed with brief reconciliations.

Frazier was diagnosed with liver cancer in late September 2011 and admitted to hospice care. He died of complications from the disease on November 7, 2011.

Details

Name : Joseph William Frazier
Born : January 12, 1944
Died : November 7, 2011 (aged 67)
Nationality : American
Nickname : Smokin' Joe

Boxing Info
Weight class : Heavyweight
Height : 5 ft 11 1⁄2 in (182 cm)

Joe Frazier (1944-2011) was a professional boxer from the United States whose career lasted from 1965 until 1976. He was undisputed heavyweight champion of the world in the early 1970’s. Frazier was considered to have the most dangerous left hook in boxing and is best known for his three fights against Muhammad Ali. Before turning pro, Frazier had been an Olympic champion at the 1964 Games in Tokyo. After a comeback for a single fight in 1981, he retired from boxing and was later inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame.

Biography:

Early life

One of 13 children, Frazier was born on January 17th, 1944 in Beaufort, South Carolina. He grew up on the family’s farm. His school days were hard, as he did not find academic learning came naturally to him and he had to work on the farm most evenings. However, his family was among the first in their neighborhood to purchase a television. As a result, Frazier gradually grew interested in the boxing programs that were often shown. By his teens, he was practicing on a home-made punching bag and telling anyone who would listen that he would one day emulate his boxing hero, Joe Louis, and become a world champion boxer.

Frazier left the South at age 15 after an altercation on the family farm. He traveled to New York, where his brother Tommy lived, and by the early 1960’s he was established as one of the nation’s best amateur boxers. He won the prestigious Golden Gloves championships every year between 1962 and 1964, and won gold on a 3-2 split decision at the Tokyo Olympics – despite having to fight with a broken thumb. A year after the Games, Frazier turned professional, and quickly demonstrated that his potential was just as high in the pro game as it had been in the amateur ranks.

Boxing career

During the late 1960’s, Frazier repeatedly beat high-ranking opponents including Buster Mathis, Jerry Quarry, and George Chuvalo. In 1970 he became undisputed heavyweight champion when he defeated Jimmy Ellis by way of technical knockout at Madison Square Garden. Thanks to Muhammad Ali’s first retirement, the belts Ali had held had become vacant, thus making this a unification bout. Ali quickly returned to the ring and the two men met for the first time in 1971, again at Madison Square Garden. The match had been built up as the “Fight of the Century,” and it lived up to the hype: Frazier won in 15 brutal rounds, becoming the first man to defeat Ali as a professional.

Frazier held his title for two years, but was then knocked out by George Foreman. Frazier elected to continue boxing, and met Ali for the second time, this time losing. In 1975, the two men met for the final time, the fight taking place in the Philippines. The so-called “Thrilla in Manila” turned out to be one of the century’s greatest boxing matches, with Ali winning a sensational contest by way of 14th-round TKO. Frazier retired the following year, after losing to Joe Bugner, returning only for a single fight in 1981. He then became a trainer and occasional actor, before dying of liver cancer in November, 2011.

Jai Ganesh · 2022-04-01 20:41:01

1041) Sean Connery

Summary

Sir Sean Connery (born Thomas Connery; 25 August 1930 – 31 October 2020) was a Scottish actor. He was the first actor to portray fictional British secret agent James Bond on film, starring in seven Bond films between 1962 and 1983. Originating the role in Dr. No, Connery played Bond in six of Eon Productions' entries and made his final appearance in Never Say Never Again.

Connery began acting in smaller theatre and television productions until his breakout role as Bond. Although he did not enjoy the off-screen attention the role gave him, the success of the Bond films brought Connery offers from notable directors such as Alfred Hitchcock, Sidney Lumet and John Huston. Their films in which Connery appeared included Marnie (1964), The Hill (1965), Murder on the Orient Express (1974), and The Man Who Would Be King (1975). He also appeared in A Bridge Too Far (1977), Highlander (1986), The Name of the Rose (1986), The Untouchables (1987), Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), The Hunt for Red October (1990), Dragonheart (1996), The Rock (1996), and Finding Forrester (2000). Connery officially retired from acting in 2006, although he briefly returned for voice-over roles in 2012.

His achievements in film were recognised with an Academy Award, two BAFTA Awards (including the BAFTA Fellowship), and three Golden Globes, including the Cecil B. DeMille Award and a Henrietta Award. In 1987, he was made a Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters in France, and he received the US Kennedy Center Honors lifetime achievement award in 1999. Connery was knighted in the 2000 New Year Honours for services to film drama.

In 2004, a poll in the UK Sunday Herald recognized Connery as "The Greatest Living Scot" and a 2011 EuroMillions survey named him "Scotland's Greatest Living National Treasure". He was voted by People magazine as the "Sexiest Man Alive" in 1989 and the "Sexiest Man of the Century" in 1999.

Details

Overview

Born : August 25, 1930 in Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
Died : October 31, 2020 in Nassau, Bahamas (pneumonia-triggered respiratory failure, and atrial fibrillation)
Birth Name : Thomas Sean Connery
Nickname : Big Tam
Height : 6' 2¾" (1.9 m)

Mini Bio

The tall, handsome and muscular Scottish actor Sean Connery is best known as the original actor to portray James Bond in the hugely successful movie franchise, starring in seven films between 1962 and 1983. Some believed that such a career-defining role might leave him unable to escape it, but he proved the doubters wrong, becoming one of the most notable film actors of his generation, with a host of great movies to his name. This arguably culminated in his greatest acclaim in 1988, when Connery won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as an Irish cop in The Untouchables (1987), stealing the thunder from the movie's principal star Kevin Costner. Connery was polled as "The Greatest Living Scot" and "Scotland's Greatest Living National Treasure". In 1989, he was proclaimed "Sexiest Man Alive" by People magazine, and in 1999, at age 69, he was voted "Sexiest Man of the Century."

Thomas "Sean" Connery was born on August 25, 1930 in Fountainbridge, Edinburgh. His mother, Euphemia C. (Maclean), was a cleaning lady, and his father, Joseph Connery, was a factory worker and truck driver. He also had a brother, Neil Connery, a plasterer in Edinburgh. He was of Irish and Scottish descent. Before going into acting, Sean had many different jobs, such as a milkman, lorry driver, a laborer, artist's model for the Edinburgh College of Art, coffin polisher and bodybuilder. He also joined the Royal Navy, but was later discharged because of medical problems. At the age of 23, he had a choice between becoming a professional footballer or an actor, and even though he showed much promise in the sport, he chose acting and said it was one of his more intelligent moves.

No Road Back (1957) was Sean's first major movie role, and it was followed by several made-for-TV movies such as ITV Television Playhouse: Anna Christie (1957), Macbeth (1961) and Anna Karenina (1961) as well as guest appearances on TV series, and also films such as Hell Drivers (1957), Another Time, Another Place (1958), Darby O'Gill and the Little People (1959) and The Frightened City (1961). In 1962 he appeared in The Longest Day (1962) with a host of other stars.

His big breakthrough came in 1962 when he landed the role of secret agent James Bond in Dr. No (1962). He played James Bond in six more films: From Russia with Love (1963), Goldfinger (1964), Thunderball (1965), You Only Live Twice (1967), Diamonds Are Forever (1971) and Never Say Never Again (1983).

After and during the success of the Bond films, he maintained a successful career as an actor and has appeared in films, including Alfred Hitchcock's Marnie (1964), The Hill (1965), Murder on the Orient Express (1974), The Man Who Would Be King (1975), The Wind and the Lion (1975), Time Bandits (1981), Highlander (1986), The Name of the Rose (1986), Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), The Hunt for Red October (1990), Rising Sun (1993), The Rock (1996), Finding Forrester (2000) and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003).

Sean married actress Diane Cilento in 1962 and they had Sean's only child, Jason Connery, born on January 11, 1963. The couple announced their separation in February 1971 and filed for divorce 2½ years later. Sean then dated Jill St. John, Lana Wood, Magda Konopka and Carole Mallory. In 1975 he married Micheline Roquebrune and they stayed married, despite Sean's well-documented love affair with Lynsey de Paul in the late '80s. Sean had three stepchildren through his marriage to Micheline. He is also a grandfather. His son, Jason and Jason's ex-wife, actress Mia Sara had a son, Dashiell Connery, in 1997.

Sean Connery died on 31 October, 2020, in Nassau, the Bahamas, where he resided. He was 90.

No-Time-To-Die-director-Cary-Fukunaga-says-Sean-Connerys.jpg

Jai Ganesh · 2022-04-03 18:50:44

1042) Trygve Lie

Summary

Trygve Halvdan Lie (16 July 1896 – 30 December 1968) was a Norwegian politician, labour leader, government official and author. He served as Norwegian foreign minister during the critical years of the Norwegian government in exile in London from 1940 to 1945. From 1946 to 1952 he was the first Secretary-General of the United Nations. Lie earned a reputation as a pragmatic, determined politician.

Details

Trygve Halvdan Lie was born on 16 July 1896, in Oslo, Norway, the son of Martin and Hulda Arnesen Lie. He was educated at Oslo University where he obtained a law degree in 1919. On 8 November 1921, he married Hjordis Joergensen. They had three children - Sissel, Guri and Mette.

Mr. Lie became a member of the Norwegian Labor Party Youth Organization in 1911. He was an assistant to the secretary of the Labor Party from 1919 to 1922, a legal adviser to the Norwegian Trade Union Federation from 1922 to 1935, and national executive secretary of the Labor Party in 1926. In the Labor Party Government formed by Johan Nygaardsvold, Mr. Lie was Minister of Justice for the years 1935 to 1939, then Minister of Trade and Industries from July to September 1939 and, at the time of the outbreak of the Second World War, became Minister of Supply and Shipping. In that capacity he evolved the provisional measures that saved the Norwegian fleet for the Allies, after the German invasion in April 1940. In June that year he went to England, when the Norwegian Government decided to continue the fight from abroad.

He became acting Foreign Minister in December 1940 and was appointed Foreign Minister of Norway in February 1941. Mr. Lie was elected a member of the Norwegian Parliament in 1936 and was re-elected in 1945. On 12 June 1945, the Government of which he was a member resigned; Mr. Lie was appointed Foreign Minister of the interim coalition cabinet which took over the government at the time, and Foreign Minister in the new Labor Party Government in October 1945.

Mr. Lie led the Norwegian delegation to the United Nations Conference on International Organization in San Francisco, April 1945, and was Chairman of Commission III for drafting the Security Council provisions of the Charter. He was also Chairman of the Norwegian delegation to the United Nations General Assembly in London in January 1946. On 1 February 1946, Mr. Lie was elected the first Secretary-General of the United Nations. He was formally installed by the General Assembly at its 22nd meeting on 2 February 1946. The General Assembly on 1 November 1950, continued Mr. Lie in office for a further three years from 1 February 1951. He resigned as Secretary-General of the United Nations in November 1952.

Mr. Lie had the following appointments since leaving the United Nations: Governor of Oslo and Akershus, Chairman of Norway's Board of Energy. By a resolution of the General Assembly in 1958, King Olav of Norway was asked to find a basis on which Ethiopia and Italy could start to settle a border dispute involving the former Italian colony, Somalia. King Olav, in 1959, appointed Mr. Lie as Mediator.

Mr. Lie passed away on 30 December 1968.

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Jai Ganesh · 2022-04-04 18:08:24

1043) Paul Buchheit

Summary

Paul Buchheit Success Story:

Paul T. Buchheit : One of the most famous and used email servers presently remains to be Gmail. With a base of close to 900 million clients, it is regarded as possibly the most frequently used web mail application in the entire world. The proud founder of Gmail is Paul Buchheit.Buchheit was born in New York and right from a young age had a great affinity to anything computer related. He was one of the brightest students in his class and came up with many innovative ideas to tackle issues related to computer glitches. Later, he attended the Case Western Reserve University in Colorado before getting his life changing start with Google.

Early Career

Buchheit was hired by Google as their 23rd employee during their initial days and he is considered one of the innovators of many revolutionary programs.Paul is known as one of the creators and innovators of the mail application Gmail. Gmail is known to have close to 900 million users today. He was also responsible for the conceptualization and idea of Adsense, through which Google make millions, every single day.After Google, Buchheit decided to start his own company and came up with FriendFeed in 2007. FriendFeed was a success and was later obtained by Facebook in a private transaction worth millions.

Later life

After selling Friendfeed and working for Facebook for a few years, he decided to shift his focus towards angel investing. With his money, he has invested in over 83 start ups all over the United States.He founded a capital firm known as Y Combinator and is responsible for investing in budding startups around the nation. Apart from that, he is also well known for creating the Google motto, “Don’t be Evil”.A staunch supporter of equality and using technology the right way, he has been quoted as saying that technology can pave the way for more resources and food.He claims that we are using only a fraction of the resources available to us to aid the poor and needy and that more needs to be done.“I don't have to work. I choose to work. And I believe everyone deserves the same freedom I have. If done right, it's also economically superior, meaning we will all have more wealth. We often talk about how brilliant or visionary Steve Jobs was, but there are probably millions of people just as brilliant as he was. " If everything you do works, then you're not taking many risks and probably aren't innovating either " - Paul T. Buchheit. The difference is they likely didn't grow up with great parents, amazing teachers, and an environment where innovation was the norm. Also they didn't live down the street from Steve Wozniak. Economically, we don't need more jobs. We need more Steve Jobs. When we set everyone free, we enable outlives everywhere. The result will be an unprecedented boom in human creativity and ingenuity.”

Details

Paul T. Buchheit is an American computer engineer and entrepreneur who created Gmail. He developed the original prototype of Google AdSense as part of his work on Gmail. He also suggested Google's former company motto Don't be evil in a 2000 meeting on company values, after the motto was initially coined in 1999 by engineer Amit Patel.

Early life and education

Buchheit grew up in New York. He attended Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio where he studied computer science and rowed crew.

Career

Buchheit worked at Intel and later became the 23rd employee at Google. At Google he began developing Gmail in 2001, with its innovations in search and storage. He also prompted what would become AdSense. Leaving Google in 2006, Buchheit started FriendFeed, which was launched in 2007 with partner Bret Taylor. FriendFeed was acquired by Facebook in 2009 in a private transaction that resulted in Buchheit being a Facebook employee. In 2010, Buchheit left Facebook to become a partner at the investment firm Y Combinator. From 2006 (when he started investing) until 2008, Buchheit invested about $1.21 million in 32 different companies. and he left Facebook to become a full-time angel investor.

He continues to oversee angel investments of his own in "about 40" startups (by his own estimate) and is active with Y Combinator.

Philanthropy

In 2009, Buchheit set up Google Moderator to crowdsource ideas for the causes (501(c)3 non-profits) should benefit from his financial support. To quote him:

In terms of which causes I'd like to support, I'd consider anything, but am probably most sympathetic to health, freedom, and education. In terms of solutions, I'm very skeptical of centralization, one-size-fits-all solutions, and people who are certain of the answer. I also prefer to support things that have tangible, objective outcomes (where you could say, 'this money was used to purchase X' or 'this money was used to fund study Y, which will be published this fall.').

Buchheit has donated to various health organizations since the death of his 33-year-old brother from pancreatic cancer.

Buchheit has stated that he believes society has the technology and resources to provide adequate food, housing, education, and healthcare for everyone, using only a fraction of available labor and resources. In his view, this implies it is possible to put an end to wage slavery. Buchheit further stated:

I don't have to work. I choose to work. And I believe everyone deserves the same freedom I have. If done right, it's also economically superior, meaning we will all have more wealth. We often talk about how brilliant or visionary Steve Jobs was, but there are probably millions of people just as brilliant as he was. The difference is they likely didn't grow up with great parents, amazing teachers, and an environment where innovation was the norm. Also they didn't live down the street from Steve Wozniak. Economically, we don't need more jobs. We need more Steve Jobs. When we set everyone free, we enable the outliers everywhere. The result will be an unprecedented boom in human creativity and ingenuity.

Honors and awards

Buchheit won the 2011 The Economist innovation awards for the Computing and telecommunications field.

Jai Ganesh · 2022-04-05 20:39:53

1044) Dag Hammarskjöld

Summary

Dag Hjalmar Agne Carl Hammarskjöld (29 July 1905 – 18 September 1961) was a Swedish economist and diplomat who served as the second Secretary-General of the United Nations from April 1953 until his death in a plane crash in September 1961. As of 2022, he remains the youngest person to have held the post, having been only 47 years old when he was appointed.

Hammarskjöld's tenure was characterized by efforts to strengthen the newly formed UN both internally and externally. He led initiatives to improve morale and organisational efficiency while seeking to make the UN more responsive to global issues. He presided over the creation of the first UN peacekeeping forces in Egypt and the Congo and personally intervened to defuse or resolve diplomatic crises. Hammarskjöld's second term was cut short when he died in a plane crash while en route to cease-fire negotiations during the Congo Crisis.

Hammarskjöld was and remains well regarded internationally as a capable diplomat and administrator, and his efforts to resolve various global crises led to him being the only posthumous recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. He is considered one of the two best UN secretaries-general, along with his successor U Thant, and his appointment has been hailed as one of the most notable successes for the organization. U.S. President John F. Kennedy called Hammarskjöld "the greatest statesman of our century."

Details

Dag Hjalmar Agne Carl Hammarskjöld was Secretary-General of the United Nations from 10 April 1953 until 18 September 1961 when he met his death in a plane accident while on a peace mission in the Congo. He was born on 29 July 1905 in Jonkoping in south-central Sweden. The fourth son of Hjalmar Hammarskjöld, Prime Minister of Sweden during the years of World War I, and his wife Agnes, M.C. (b. Almquist), he was brought up in the university town of Uppsala where his father resided as Governor of the county of Uppland.

At 18, he was graduated from college and enrolled in Uppsala University. Majoring in French history of literature, social philosophy and political economy, Mr. Hammarskjöld received, with honors, his Bachelor of Arts degree two years later. The next three years he studied economics, at the same university, where he received a "filosofic licenciat" degree in economics at the age of 23. He continued his studies for two more years to become a Bachelor of Laws in 1930.

Mr. Hammarskjöld then moved to Stockholm, where he became a secretary of a governmental committee on unemployment (1930-1934). At the same time he wrote his doctor's thesis in economics, entitled, "Konjunkturspridningen" (The Spread of the Business Cycle). In 1933 he received his doctor's degree from the University of Stockholm, where he was made assistant professor in political economy.

At the age of 31 and after having served one year as secretary in the National Bank of Sweden, Mr. Hammarskjöld was appointed to the post of Permanent Under-Secretary of the Ministry of Finance. He concurrently served as Chairman of the National Bank's Board, from 1941 to 1948. Six of the Board's members are appointed by Parliament and the Chairman by the Government. This was the first time that one man had held both posts, the Chairmanship of the Bank's Board and that of Under-Secretary of the Finance Ministry.

Early in 1945, he was appointed an adviser to the Cabinet on financial and economic problems, organizing and coordinating, among other things, different governmental planning for the various economic problems that arose as a result of the war and the postwar period. During these years, Mr. Hammarskjöld played an important part in shaping Sweden's financial policy. He led a series of trade and financial negotiations with other countries, among them the United States and the United Kingdom.

In 1947 he was appointed to the Foreign Office, where he was responsible for all economic questions with rank of Under-Secretary. In 1949, he was appointed Secretary-General of the Foreign Office and in 1951, he joined the Cabinet as Minister without portfolio. He became, in effect, Deputy Foreign Minister, dealing especially with economic problems and various plans for close economic cooperation.

He was Vice-Chairman of the Swedish Delegation to the Sixth Regular Session of the United Nations General Assembly in Paris 1951-1952, and acting Chairman of his country's delegation to the Seventh General Assembly in New York in 1952-1953.

Although he served with the Social-Democratic cabinet, Mr. Hammarskjöld never Joined any political party, regarding himself as an independent, politically.

On 20 December 1954, he became a member of the Swedish Academy. He was elected to take the seat in the Academy previously held by his father. Elected to two terms as Secretary-General Mr. Hammarskjöld was unanimously appointed Secretary-General of the United Nations by the General Assembly on 7 April 1953 on the recommendation of the Security Council. He was reelected unanimously for another term of five years in September 1957.

During his terms as Secretary-General, Mr. Hammarskjöld carried out many responsibilities for the United Nations in the course of its efforts to prevent war and serve the other aims of the Charter.

In the Middle East these included: continuing diplomatic activity in support of the Armistice Agreements between Israel and the Arab States and to promote progress toward better and more peaceful conditions in the area; organization in 1956 of the United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) and its administration since then; clearance of the Suez Canal in 1957 and assistance in the peaceful solution of the Suez Canal dispute; organization and administration of the United Nations Observation Group in Lebanon (UNOGIL) and establishment of an office of the special representative of the Secretary-General in Jordan in 1958.

In 1955, following his visit to Peking, 30 December 1954 - 13 January 1955, 15 detained American fliers who had served under the United Nations Command in Korea were released by the Chinese People's Republic. Mr. Hammarskjöld also traveled to many countries of Africa, Asia, Europe, the Americas and the Middle East, either on specific assignments or to further his acquaintance with officials of member governments and the problems of various areas.

On one of these trips, from 18 December 1959 to 31 January 1960, the Secretary-General visited 21 countries and territories in Africa -- a trip he described later as "a strictly professional trip for study, for information", in which he said he had gained a "kind of cross-section of every sort of politically responsible opinion in the Africa of today".

Later in 1960, when President Joseph Kasa-Vubu and Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba of the Republic of the Congo sent a cable on 12 July asking "urgent dispatch" of United Nations military assistance to the Congo, the Secretary-General addressed the Security Council at a night meeting on 13 July and asked the Council to act "with utmost speed" on the request. Following Security Council actions the United Nations Force in the Congo was established and the Secretary-General himself made four trips to the Congo in connection with the United Nations operations there. The first two trips to the Congo were made in July and August 1960. Then, in January of that year, the Secretary-General stopped in the Congo while en route to the Union of South Africa on another mission in connection with the racial problems of that country. The fourth trip to the Congo began on 12 September and terminated with the fatal plane accident.

In other fields of work, Mr. Hammarskjöld was responsible for the organization in 1955 and 1958 of the first and second UN international conference on the peaceful uses of atomic energy in Geneva, and for planning a UN conference on the application of science and technology for the benefit of the less developed areas of the world held in 1962.

He held honorary degrees from Oxford University, England; in the United States from Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Pennsylvania, Amherst, John Hopkins, the University of California, Uppsala College, and Ohio University; and in Canada from Carleton College and from McGill University.

Jai Ganesh · 2022-04-06 19:15:04

1045) U Thant

Summary

Thant (January 22, 1909 – November 25, 1974), known honorifically as U Thant, was a Burmese diplomat and the third secretary-general of the United Nations from 1961 to 1971, the first non-Scandinavian to hold the position. He held the office for a record 10 years and one month.

A native of Pantanaw, Thant was educated at the National High School and at Rangoon University. In the days of tense political climate in Burma, he held moderate views positioning himself between fervent nationalists and British loyalists. He was a close friend of Burma's first Prime Minister U Nu and served in various positions in Nu's cabinet from 1948 to 1961. Thant had a calm and unassuming demeanor that won his colleagues' respect.

He was appointed as Secretary-General in 1961, six weeks after his predecessor Dag Hammarskjöld died in an air crash. In his first term, Thant facilitated negotiations between U.S. President John F. Kennedy and Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, helping to avert a global catastrophe. Later, in December that year, Thant ordered Operation Grandslam, which ended a secessionist insurgency in Congo. He was reappointed as Secretary-General on December 2, 1966 by a unanimous vote of the Security Council. During his second term Thant was well known for publicly criticizing U.S. conduct in the Vietnam War. He oversaw the entry of several newly independent African and Asian states into the UN. He refused to serve a third term, and retired in 1971.

Thant died of lung cancer in 1974. A devout Buddhist and the foremost Burmese diplomat on the international stage, he was widely admired and held in great respect by the Burmese populace. When the military government refused him any honours, riots erupted in Rangoon; these were violently crushed by the government, leaving scores of casualties.

Details

U Thant , who served as Secretary-General of the United Nations from 1961 to 1971, was chosen to head the world body when Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold was killed in an air crash in September 1961.

U Thant was born at Pantanaw, Burma, on 22 January 1909, and was educated at the National High School in Pantanaw and at University College, Rangoon.

Prior to his diplomatic career, U Thant's experience was in education and information work. He served as Senior Master at the National High School, which he had attended in Pantanaw, and in 1931, he became Headmaster after winning first place in the Anglo-Vernacular Secondary Teachership Examination.

He was a member of Burma's Textbook Committee and of the Council of National Education before World War II, and was an Executive Committee member of the Heads of Schools Association. He was also active as a free-lance journalist.

In 1942, U Thant served for a few months as Secretary of Burma's Education Reorganization Committee. In the following year, he returned to the National High School as Headmaster for another four years.

U Thant was appointed Press Director of the Government of Burma in 1947. In 1948, he became Director of Broadcasting, and in the following year, he was appointed Secretary to the Government of Burma in the Ministry of Information. In 1953, U Thant became Secretary for projects in the Office of the Prime Minister, and in 1955, he was assigned additional duties as Executive Secretary of Burma's Economic and Social Board.

At the time of his appointment as Acting Secretary-General of the United Nations, U Thant had been Permanent Representative of Burma to the United Nations, with the rank of Ambassador (1957-1961).

During that period, he headed the Burmese delegations to the sessions of the General Assembly, and in 1959, he served as one of the Vice-Presidents of the Assembly's fourteenth session. In 1961, U Thant was Chairman of the United Nations Congo Conciliation Commission and Chairman of the Committee on a United Nations Capital Development Fund.

During his diplomatic career, U Thant served on several occasions as Adviser to Prime Ministers of Burma.

U Thant began serving as Acting Secretary-General since 3 November 1961, when he was unanimously appointed by the General Assembly, on the recommendation of the Security Council, to fill the unexpired term of the late Secretary-General, Dag Hammarskjold. He was then unanimously appointed Secretary-General by the General Assembly on 30 November 1962 for a term of office ending on 3 November 1966.

U Thant was re-appointed for a second term as Secretary-General of the United Nations by the General Assembly on 2 December 1966 on the unanimous recommendation of the Security Council (resolution 229, 1966). His term of office continued until 31 December 1971.

U Thant received honorary degrees (LL.D) from the following universities: Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada (25 May 1962); Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusetts (10 June 1962); Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey (12 June 1962); Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, Massachusetts (2 June 1963); Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts (13 June 1963); Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire (16 June 1963); University of California at Berkeley, California (2 April 1964); University of Denver, Denver, Colorado (3 April 1964); Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania (8 June 1964); New York University, New York (10 June 1964); Moscow University, Moscow, Soviet Union (30 July 1964); Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario (22 May 1965); Colby College, Waterville, Maine (6 June 1965); Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut (14 June 1965); University of Windsor, Windsor, Ontario, Canada (28 May 1966); Hamilton College, Clinton, New York (5 June 1966); Fordham University, Bronx, New York (8 June 1966); Manhattan College, New York (14 June 1966); University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan (30 March 1967); Delhi University, New Delhi, India (13 April 1967); University of Leeds, England (26 May 1967); Louvain University, Brussels, Belgium (10 April 1968); University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada (13 May 1968); Boston Unversity, Boston, Massachusetts (19 May 1968); Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey (29 May 1968); University of Dublin (Trinity College), Dublin, Ireland (12 July 1968); Laval University, Quebec, Canada (31 May 1969); Columbia University, New York City (3 June 1969); the University of the Philippines (11 April 1970); and Syracuse University (6 June 1970). He also received the following honorary degrees: Doctor of Divinity, The First Universal Church (11 May 1970); Doctor of International Law, Florida International University, Miami, Florida (25 January 1971); Doctor of Laws, University of Hartford, Hartford, Connecticut (23 March 1971); Doctor of Civil Laws degree, honoris causa, Colgate University, Hamilton, New York, (30 May 1971); Doctor of Humane Letters, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina (7 June 1971).

U Thant retired at the end of his second term in 1971 and he died on 25 November 1974 after a long illness. He was 65 years old.

** Formerly known as Burma.

Jai Ganesh · 2022-04-07 18:12:28

1046) Kurt Waldheim

Summary

Kurt Josef Waldheim (21 December 1918 – 14 June 2007) was an Austrian politician and diplomat. Waldheim was the fourth Secretary-General of the United Nations from 1972 to 1981, and President of Austria from 1986 to 1992. While he was running for the latter office in the 1986 election, the revelation of his service in Greece and Yugoslavia, as an intelligence officer in Nazi Germany's Wehrmacht during World War II, raised international controversy.

Details

Kurt Waldheim was appointed Secretary-General of the United Nations for a five-year term beginning on 1 January 1972. The Security Council had recommended the appointment on 21 December 1971 and the General Assembly approved it by acclamation on the following day.

The Secretary-General was born at Sankt Andra-Wordern, near Vienna, Austria, on 21 December 1918. He graduated from the University of Vienna as a Doctor of Jurisprudence in 1944. He is also a graduate of the Vienna Consular Academy.

Mr. Waldheim joined the Austrian diplomatic service in 1945, and from 1948 to 1951 he served as First Secretary of the Legation in Paris. He was head of the personnel department of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs in Vienna from 1951 to 1955 In 1955 he was appointed Permanent Observer for Austria to the United Nations and later that year became head of the Austrian Mission when Austria was admitted to the Organization.

From 1956 to 1960, Mr. Waldheim represented Austria in Canada, first as Minister Plenipotentiary and later as Ambassador. From 1960 to 1962 he was head of the Political Department (West) in the Austrian Ministry for Foreign Affairs, subsequently becoming Director-General for Political Affairs until June 1964.

From 1964 to 1968, Mr. Waldheim was Permanent Representative of Austria to the United Nations. During that period he was Chairman of the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space; in 1968 he was elected President of the first United Nations Conference on the Exploration and Peaceful Uses of Outer Space.

From January 1968 to April 1970, Mr. Waldheim was Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs of Austria. After leaving the Government, he was unanimously elected Chairman of the Safeguards Committee of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and in October 1970 he again became the Austrian Permanent Representative to the United Nations, a post he held until he was elected Secretary-General of the Organization.

In April 1971, he was one of the two candidates for the Federal Presidency of Austria.

During his first three years as Secretary-General, Mr. Waldheim made it a practice to visit areas of special concern to the United Nations. In March 1972 he travelled to South Africa and Namibia in pursuance of a mandate given him by the Security Council in order to assist in finding a satisfactory solution for the problem of Namibia.

The Secretary-General paid three visits to Cyprus, in June 1972, August 1973 and August 1974, for discussions with government leaders and to inspect the United Nations Peace-keeping Force in the island. During his visit in August 1974, in the wake of the hostilities, Mr. Waldheim arranged for talks to begin between Acting President Glafcos Clerides and Rauf Denktash.

The Secretary-General also made a number of trips to the Middle East in the continuing search for peace in the area. In August 1973 he visited Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Egypt and Jordan; in June 1974 he met with the leaders of Lebanon, Syria, Israel, Jordan and Egypt; and in November 1974 he went to Syria, Israel and Egypt in connection with the extension of the mandate of United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF). On these visits he also inspected the United Nations peace-keeping operations in the area - the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO), the United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) and UNDOF.

In February 1973, during an official trip to the subcontinent, the Secretary-General discussed with the Governments of India,Pakistan and Bangladesh the problems created by the war between India and Pakistan and ways and means to overcome its consequences. He also inspected the United Nations Relief Operation in Bangladesh, the largest relief operation ever undertaken under United Nations auspices.

In February and March 1974, the Secretary-General visited a number of countries in the Sudano-Sahelian area of Africa where the United Nations had undertaken a major relief operation to assist the victims of a prolonged drought.

The Secretary-General also opened and addressed a number of major international conferences convened under United Nations auspices. These include the third session of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (Santiago, April 1972), the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment (Stockholm, June 1972), the Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea (Caracas, June 1974), the World Population Conference (Bucharest, August 1974) and the World Food Conference (Rome, November 1974).

The Secretary-General participated in Security Council meetings held away from Headquarters, in Africa (Addis Ababa, January 1972) and in Latin America (Panama, March 1973).

He addressed and attended meetings of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) in Rabat (June 1972 on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the OAU, in Addis Ababa (May 1973) and in Mogadiscio (June 1974). He also addressed the Organization of American States (OAS) in Washington (March 1972).

In February 1973, the Secretary-General took part in the Paris International Conference on Viet-Nam; in December of the same year he presided over the first phase of the Geneva Peace Conference on the Middle East.

In July 1973, Mr. Waldheim addressed the Conference on European Security and Co-operation in Helsinki.

On the invitation of their respective Governments, the Secretary-General paid official visits to a number of countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and Europe.

Married and the father of three children, Mr. Waldheim is the author of a work on Austria's foreign policy, The Austrian Example, which has been published in German, English and French.

Mr. Waldheim died on 14 June 2007 in Vienna, Austria, at the age of 88.

Jai Ganesh · 2022-04-08 21:29:36

1047) Javier Pérez de Cuéllar

Summary

Javier Felipe Ricardo Pérez de Cuéllar de la Guerra (19 January 1920 – 4 March 2020) was a Peruvian diplomat and politician who served as the fifth Secretary-General of the United Nations from 1982 to 1991. He later served as Prime Minister of Peru from 2000 to 2001.

Pérez de Cuéllar was a member of the Club of Madrid, a group of former heads of state and government, and the Inter-American Dialogue. A centenarian at the time of his death in 2020, Pérez de Cuéllar is both the longest-lived former Peruvian prime minister and United Nations secretary-general.

Biography:

Early years

Javier Pérez de Cuéllar was born on 19 January 1920 in Lima, Peru, to a wealthy family of Spanish descent with ancestry from Cuéllar. He studied at Colegio San Agustín, and then at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru.

Diplomatic career

Pérez de Cuéllar joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1940 and the diplomatic service in 1944, serving thereafter as secretary at Peru's embassy in France, where he met and married his first wife, Yvette Roberts-Darricau (1922–2013), in 1947. He also held posts in Britain, Bolivia and Brazil, and later served as ambassador to Switzerland from 1964 to 1966, the Soviet Union and Poland from 1969 to 1971, and Venezuela from 1977 to 1979. From his first marriage, he had a son, Francisco, and a daughter, Águeda Cristina.

He was a member of the Peruvian delegation to the first session of the United Nations General Assembly, which convened in London in 1946, and of the delegations to the 25th through 30th sessions of the Assembly. In 1971, he was appointed permanent representative of Peru to the UN and led his country's delegation in the Assembly until 1975.

In 1973 and 1974, he represented Peru in the UN Security Council, serving as its president at the time of the Cypriot coup d'état in July 1974. On 18 September 1975, he was appointed Special Representative of the Secretary-General in Cyprus – a post he held until December 1977, when he rejoined Peru's foreign service. Also in 1975, Pérez de Cuéllar divorced his first wife and married Marcela Temple Seminario (1933–2013), with whom he had no children.

On 27 February 1979, he was appointed UN under-secretary-general for Special Political Affairs. From April 1981, he also acted as the Secretary-General's personal representative on the situation in Afghanistan; he visited Pakistan and Afghanistan in April and August of that year to continue negotiations initiated by the Secretary-General some months earlier.

Details

Javier Perez de Cuellar assumed office as Secretary-General of the United Nations on 1 January 1982. On 10 October 1986, he was appointed for a second term of office, which began on 1 January 1987.

Mr. Perez de Cuellar was born in Lima, Peru, on 19 January 1920. He is a lawyer and a career diplomat, now retired.

He joined the Peruvian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1940 and the diplomatic service in 1944, serving subsequently as Secretary at the Peruvian embassies in France, the United Kingdom, Bolivia and Brazil, and as Counsellor and Minister Counsellor at the embassy in Brazil.

Having returned to Lima in 1961, he was promoted to the rank of Ambassador the following year, successively occupying the posts of Director of the Legal Department, Director of Administration, Director of Protocol and Director of Political Affairs. In 1966, he was appointed Secretary-General (Deputy Minister) for Foreign Affairs. In 1981, he served as Legal Adviser in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Mr. Perez de Cuellar was Ambassador of Peru to Switzerland, the Soviet Union, Poland and Venezuela.

He was a member of the Peruvian delegation to the General Assembly at its first session in 1946 and a member of the delegations to the twenty-fifth to thirtieth sessions of the Assembly. In 1971, he was appointed Permanent Representative of Peru to the United Nations, and he led his country's delegation to all sessions of the Assembly from then until 1975.

In 1973 and 1974, he represented his country in the Security Council, serving as President of the Council at the time of the events in Cyprus in July 1974. On 18 September 1975, he was appointed Special Representative of the Secretary-General in Cyprus, a post he held until December 1977, when he rejoined his Foreign Service.

On 27 February 1979, he was appointed as United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Special Political Affairs. From April 1981, while still holding this post, he acted as the Secretary-General's Personal Representative on the situation relating to Afghanistan. In that capacity, he visited Pakistan and Afghanistan in April and August of that year in order to continue the negotiations initiated by the Secretary-General some months earlier.

In May 1981, he again rejoined his country's Ministry of Foreign Affairs but continued to represent the Secretary-General in the context of the situation relating to Afghanistan until his appointment in December of that year as Secretary-General of the United Nations.

He also served as Professor of International Law at Peru's Academia Diplomatica and Professor of International Relations at Peru's Academia de Guerra Aerea. He is the author of Manual de Derecho Diplomatico (Manual of Diplomatic Law (1964).

Mr. Perez de Cuellar received doctorate degrees honoris causa from the following universities: the University of Nice; the Jagiellonian University at Cracow; Charles University at Prague; the University of Sofia; the University of San Marcos at Lima; the Free University at Brussels; Carleton University at Ottawa, Canada; the University of Paris (Sorbonne); the University of Visva-Bharati in West Bengal, India; the University of Michigan; the University of Osnabruck in the Federal Republic of Germany; the Coimbra University at Coimbra, Portugal; the Mongolian State University at Ulan Bator; the Humboldt University of Berlin; the Moscow State University; the University of Malta in Valleta; the Leyden University in the Netherlands; La Salle University in Philadelphia; Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts; the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland; and Cambridge University in the United Kingdom.

In the course of his career, Mr. Perez de Cuellar was decorated by some 25 countries.

In October 1987, he was awarded the Prince of Asturias Prize for the promotion of Ibero-American co-operation. In January 1989, he was awarded the Olof Palme Prize for International Understanding and Common Security by the Olof Palme Memorial Fund. In February 1989, he was awarded the Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International Understanding. Mr. Perez de Cuellar has two children.

Javier Perez de Cuellar died on 4 March 2020 in Lima, Peru, at the age of 100.

Jai Ganesh · 2022-04-10 00:11:34

1048) Boutros Boutros-Ghali

Summary

Boutros Boutros-Ghali (14 November 1922 – 16 February 2016) was an Egyptian politician and diplomat who served as the sixth Secretary-General of the United Nations (UN) from 1992 to 1996. An academic who previously served as acting foreign minister and vice foreign minister of Egypt, Boutros-Ghali oversaw the UN over a period coinciding with several world crises, including the break-up of Yugoslavia and the Rwandan genocide. He went on to serve as the first Secretary-General of La Francophonie from 1997 to 2002.

Early life and education

Boutros Boutros-Ghali was born in Cairo, Egypt, on 14 November 1922 into a Coptic Christian family. His father Yusuf Butros Ghali was the son of Boutros Ghali Bey then Pasha (also his namesake), who was Prime Minister of Egypt from 1908 until he was assassinated in 1910. His mother Safela Mikhail Sharubim was daughter of Mikhail Sharubim (1861–1920), a prominent public servant and historian.

Boutros-Ghali graduated from Cairo University in 1946. He received a PhD in international law from the Faculty of Law of Paris (University of Paris) and diploma in international relations from the Sciences Po in 1949. During 1949–1979, he was appointed Professor of International Law and International Relations at Cairo University. He became President of the Centre of Political and Strategic Studies in 1975 and President of the African Society of Political Studies in 1980. He was a Fulbright Research Scholar at Columbia University from 1954 to 1955, Director of the Centre of Research at The Hague Academy of International Law from 1963 to 1964, and Visiting Professor at the Faculty of Law at the Faculty of Law of Paris from 1967 to 1968. In 1986 he received an honorary doctorate from the Faculty of Law at Uppsala University, Sweden. He was also the Honorary Rector of the Graduate Institute of Peace Studies, a branch of Kyunghee University Seoul.

Political career

Boutros-Ghali's political career developed during the presidency of Anwar Sadat. He was a member of the Central Committee of the Arab Socialist Union from 1974 to 1977. He served as Egypt's Minister of State for Foreign Affairs from 1977 until early 1991. He then became Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs for several months before moving to the UN. As Minister of State, he played a part in the peace agreements between President Sadat and Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin.

According to investigative journalist Linda Melvern, Boutros-Ghali approved a secret $26 million arms sale to the government of Rwanda in 1990 when he was foreign minister, the weapons stockpiled by the Hutu regime as part of the fairly public, long-term preparations for the subsequent genocide. He was serving as UN secretary-general when the killings occurred four years later.

Details

Mr. Boutros Boutros-Ghali became the sixth Secretary-General of the United Nations on 1 January 1992, when he began a five-year term. At the time of his appointment by the General Assembly on 3 December 1991, Mr. Boutros-Ghali had been Deputy Prime Minister for Foreign Affairs of Egypt since May 1991 and had served as Minister of State for Foreign Affairs from October 1977 until 1991.

Mr. Boutros-Ghali has had a long association with international affairs as a diplomat, jurist, scholar and widely published author. He became a member of the Egyptian Parliament in 1987 and was part of the secretariat of the National Democratic Party from 1980. Until assuming the office of Secretary-General of the United Nations, he was also Vice- President of the Socialist International.

He was a member of the International Law Commission from 1979 until 1991, and is a former member of the International Commission of Jurists. He has many professional and academic associations related to his background in law, international affairs and political science, among them, his membership in the Institute of International Law, the International Institute of Human Rights, the African Society of Political Studies and the Académie des sciences morales et politique (Académie française, Paris).

Over four decades, Mr. Boutros-Ghali participated in numerous meetings dealing with international law, human rights, economic and social development, decolonization, the Middle East question, international humanitarian law, the rights of ethnic and other minorities, non-alignment, development in the Mediterranean region and Afro-Arab cooperation.

In September 1978, Mr. Boutros-Ghali attended the Camp David Summit Conference and had a role in negotiating the Camp David accords between Egypt and Israel, which were signed in 1979. He led many delegations of his country to meetings of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) and the Movement of Non-Aligned Countries, as well as to the Summit Conference of the French and African Heads of State. He also headed Egypt's delegation to the General Assembly sessions in 1979, 1982 and 1990.

Mr. Boutros-Ghali received a Ph.D. in international law from Paris University in 1949. His thesis was on the study of regional organizations. Mr. Boutros-Ghali also holds a Bachelor of Laws degree, received from Cairo University in 1946, as well as separate diplomas in political science, economics and public law from Paris University.

Between 1949 and 1977, Mr. Boutros-Ghali was Professor of International Law and International Relations at Cairo University. From 1974 to 1977, he was a member of the Central Committee and Political Bureau of the Arab Socialist Union.

Among his other professional and academic activities, Mr. Boutros-Ghali was a Fulbright Research Scholar at Columbia University (1954-1955); Director of the Centre of Research of The Hague Academy of International Law (1963-1964); and Visiting Professor at the Faculty of Law, Paris University (1967-1968). He has lectured on international law and international relations at universities in Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America and North America.

Mr. Boutros-Ghali was President of the Egyptian Society of International Law from 1965; President of the Centre of Political and Strategic Studies (Al-Ahram) from 1975; member of the Curatorium Administrative Council of The Hague Academy of International Law from 1978; member of the Scientific Committee of the Académie mondiale pour la paix (Menton, France) from 1978; and associate member of the Institute affari internazionali (Rome) from 1979. He served as a member of the Committee on the Application of Conventions and Recommendations of the International Labour Organisation from 1971 until 1979. Mr. Boutros-Ghali also founded the publication Alahram Iqtisadi, which he edited from 1960 to 1975, and the quarterly Al-Seyassa Al-Dawlia, which he edited until December 1991.

The more than 100 publications and numerous articles that Mr. Boutros-Ghali has written deal with regional and international affairs, law and diplomacy, and political science.

During the course of his career, Mr. Boutros-Ghali has received awards and honours from 24 countries, which, besides Egypt, include Belgium, Italy, Colombia, Guatemala, France, Ecuador, Argentina, Nepal, Luxembourg, Portugal, Niger, Mali, Mexico, Greece, Chile, Brunei Darussalam, Germany, Peru, C&ocircte d'Ivoire, Denmark, Central African Republic, Sweden and the Republic of Korea. He has also been decorated with the Sovereign Military Order of Malta.

He was awarded a doctorate of law honoris causa from the Institute of State and Law of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow (September 1992); a doctorate honoris causa from l'Institut d'études politiques de Paris (January 1993); the Christian A. Herter Memorial Award from the World Affairs Council, Boston (March 1993); a doctorate honoris causa from The Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium (April 1993); the "Man of Peace" award, sponsored by the Italian-based Together for Peace Foundation (July 1993); an honorary doctorate degree from the University of Laval, Quebec (August 1993); and the Arthur A. Houghton Jr. Star Crystal Award for Excellence from the African-American Institute, New York (November 1993).

In addition, he was given an honorary membership of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, Moscow (April 1994); an honorary foreign membership of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow (April 1994); an honourary foreign membership of the Academy of Sciences of Belarus, Minsk, (April 1994); an honorary doctorate from the University Carlos III of Madrid (April 1994); an honorary degree from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, Washington, D.C. (May 1994); a doctorate in international law honoris causa from the University of Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada (August 1994); honorary doctorates from the University of Bucharest (October 1994), University of Baku (October 1994), University of Yerevan (November 1994), University of Haifa (February 1995), University of Vienna (February 1995), and University of Melbourne (April 1995); and a doctorate of law honoris causa from Carleton University, Canada (November 1995). He was made a Fellow of Berkeley College, Yale University (March 1995) and is the recipient of the Onassis Award for International Understanding and Social Achievement (July 1995). He was awarded an honorary doctorate of law by the University Montesquien of Bordeau, France (March 1996), and he received an honorary doctorate from Koryo University, Seoul, Republic of Korea (April 1996).

Mr. Boutros-Ghali was born in Cairo on 14 November 1922 and died on 16 February 2016 at the age of 93. He was married to Leia Maria Boutros-Ghali.

Jai Ganesh · 2022-04-12 00:24:10

1049) Kofi Annan

Summary

Kofi Atta Annan (8 April 1938 – 18 August 2018) was a Ghanaian diplomat who served as the seventh Secretary-General of the United Nations (UN) from 1997 to 2006. Annan and the UN were the co-recipients of the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize. He was the founder and chairman of the Kofi Annan Foundation, as well as chairman of The Elders, an international organization founded by Nelson Mandela.

Annan studied economics at Macalester College, international relations at the Graduate Institute Geneva, and management at MIT. Annan joined the UN in 1962, working for the World Health Organization's Geneva office. He went on to work in several capacities at the UN Headquarters including serving as the Under-Secretary-General for peacekeeping between March 1992 and December 1996. He was appointed secretary-general on 13 December 1996 by the Security Council, and later confirmed by the General Assembly, making him the first office holder to be elected from the UN staff itself. He was re-elected for a second term in 2001, and was succeeded as secretary-general by Ban Ki-moon in 2007.

As secretary-general, Annan reformed the UN bureaucracy, worked to combat HIV/AIDS (especially in Africa), and launched the UN Global Compact. He was criticized for not expanding the Security Council and faced calls for his resignation after an investigation into the Oil-for-Food Programme, but was largely exonerated of personal corruption. After the end of his term as secretary-general, he founded the Kofi Annan Foundation in 2007 to work on international development. In 2012, Annan was the UN–Arab League Joint Special Representative for Syria, to help find a resolution to the ongoing conflict there. Annan quit after becoming frustrated with the UN's lack of progress with regards to conflict resolution. In September 2016, Annan was appointed to lead a UN commission to investigate the Rohingya crisis. He died in 2018 and was given a state funeral.

Details

Kofi A. Annan of Ghana, the seventh Secretary-General of the United Nations, served from 1997 to 2006 and was the first to emerge from the ranks of United Nations staff.

One of Mr. Annan's main priorities as Secretary-General was a comprehensive programme of reform aimed at revitalizing the United Nations and making the international system more effective. He was a constant advocate for human rights, the rule of law, the Millennium Development Goals and Africa, and sought to bring the Organization closer to the global public by forging ties with civil society, the private sector and other partners.

At Mr. Annan's initiative, UN peacekeeping was strengthened in ways that enabled the United Nations to cope with a rapid rise in the number of operations and personnel. It was also at Mr. Annan's urging that, in 2005, Member States established two new intergovernmental bodies: the Peacebuilding Commission and the Human Rights Council. Mr. Annan likewise played a central role in the creation of the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the adoption of the UN's first-ever counter-terrorism strategy, and the acceptance by Member States of the “responsibility to protect” people from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. His “Global Compact” initiative, launched in 1999, has become the world's largest effort to promote corporate social responsibility.

Mr. Annan undertook wide-ranging diplomatic initiatives. In 1998, he helped to ease the transition to civilian rule in Nigeria . Also that year, he visited Iraq in an effort to resolve an impasse between that country and the Security Council over compliance with resolutions involving weapons inspections and other matters -- an effort that helped to avoid an outbreak of hostilities, which was imminent at that time. In 1999, he was deeply involved in the process by which Timor-Leste gained independence from Indonesia . He was responsible for certifying Israel 's withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000, and in 2006, his efforts contributed to securing a cessation of hostilities between Israel and Hizbollah. Also in 2006, he mediated a settlement of the dispute between Cameroon and Nigeria over the Bakassi peninsula through implementation of the judgement of the International Court of Justice. His efforts to strengthen the Organization's management, coherence and accountability involved major investments in training and technology, the introduction of a new whistleblower policy and financial disclosure requirements, and steps aimed at improving coordination at the country level.

Career highlights

Mr. Annan joined the UN system in 1962 as an administrative and budget officer with the World Health Organization in Geneva. He later served with the Economic Commission for Africa in Addis Ababa, the UN Emergency Force (UNEF II) in Ismailia, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Geneva, and in various senior posts in New York dealing with human resources, budget, finance and staff security. Immediately before becoming Secretary-General, he was Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping. Mr. Annan also served as Special Representative of the Secretary-General to the former Yugoslavia (1995-1996), and facilitated the repatriation from Iraq of more than 900 international staff and other non-Iraqi nationals (1990).

Education

Mr. Annan studied at the University of Science and Technology in Kumasi, Ghana, and completed his undergraduate work in economics at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1961. In 1961-1962, he undertook graduate studies at the Institute of International Affairs in Geneva, and in 1972 earned a Master of Science degree at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management.

Prizes and awards

Mr. Annan was awarded the 2001 Nobel Prize for Peace, jointly with the Organization. He has also received numerous honorary degrees and many other national and international prizes, medals and honours.

Personal

Mr. Annan was born in Kumasi, Ghana, on 8 April 1938, and was fluent in English, French and several African languages.

Kofi Annan died on 18 August 2018 in Bern, Switzerland, at the age of 80.

Jai Ganesh · 2022-04-15 01:08:08

1050) Ban Ki-moon

Summary

Ban Ki-moon (born 13 June 1944) is a South Korean politician and diplomat who served as the eighth Secretary-General of the United Nations between 2007 and 2016. Prior becoming the secretary-general, Ban was a career diplomat in South Korea's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and in the United Nations. He entered diplomatic service the year he graduated from university, accepting his first post in New Delhi, India.

Ban was the foreign minister of South Korea between 2004 and 2006. In February 2006, he began to campaign for the office of secretary-general. Ban was initially considered to be a long shot for the office. As foreign minister of South Korea, he was able to travel to all the countries on the United Nations Security Council, a maneuver that turned him into the campaign's front runner.

On 13 October 2006, he was elected to be the eighth secretary-general by the United Nations General Assembly. On 1 January 2007, he succeeded Kofi Annan. As secretary-general, he was responsible for several major reforms on peacekeeping and UN employment practices around the world. Diplomatically, Ban has taken particularly strong views on global warming, pressing the issue repeatedly with U.S. President George W. Bush, and on the Darfur conflict, where he helped persuade Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir to allow peacekeeping troops to enter Sudan.

Ban was named the world's 32nd most powerful person by the Forbes list of The World's Most Powerful People in 2013, the highest among South Koreans. In 2014, he was named the third most powerful South Korean after Lee Kun-hee and Lee Jae-yong. In 2016, Foreign Policy named Ban one of the Top 100 Global Thinkers for his achievement of helping the Paris Agreement to be ratified and enforced less than a year after it was adopted.

António Guterres was appointed by the General Assembly on 13 October 2016 to be the successor of Ban Ki-moon as he exited on 31 December 2016. He was widely considered to be a potential candidate for the 2017 South Korean presidential election, before announcing, on 1 February, that he would not be running.

On 14 September 2017, Ban was elected chair of the International Olympic Committee's Ethics Commission. Also in 2017, Ban co-founded the nonprofit Ban Ki-moon Centre for Global Citizens. He also currently serves as the Distinguished Chair Professor at Yonsei University's Institute for Global Engagement and Empowerment.

On February 20, 2018, Ban was unanimously elected as the President of the Assembly and Chair of the Council by the Members of the Assembly and Council, respectively, the two governance organs of the Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI), a treaty-based international, inter-governmental organization dedicated to supporting and promoting environmentally sustainable and socially inclusive economic growth in developing countries and emerging economies. Since Ban's election as the President and Chair, GGGI's list of Members has expanded from 27 to 43 Member Countries and Regional Integration Organizations.

On 16 October 2018, the Global Commission on Adaptation was launched with Ban as co-chair, together with Bill Gates and Kristalina Georgieva. The commission's mandate to accelerate adaptation by elevating the political visibility of adaptation and focusing on concrete solutions came to an end following its Year of Action in 2020, with its work showcased at the Climate Adaptation Summit hosted by the Netherlands on 25 January 2021. Ban currently serves as co-chair for the Global Center on Adaptation, which is taking forward the commission's work through its programs.

He became the first major international diplomat to throw his weight behind the Green New Deal, a nascent effort by the progressive wing of the Democratic Party in the United States to zero out planet-warming emissions and end poverty over the next decade.

Details

Ban Ki-moon was the eighth Secretary-General of the United Nations. His priorities have been to mobilize world leaders around a set of new global challenges, from climate change and economic upheaval to pandemics and increasing pressures involving food, energy and water. He has sought to be a bridge-builder, to give voice to the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people, and to strengthen the Organization itself.

"I grew up in war", the Secretary-General has said, "and saw the United Nations help my country to recover and rebuild. That experience was a big part of what led me to pursue a career in public service. As Secretary-General, I am determined to see this Organization deliver tangible, meaningful results that advance peace, development and human rights."

Mr. Ban held office from on 1 January 2007 to 31 December 2016. On 21 June 2011, he was unanimously re-elected by the General Assembly for a second mandate.

One of the Secretary-General’s first major initiatives was the 2007 Climate Change Summit, followed by extensive diplomatic efforts that have helped put the issue at the forefront of the global agenda. Subsequent efforts to focus on the world’s main anti-poverty targets, the Millennium Development Goals, have generated more than $60 billion in pledges, with a special emphasis on Africa and the new Global Strategy on Women’s and Children’s Health. At the height of the food, energy and economic crises in 2008, the Secretary-General successfully appealed to the G20 for a $1 trillion financing package for developing countries and took other steps to guide the international response and protect the vulnerable and poor.

The Secretary-General pressed successfully for the creation of UN Women, a major new agency that consolidates the UN’s work in this area. His advocacy for women’s rights and gender equality has also included the "Unite to End Violence against Women" campaign, the "Stop math Now" initiative, the creation of a "Network of Men Leaders" and the establishment of a new Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict. Within the UN itself, the Secretary-General has increased the number of women in senior management positions by more than 40 per cent, reaching the highest level in the Organization’s history.

Ban Ki-moon has sought to strengthen UN peace efforts, including through the New Horizons peacekeeping initiative, the Global Field Support Strategy and the Civilian Capacity Review, a package of steps to improve the impact of the 120,000 United Nations "blue helmets" operating in the world’s conflict zones. A mediation support unit, along with new capacity to carry out the Secretary-General’s good offices, have been set up to help prevent, manage and resolve tensions, conflicts and crises. Accountability for violations of human rights has received high-level attention through inquiries related to Gaza, Guinea, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, legal processes in Lebanon and Cambodia, and advocacy for the "responsibility to protect," the new United Nations norm aimed at prevent and halt genocide and other grave crimes. He has also sought to strengthen humanitarian response in the aftermath of mega-disasters in Myanmar (2008), Haiti (2010) and Pakistan (2010), and mobilized UN support for the democratic transitions in North Africa and the Middle East.

Mr. Ban has sought to rejuvenate the disarmament agenda through a five-point plan, efforts to break the deadlock at the Conference on Disarmament and renewed attention to nuclear safety and security in the aftermath of the tragedy at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.

The Secretary-General has introduced new measures aimed at making the United Nations more transparent, effective and efficient. These include heightened financial disclosure requirements, compacts with senior managers, harmonization of business practices and conditions of service, the adoption of International Public Sector Accounting Standards, and continued investments in information technology and staff development.

The Secretary-General was born in the Republic of Korea on 13 June 1944. He received a bachelor's degree in international relations from Seoul National University in 1970. In 1985, he earned a master's degree in public administration from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

At the time of his election as Secretary-General, Mr. Ban was his country's Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade. His 37 years of service with the Ministry included postings in New Delhi, Washington D.C. and Vienna, and responsibility for a variety of portfolios, including Foreign Policy Adviser to the President, Chief National Security Adviser to the President, Deputy Minister for Policy Planning and Director-General of American Affairs.

Mr. Ban’s ties to the United Nations date back to 1975, when he worked for the Foreign Ministry's United Nations Division. That work expanded over the years, with assignments that included service as Chairman of the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization and Chef de Cabinet during the Republic of Korea's 2001-2002 presidency of the UN General Assembly. Mr. Ban has also been actively involved in issues relating to inter-Korean relations.

Ban Ki-moon and his wife, Madam Yoo (Ban) Soon-taek, whom he met in high school in 1962, have one son, two daughters and three grandchildren.

Since 2007, Mrs. Ban has devoted her attention to women’s and children’s health, including autism, the elimination of violence against women, and the campaign to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV/AIDS.

Jai Ganesh · 2022-04-17 02:04:07

1051) António Guterres

Summary

António Manuel de Oliveira Guterres (born 30 April 1949) is a Portuguese politician and diplomat. Since 2017, he has served as secretary-general of the United Nations, the ninth person to hold this title. A member of the Portuguese Socialist Party, Guterres served as prime minister of Portugal from 1995 to 2002.

Guterres served as secretary-general of the Socialist Party from 1992 to 2002. He was elected prime minister in 1995 and resigned in 2002, after his party was defeated in the 2001 Portuguese local elections. After six years governing without an absolute majority and with a poor economy, the Socialist Party did worse than expected because of losses in Lisbon and Porto, where polls indicated they had a solid lead. Eduardo Ferro Rodrigues assumed the Socialist Party leadership, but the general election was lost to the Social Democratic Party, led by José Manuel Barroso. Despite this defeat, polling of the Portuguese public in both 2012 and 2014 ranked Guterres the best prime minister of the previous 30 years.

He served as president of the Socialist International from 1999 to 2005, and was the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees from 2005 to 2015. Guterres was elected secretary-general in October 2016, succeeding Ban Ki-moon at the beginning of the following year and becoming the first European to hold this office since Kurt Waldheim in 1981.

Details

António Guterres, in full António Manuel de Oliveira Guterres, (born April 30, 1949, Lisbon, Portugal), is Portuguese politician and diplomat who served as prime minister of Portugal (1995–2002) and secretary-general of the United Nations (2017– ).

Guterres studied physics and engineering at the Universidade de Lisboa’s elite Instituto Superior Técnico, earning a degree in 1971. His time as a student was marked by the decline of the dictatorship of António de Oliveira Salazar, and Guterres was active in the protest movement that helped to topple Salazar’s successor, Marcello Caetano, in 1974. After graduating, Guterres worked as a physics instructor, but, as Portugal began its transition to democracy, he became more active in politics. He joined the Socialist Party in 1974, and two years later he was elected to the Portuguese parliament. Over the next two decades, he served on a variety of parliamentary committees, and, from 1981 to 1983, he was a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.

In 1992 he was elected secretary-general of the Socialist Party, and in 1995 he was elected prime minister of Portugal at the head of a minority government. During his term Guterres oversaw Portugal’s transition to the euro as its official currency and presided over the transfer of Macau to Chinese sovereignty. He also played a key role in the resolution of the crisis in East Timor (Timor Leste); the former Portuguese colony had been under Indonesian occupation since 1975 and Guterres was a prominent advocate for Timorese independence. After the Socialists were soundly beaten in local elections in December 2001, Guterres resigned, and in early legislative elections held in March 2002, the Socialists were swept from power. In 2005 the UN General Assembly elected Guterres to serve as the High Commissioner for Refugees. He increased efficiency at the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), reducing staff and costs at its Geneva headquarters while improving the organization’s response capabilities. Such steps were clearly necessary at a time when conflicts were displacing populations at a level not seen since World War II, and Guterres used his position to encourage rich countries to do more to aid the world’s refugees.

On October 13, 2016, the United Nations General Assembly elected Guterres to serve as UN secretary-general. After six rounds of straw polling among the 15 members of the Security Council, Guterres emerged from a crowded field that included former Slovenian president Danilo Turk and former New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark. Of the 13 candidates, 7 were women, and many believed that the Security Council would make history by nominating its first female secretary-general. Guterres was the clear front-runner, however, and in the final vote the typically fractious Security Council found rare consensus, with 13 votes in favour of Guterres and 2 abstentions, with none opposed. On December 12 he took the oath of office and was sworn in as the ninth secretary-general in UN history, succeeding South Korea’s Ban Ki-Moon. Guterres’s term began on January 1, 2017.

Additional Information

António Guterres, the ninth Secretary-General of the United Nations, took office on 1st January 2017.

Having witnessed the suffering of the most vulnerable people on earth, in refugee camps and in war zones, the Secretary-General is determined to make human dignity the core of his work, and to serve as a peace broker, a bridge-builder and a promoter of reform and innovation.

Prior to his appointment as Secretary-General, Mr. Guterres served as United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees from June 2005 to December 2015, heading one of the world’s foremost humanitarian organizations during some of the most serious displacement crises in decades. The conflicts in Syria and Iraq, and the crises in South Sudan, the Central African Republic and Yemen, led to a huge rise in UNHCR’s activities as the number of people displaced by conflict and persecution rose from 38 million in 2005 to over 60 million in 2015.

Before joining UNHCR, Mr. Guterres spent more than 20 years in government and public service. He served as prime minister of Portugal from 1995 to 2002, during which time he was heavily involved in the international effort to resolve the crisis in East Timor.

As president of the European Council in early 2000, he led the adoption of the Lisbon Agenda for growth and jobs, and co-chaired the first European Union-Africa summit. He was a member of the Portuguese Council of State from 1991 to 2002.

Mr. Guterres was elected to the Portuguese Parliament in 1976 where he served as a member for 17 years. During that time, he chaired the Parliamentary Committee for Economy, Finance and Planning, and later the Parliamentary Committee for Territorial Administration, Municipalities and Environment. He was also leader of his party’s parliamentary group.

From 1981 to 1983, Mr. Guterres was a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, where he chaired the Committee on Demography, Migration and Refugees.

For many years Mr. Guterres was active in the Socialist International, a worldwide organization of social democratic political parties. He was the group’s vice-president from 1992 to 1999, co-chairing the African Committee and later the Development Committee. He served as President from 1999 until mid-2005. In addition, he founded the Portuguese Refugee Council as well as the Portuguese Consumers Association DECO, and served as president of the Centro de Acção Social Universitário, an association carrying out social development projects in poor neighbourhoods of Lisbon, in the early 1970s.

Mr. Guterres is a member of the Club of Madrid, a leadership alliance of democratic former presidents and prime ministers from around the world.

Mr. Guterres was born in Lisbon in 1949 and graduated from the Instituto Superior Técnico with a degree in engineering. He is fluent in Portuguese, English, French and Spanish. He is married to Catarina de Almeida Vaz Pinto, Deputy Mayor for Culture of Lisbon, and has two children, a stepson and three grandchildren.

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Jai Ganesh · 2022-04-19 01:17:39

1052) Alois Alzheimer

Summary

In 1901 at the Frankfurt Asylum, Alois Alzheimer treated a 51-year-old woman who had progressive memory loss. Her mental condition deteriorated, and she died 5 years later (1906). At autopsy, Alzheimer noticed that the patient's cerebral cortex looked atrophied, with widening of the sulci. He also identified histopathologic changes, which would come to be known as the pathologic hallmarks of the degenerative condition that today bears Alzheimer's name: neurofibrillary tangles and neuritic plaques.

Alois Alzheimer was born in the small town of Marktbreit in Bavaria (Germany) on June 14, 1864. His father was a notary public and minor government official. After attending school at Aschaffenburg and Würzburg, Alzheimer studied medicine at the universities of Würzburg, Tübingen, and Berlin. In 1887, he received his medical degree from the University of Würzburg after defending his doctoral thesis on the wax-producing glands of the ear. This work was based on his research in the laboratory of noted Swiss physiologist and histologist Rudolf Albert von Kölliker (1817-1905), who spent much of his career in Germany.

After an internship, Alzheimer worked for 7 years as an assistant in the Städtische Irrenanstalt (city mental asylum) in Frankfurt-am-Main, where he began his work in psychiatry and neuropathology under the direction of the distinguished neurologist Franz Nissl (1860-1919). In 1895, Nissl moved to Heidelberg to join the noted German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin (1856-1926). Alzheimer succeeded Nissl as director of the mental asylum in Frankfurt-am-Main and served in that role for 7 years, from 1895 to 1902.

At Frankfurt, Nissl and Alzheimer started to investigate the pathology of the nervous system, studying the normal and pathologic anatomy of the cerebral cortex. This resulted in their 6-volume
Histologic and Histopathologic Studies of the Cerebral Cortex, which was published serially between 1906 and 1918.

In 1902, Kraepelin left Heidelberg to become head of the University Psychiatric Clinic in Munich, where Alzheimer joined him in 1903. The Psychiatric Clinic opened in 1904, and Alzheimer was appointed privatdocent. In 1908, he became professor and director of the anatomical laboratory in the Psychiatric Clinic. Alzheimer worked in Munich until 1912. It was during his time in Munich that Alzheimer described the findings of the disorder that now bears his name. In 1910, Kraepelin introduced the name “Alzheimer's disease” to honor Alois Alzheimer.

In 1912, Alzheimer was appointed professor of psychiatry and neurology at the University of Breslau (now Wroclaw) in Poland, a position that combined research and clinical practice. From 1910 to 1915, he was editor for psychiatry of the Zeitschrift für die gesamte Neurologie und Psychiatrie. On December 19, 1915, at the age of 51 years, Alois Alzheimer died of cardiac failure and uremia.

Most of Alzheimer's scientific contributions concerned neurologic subjects, including studies of acute alcoholic delirium, Westphal-Strümpell pseudosclerosis (Wilson disease), dementia praecox (schizophrenia), differential diagnosis of brain tumors, progressive paralysis of the young, epilepsy, luetic meningomyelitis and encephalitis (neurosyphilis), gliosis, Huntington disease, general paresis, and hysterical bulbar paralysis.

In addition to a form of senile dementia being named after him, a cell (giant astrocyte with prominent nucleus found in the brain in hepatolenticular degeneration and hepatic coma) and a stain (a methylene blue and eosin polychrome stain for detection Negri bodies) also bear his name. In 2008, the United States issued a stamp in Alzheimer's honor (Scott no. 4358).

Details

Alois Alzheimer (14 June 1864 – 19 December 1915) was a German psychiatrist and neuropathologist and a colleague of Emil Kraepelin. Alzheimer is credited with identifying the first published case of "presenile dementia", which Kraepelin would later identify as Alzheimer's disease.

Early life and education

Alzheimer was born in Marktbreit, Bavaria, on 14 June 1864, the son of Anna Johanna Barbara Sabina and Eduard Román Alzheimer. His father served in the office of notary public in the family's hometown.

The Alzheimers moved to Aschaffenburg when Alois was still young in order to give their children an opportunity to attend the Royal Humanistic Gymnasium. After graduating with Abitur in 1883, Alzheimer studied medicine at University of Berlin, University of Tübingen, and University of Würzburg. In his final year at university, he was a member of a fencing fraternity, and even received a fine for disturbing the peace while out with his team. In 1887, Alois Alzheimer graduated from Würzburg as Doctor of Medicine.

Career

The following year, he spent five months assisting mentally ill women before he took an office in the city mental asylum in Frankfurt, the Städtische Anstalt für Irre und Epileptische (Asylum for Lunatics and Epileptics). Emil Sioli [de], a noted psychiatrist, was the dean of the asylum. Another neurologist, Franz Nissl, began to work in the same asylum with Alzheimer. Together, they conducted research on the pathology of the nervous system, specifically the normal and pathological anatomy of the cerebral cortex. Alzheimer was the co-founder and co-publisher of the journal Zeitschrift für die gesamte Neurologie und Psychiatrie, though he never wrote a book that he could call his own.

While at the Frankfurt asylum, Alzheimer also met Emil Kraepelin, one of the best-known German psychiatrists of the time. Kraepelin became a mentor to Alzheimer, and the two worked very closely for the next several years. When Kraepelin moved to Munich to work at the Royal Psychiatric Hospital in 1903, he invited Alzheimer to join him.

At the time, Kraepelin was doing clinical research on psychosis in senile patients; Alzheimer, on the other hand, was more interested in the lab work of senile illnesses. The two men would face many challenges involving the politics of the psychiatric community. For example, both formal and informal arrangements would be made among psychiatrists at asylums and universities to receive cadavers.

In 1904, Alzheimer completed his habilitation at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, where he was appointed as a professor in 1908. Afterwards, he left Munich for the Silesian Friedrich Wilhelm University in Breslau in 1912, where he accepted a post as professor of psychiatry and director of the Neurologic and Psychiatric Institute. His health deteriorated shortly after his arrival so that he was hospitalized. Alzheimer died three years later.

Auguste Deter

In 1901, Alzheimer observed a patient at the Frankfurt asylum named Auguste Deter. The 51-year-old patient had strange behavioral symptoms, including a loss of short-term memory; she became his obsession over the coming years. Auguste Deter was a victim of the politics of the time in the psychiatric community; the Frankfurt asylum was too expensive for her husband. Herr Deter made several requests to have his wife moved to a less expensive facility, but Alzheimer intervened in these requests. Frau Deter, as she was known, remained at the Frankfurt asylum, where Alzheimer had made a deal to receive her records and brain upon her death.

On 8 April 1906, Frau Deter died, and Alzheimer had her medical records and brain brought to Munich where he was working in Kraepelin's laboratory. With two Italian physicians, he used the staining techniques of Bielschowsky to identify amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles. These brain anomalies would become identifiers of what later became known as Alzheimer's disease.

Another hypothesis offered by Claire O'Brien was that Auguste Deter actually had a vascular dementing disease.

Findings

Alzheimer discussed his findings on the brain pathology and symptoms of presenile dementia publicly on 3 November 1906, at the Tübingen meeting of the Southwest German Psychiatrists. The attendees at this lecture seemed uninterested in what he had to say. The lecturer that followed Alzheimer was to speak on the topic of "compulsive masturbation", which the audience of 88 individuals was so eagerly awaiting that they sent Alzheimer away without any questions or comments on his discovery of the pathology of a type of senile dementia.

Following the lecture, Alzheimer published a short paper summarizing his lecture; in 1907 he wrote a larger paper detailing the disease and his findings. The disease would not become known as Alzheimer's disease until 1910, when Kraepelin named it so in the chapter on "Presenile and Senile Dementia" in the 8th edition of his Handbook of Psychiatry. By 1911, his description of the disease was being used by European physicians to diagnose patients in the US.

Contemporaries

American Solomon Carter Fuller gave a report similar to that of Alzheimer at a lecture five months before Alzheimer. Oskar Fischer was a fellow German psychiatrist, 12 years Alzheimer's junior, who reported 12 cases of senile dementia in 1907 around the time that Alzheimer published his short paper summarizing his lecture.

Alzheimer and Fischer had different interpretations of the disease, but due to Alzheimer's short life, they never had the opportunity to meet and discuss their ideas.

Among the doctors trained by Alois Alzheimer and Emil Kraepelin at Munich in the beginning of the 20th century were the Spanish neuropathologists Nicolás Achúcarro and Gonzalo Rodríguez Lafora, two distinguished disciples of Santiago Ramón y Cajal and members of the Spanish Neurological School. Alzheimer recommended the young and brilliant Nicolás Achúcarro to organize the neuropathological service at the Government Hospital for the Insane, at Washington D.C. (current, NIH), and after two years of work, he was substituted by Gonzalo Rodríguez Lafora.

Other interests

Alzheimer was known for having a variety of medical interests including vascular diseases of the brain, early dementia, brain tumors, forensic psychiatry and epilepsy. Alzheimer was a leading specialist in histopathology in Europe. His colleagues knew him to be a dedicated professor and cigar smoker.

Personal life and death

In 1894, Alzheimer married Cecilie Simonette Nathalie Geisenheimer, with whom he had three children. Geisenheimer died in 1901.

In August 1912, Alzheimer fell ill on the train on his way to the University of Breslau, where he had been appointed professor of psychiatry in July 1912. Most probably he had a streptococcal infection and subsequent rheumatic fever leading to valvular heart disease, heart failure and kidney failure. He did not recover completely from this illness.

He died of heart failure on 19 December 1915 at age 51, in Breslau, Silesia (present-day Wrocław, Poland). He was buried on 23 December 1915 next to his wife at the Frankfurt Main Cemetery.

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Jai Ganesh · 2022-04-21 01:12:51

1053) Sigmund Freud

Summary

Sigmund Freud, (born May 6, 1856, Freiberg, Moravia, Austrian Empire [now Příbor, Czech Republic]—died September 23, 1939, London, England), Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis. Freud’s article on psychoanalysis appeared in the 13th edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica.

Freud may justly be called the most influential intellectual legislator of his age. His creation of psychoanalysis was at once a theory of the human psyche, a therapy for the relief of its ills, and an optic for the interpretation of culture and society. Despite repeated criticisms, attempted refutations, and qualifications of Freud’s work, its spell remained powerful well after his death and in fields far removed from psychology as it is narrowly defined. If, as the American sociologist Philip Rieff once contended, “psychological man” replaced such earlier notions as political, religious, or economic man as the 20th century’s dominant self-image, it is in no small measure due to the power of Freud’s vision and the seeming inexhaustibility of the intellectual legacy he left behind.

Details

Sigmund Freud (born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating pathologies in the psyche through dialogue between a patient and a psychoanalyst.

Freud was born to Galician Jewish parents in the Moravian town of Freiberg, in the Austrian Empire. He qualified as a doctor of medicine in 1881 at the University of Vienna. Upon completing his habilitation in 1885, he was appointed a docent in neuropathology and became an affiliated professor in 1902. Freud lived and worked in Vienna, having set up his clinical practice there in 1886. In 1938, Freud left Austria to escape Nazi persecution. He died in exile in the United Kingdom in 1939.

In founding psychoanalysis, Freud developed therapeutic techniques such as the use of free association and discovered transference, establishing its central role in the analytic process. Freud's redefinition of sexuality to include its infantile forms led him to formulate the Oedipus complex as the central tenet of psychoanalytical theory. His analysis of dreams as wish-fulfillments provided him with models for the clinical analysis of symptom formation and the underlying mechanisms of repression. On this basis, Freud elaborated his theory of the unconscious and went on to develop a model of psychic structure comprising id, ego and super-ego. Freud postulated the existence of libido, sexualised energy with which mental processes and structures are invested and which generates erotic attachments, and a death drive, the source of compulsive repetition, hate, aggression, and neurotic guilt. In his later works, Freud developed a wide-ranging interpretation and critique of religion and culture.

Though in overall decline as a diagnostic and clinical practice, psychoanalysis remains influential within psychology, psychiatry, and psychotherapy, and across the humanities. It thus continues to generate extensive and highly contested debate concerning its therapeutic efficacy, its scientific status, and whether it advances or hinders the feminist cause. Nonetheless, Freud's work has suffused contemporary Western thought and popular culture. W. H. Auden's 1940 poetic tribute to Freud describes him as having created "a whole climate of opinion / under whom we conduct our different lives".

Jai Ganesh · 2022-04-23 01:03:48

1054) Peter Mark Roget

Summary

Peter Mark Roget, (born January 18, 1779, London, England—died September 12, 1869, West Malvern, Worcestershire), was a English physician and philologist remembered for his Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases (1852), a comprehensive classification of synonyms or verbal equivalents that is still popular in modern editions.

Roget studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh and later helped found the medical school at Manchester. In 1814 he invented a “log-log” slide rule for calculating the roots and powers of numbers. From 1808 to 1840 he practiced in London. The first edition of the Thesaurus, which was begun in his 61st year and finished in his 73rd, was a product of his retirement from active medical practice, although it was based on a system of verbal classification he had begun in 1805. Roget was a fellow (from 1815) and secretary (from 1827) of the Royal Society. Peter Mark Roget (18 January 1779 – 12 September 1869) was a British physician, natural theologian, lexicographer and founding secretary of The Portico Library. He is best known for publishing, in 1852, the Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases, a classified collection of related words. He also read a paper to the Royal Society about a peculiar optical illusion in 1824, which is often regarded as the origin of the persistence of vision theory that was later commonly used to explain apparent motion in film and animation.

Details

Peter Mark Roget (18 January 1779 – 12 September 1869) was a British physician, natural theologian, lexicographer and founding secretary of The Portico Library. He is best known for publishing, in 1852, the Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases, a classified collection of related words. He also read a paper to the Royal Society about a peculiar optical illusion in 1824, which is often regarded as the origin of the persistence of vision theory that was later commonly used to explain apparent motion in film and animation.

Early life

Peter Mark Roget was born in Broad Street, Soho, London, the son of Jean (John) Roget (1751–1783), a Genevan cleric, and his wife, Catherine Romilly, sister of Samuel Romilly. After his father's death the family moved to Edinburgh in 1783 and he shortly began to study medicine at the University of Edinburgh, graduating in 1798. Samuel Romilly, who had supported his education, also introduced Roget into Whig social circles.

Roget then attended lectures at London medical schools. Living in Clifton, Bristol, from 1798 to 1799, he knew Thomas Beddoes and Humphry Davy and frequented the Pneumatic Institute.

Not making a quick start to a medical career, in 1802 Roget took a position as a tutor to the sons of John Leigh Philips, with whom he began a Grand Tour during the Peace of Amiens, travelling with a friend, Lovell Edgeworth, son of Richard Lovell Edgeworth. When the Peace abruptly ended he was detained as a prisoner in Geneva. He was able to bring his pupils back to England in late 1803 but Edgeworth was held in captivity until Napoleon fell on 6 April 1814.

Medical career

With the help of Samuel Romilly Roger became a private physician to William Petty, 1st Marquess of Lansdowne, who died in 1805. He then succeeded Thomas Percival at Manchester Infirmary and began to lecture on physiology. He moved to London in 1808 and in 1809 became a licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians. After an extended period of dispensary work and lecturing, in particular, at the Russell Institution and Royal Institution, he was taken onto the staff of the Queen Charlotte Hospital in 1817. He also lectured at the London Institution and the Windmill Street School.

In 1823 Roget and Peter Mere Latham were brought in to investigate disease at Millbank Penitentiary. In 1828 Roget, with William Thomas Brande and Thomas Telford, submitted a report on London's water supply. In 1834 he became the first Fullerian Professor of Physiology at the Royal Institution. One of those who helped found the University of London in 1837, he was an examiner in physiology there. He gave up medical practice in 1840.

Later life

In later life Roger became deaf and was cared for by his daughter, Kate. He died while on holiday in West Malvern, Worcestershire, aged 90, and is buried there in the churchyard of St James' Church. There is a memorial to him at his local parish church of St Mary on Paddington Green Church.

Thesaurus

Roget retired from professional life in 1840, and by 1846 was working on the book that perpetuates his memory today. It has been claimed that Roget struggled with depression for most of his life, and that the thesaurus arose partly from an effort to battle it. A biographer stated that his obsession with list-making as a coping mechanism was well established by the time Roget was eight years old. In 1805, he began to maintain a notebook classification scheme for words, organized by meaning. During this period he also moved to Manchester, where he became the first secretary of the Portico Library.

The catalogue of words was first printed in 1852, titled Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases Classified and Arranged so as to Facilitate the Expression of Ideas and Assist in Literary Composition. During Roget's lifetime, the work had twenty-eight printings. After his death, it was revised and expanded by his son, John Lewis Roget (1828–1908), and later by John's son, the engineer Samuel Romilly Roget (1875–1953). Roget's private library was put up for auction in 1870 at Sotheby's and its catalogue has been analyzed.

Other interests

Roget was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1815, in recognition of a paper on a slide rule with a loglog scale. He was a secretary of the Society from 1827 to 1848. On 9 December 1824, Roget presented a paper on a peculiar optical illusion to the Philosophical Transactions, which was published in 1825, as Explanation of an optical deception in the appearance of the spokes of a wheel when seen through vertical apertures. The paper was noted by Michael Faraday and by Joseph Plateau, who both mentioned it in their articles that presented new illusions with apparent motion. It has often been heralded as the basis for the persistence of vision theory, which has for a long time been falsely regarded as the principle causing the perception of motion in animation and film. In 1834, Roget claimed to have invented "the Phantasmascope or Phenakisticope" in the spring of 1831, a few years before Plateau introduced that first stroboscopic animation device.

One of the promoters of the Medical and Chirurgical Society of London, which later became the Royal Society of Medicine, Roget was also a founder of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, writing a series of popular manuals for it. He wrote numerous papers on physiology and health, among them the fifth Bridgewater Treatise, Animal and Vegetable Physiology considered with reference to Natural Theology (1834), and articles for the Encyclopædia Britannica. He was hostile to phrenology, writing against it in a Britannica supplement in 1818, and devoting a two-volume work to it (1838).

A chess player, in an article in the London and Edinburgh Philosophical Magazine Roget solved the general open knight's tour problem. He composed chess problems, and designed an inexpensive pocket chessboard.

Selected publications

* Treatises on Electricity, Galvanism, Magnetism, and Electro-magnetism. London: Baldwin and Cradock. 1832. LCCN 08007072.
* Animal and Vegetable Physiology Considered with Reference to Natural Theology. Bridgewater Treatises. Vol. I–II. London: William Pickering. 2009 [1834]. ISBN 9781108000086. LCCN 06011266.
* Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases (Fourth ed.). London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans. 1856.

In literature

Canadian writer Keath Fraser published a story, Roget's Thesaurus, in 1982, which is narrated in Roget's voice. He has Roget speak on his wife's death, from cancer.

Roget also appears in Shelagh Stephenson's An Experiment with an Air Pump, set in 1799, as the only historical character. The play is set in the fictional household of Joseph Fenwick, and Roget is one of Fenwick's assistants.

A picture-book biography of Roget entitled The Right Word: Roget and His Thesaurus was published by Eerdmans Books in 2014. It was named a Caldecott Honor book for excellence in illustration and won the Sibert Medal for excellence in children's nonfiction.

Family

In 1824 Roget married Mary Taylor (1795–1833), daughter of Jonathan Hobson. They had a son, John Lewis (1828–1908), and a daughter, Kate.

Jai Ganesh · 2022-04-24 21:49:35

1055) Christopher Reeve

Summary

Christopher D'Olier Reeve was born September 25, 1952, in New York City, to journalist Barbara Johnson (née Barbara Pitney Lamb) and writer/professor F.D. Reeve (Franklin D'Olier Reeve). He came from an upper-class family; his paternal grandfather was CEO of Prudential Financial, and one of his maternal great-grandfathers was Supreme Court Associate Justice Mahlon Pitney.

When he was four, his parents divorced. His mother moved sons Christopher and Benjamin to Princeton, New Jersey, and married an investment banker a few years later. After graduating from high school, Reeve studied at Cornell University while at the same time working as a professional actor. In his final year at Cornell, he was one of two students selected (Robin Williams was the other) to study at New York's famous Juilliard School, under the renowned John Houseman. Although Christopher is best known for his role as Superman (1978), a role which he played with both charisma and grace, his acting career spans a much larger ground. Paralyzed after a horse riding accident, he died suddenly at age 52 after several years of living and working with his severe disability.

Details

Christopher D'Olier Reeve (September 25, 1952 – October 10, 2004) was an American actor, director, and activist, best known for playing the titular main character in the film Superman (1978) and its first three sequels.

Born in New York City and raised in Princeton, New Jersey, Reeve discovered a passion for acting and the theater at the age of nine. He studied at Cornell University and the Juilliard School and made his Broadway debut in 1976. After his acclaimed performances in Superman and Superman II, Reeve declined many roles in action movies, choosing instead to work in small films and plays with more complex characters. He later appeared in critically successful films such as The Bostonians (1984), Street Smart (1987), and The Remains of the Day (1993), and in the plays Fifth of July on Broadway and The Aspern Papers in London's West End.

On May 27, 1995, Reeve broke his neck when he was thrown from a horse during an equestrian competition in Culpeper, Virginia. The injury paralyzed him from the shoulders down, and he used a wheelchair and ventilator for the rest of his life. From his wheelchair, Reeve returned to creative work, directing In the Gloaming (1997) and acting in the television remake of Rear Window (1998). He also made several appearances in the Superman-themed television series Smallville, and wrote two autobiographical books, Still Me and Nothing is Impossible. Over the course of his career, Reeve received a BAFTA Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, an Emmy Award, and a Grammy Award.

Beginning in the 1980s, Reeve was an activist for environmental and human-rights causes and for artistic freedom of expression. After his accident, he lobbied for spinal injury research, including human embryonic stem cell research, and for better insurance coverage for people with disabilities. His advocacy work included leading the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation and co-founding the Reeve-Irvine Research Center. Reeve died on October 10, 2004, 15 days after his 52nd birthday.

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Jai Ganesh · 2022-04-25 21:39:30

1056) Aage Bohr

Summary

Aage N. Bohr, in full Aage Niels Bohr, (born June 19, 1922, Copenhagen, Den.—died Sept. 8, 2009, Copenhagen), Danish physicist who shared the 1975 Nobel Prize for Physics with Ben R. Mottelson and James Rainwater for their work in determining the asymmetrical shapes of certain atomic nuclei.

Bohr was educated at the University of Copenhagen, where he received a doctorate in 1954. During the 1940s he worked as assistant to his father, Niels Bohr (1922 Nobel physics laureate), on the development of the atomic bomb at Los Alamos, N.M. From 1946 he was associated with the Niels Bohr Institute of Theoretical Physics, founded in Copenhagen by his father, whom he succeeded as director from 1963 to 1970. From experiments inspired by the theories of James Rainwater and conducted in collaboration with Ben R. Mottelson in the early 1950s, Bohr discovered that the motion of subatomic particles can distort the shape of the nucleus, thus challenging the widely accepted theory that all nuclei are perfectly spherical. This discovery was important for the understanding and development of nuclear fusion. Bohr’s writings include Rotational States of Atomic Nuclei (1954) and Nuclear Structure, 2 vol. (1969, 1975).

Details

Aage Niels Bohr (19 June 1922 – 8 September 2009) was a Danish nuclear physicist who shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1975 with Ben Mottelson and James Rainwater "for the discovery of the connection between collective motion and particle motion in atomic nuclei and the development of the theory of the structure of the atomic nucleus based on this connection". Starting from Rainwater's concept of an irregular-shaped liquid drop model of the nucleus, Bohr and Mottelson developed a detailed theory that was in close agreement with experiments.

Since his father, Niels Bohr, had won the prize in 1922, he and his father are one of the six pairs of fathers and sons who have both won the Nobel Prize and one of the four pairs who have both won the Nobel Prize in Physics.

Early life and education

Aage Niels Bohr was born in Copenhagen on 19 June 1922, the fourth of six sons of the physicist Niels Bohr and his wife Margrethe Bohr (née Nørlund). His oldest brother, Christian, died in a boating accident in 1934, and his youngest, Harald, from childhood meningitis. Of the others, Hans became a physician; Erik, a chemical engineer; and Ernest, a lawyer and Olympic athlete who played field hockey for Denmark at the 1948 Summer Olympics in London. The family lived at the Institute of Theoretical Physics at the University of Copenhagen, now known as the Niels Bohr Institute, where he grew up surrounded by physicists who were working with his father, such as Hans Kramers, Oskar Klein, Yoshio Nishina, Wolfgang Pauli and Werner Heisenberg. In 1932, the family moved to the Carlsberg Æresbolig, a mansion donated by Carl Jacobsen, the heir to Carlsberg breweries, to be used as an honorary residence by the Dane who had made the most prominent contribution to science, literature, or the arts.

Bohr went to high school at Sortedam Gymnasium in Copenhagen. In 1940, shortly after the German occupation of Denmark in April, he entered the University of Copenhagen, where he studied physics. He assisted his father, helping draft correspondence and articles related to epistemology and physics. In September 1943, word reached his family that the Nazis considered them to be Jewish, because Aage's grandmother, Ellen Adler Bohr, had been Jewish, and that they therefore were in danger of being arrested. The Danish resistance helped the family escape by sea to Sweden. Bohr arrived there in October 1943, and then flew to Britain on a de Havilland Mosquito operated by British Overseas Airways Corporation. The Mosquitoes were unarmed high-speed bomber aircraft that had been converted to carry small, valuable cargoes or important passengers. By flying at high speed and high altitude, they could cross German-occupied Norway, and yet avoid German fighters. Bohr, equipped with parachute, flying suit and oxygen mask, spent the three-hour flight lying on a mattress in the aircraft's bomb bay.

On arrival in London, Bohr rejoined his father, who had flown to Britain the week before. He officially became a junior researcher at the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, but actually served as personal assistant and secretary to his father. The two worked on Tube Alloys, the British atomic bomb project. On 30 December 1943, they made the first of a number of visits to the United States, where his father was a consultant to the Manhattan Project. Due to his father's fame, they were given false names; Bohr became James Baker, and his father, Nicholas Baker. In 1945, the director of the Los Alamos Laboratory, Robert Oppenheimer, asked them to review the design of the modulated neutron initiator. They reported that it would work. That they had reached this conclusion put Enrico Fermi's concerns about the viability of the design to rest. The initiators performed flawlessly in the bombs used in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.

Career

In August 1945, with the war ended, Bohr returned to Denmark, where he resumed his university education, graduating with a master's degree in 1946, with a thesis concerned with some aspects of atomic stopping power problems. In early 1948, Bohr became a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. While paying a visit to Columbia University, he met Isidor Isaac Rabi, who sparked in him an interest in recent discoveries related to the hyperfine structure of deuterium. This led to Bohr becoming a visiting fellow at Columbia from January 1949 to August 1950. While in the United States, Bohr married Marietta Soffer on 11 March 1950. They had three children: Vilhelm, Tomas and Margrethe.

By the late 1940s it was known that the properties of atomic nuclei could not be explained by then-current models such as the liquid drop model developed by Niels Bohr amongst others. The shell model, developed in 1949 by Maria Goeppert-Mayer and others, allowed some additional features to be explained, in particular the so-called magic numbers. However, there were also properties that could not be explained, including the non-spherical distribution of charge in certain nuclei. In a 1950 paper, James Rainwater of Columbia University suggested a variant of the drop model of the nucleus that could explain a non-spherical charge distribution. Rainwater's model postulated a nucleus like a balloon with balls inside that distort the surface as they move about. He discussed the idea with Bohr, who was visiting Columbia at the time, and had independently conceived the same idea, and had, about a month after Rainwater's submission, submitted for publication a paper that discussed the same problem, but along more general lines. Bohr imagined a rotating, irregular-shaped nucleus with a form of surface tension. Bohr developed the idea further, in 1951 publishing a paper that comprehensively treated the relationship between oscillations of the surface of the nucleus and the movement of the individual nucleons.

Upon his return to Copenhagen in 1950, Bohr began working with Ben Mottelson to compare the theoretical work with experimental data. In three papers, that were published in 1952 and 1953, Bohr and Mottelson demonstrated close agreement between theory and experiment; for example, showing that the energy levels of certain nuclei could be described by a rotation spectrum. They were thereby able to reconcile the shell model with Rainwater's concept. This work stimulated many new theoretical and experimental studies. Bohr, Mottelson and Rainwater were jointly awarded the 1975 Nobel Prize in Physics "for the discovery of the connection between collective motion and particle motion in atomic nuclei and the development of the theory of the structure of the atomic nucleus based on this connection". Because his father had been awarded the prize in 1922, Bohr became one of only four pairs of fathers and sons to win the Nobel Prize in Physics.

Only after doing his Nobel Prize-winning research did Bohr receive his doctorate from the University of Copenhagen, in 1954, writing his thesis on "Rotational States of Atomic Nuclei". Bohr became a professor at the University of Copenhagen in 1956, and, following his father's death in 1962, succeeded him as director of the Niels Bohr Institute, a position he held until 1970. He remained active there until he retired in 1992. He was also a member of the board of the Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics (Nordita) from its inception in 1957, and was its director from 1975 to 1981. In addition to the Nobel Prize, he won the Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics in 1960, the Atoms for Peace Award in 1969, H.C. Ørsted Medal in 1970, Rutherford Medal and Prize in 1972, John Price Wetherill Medal in 1974, and the Ole Rømer medal in 1976. Bohr and Mottelson continued to work together, publishing a two-volume monograph, Nuclear Structure. The first volume, Single-Particle Motion, appeared in 1969; the second, Nuclear Deformations, in 1975.

In 1972 he was awarded an honorary degree, doctor philos. honoris causa, at the Norwegian Institute of Technology, later part of Norwegian University of Science and Technology. He was also a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters from 1980.

In 1981, Bohr became a founding member of the World Cultural Council.

His wife Marietta died on 2 October 1978. In 1981, he married Bente Scharff Meyer (1926–2011). His son, Tomas Bohr, is a Professor of Physics at the Technical University of Denmark, working in the area of fluid dynamics. Aage Bohr died in Copenhagen on 9 September 2009. He was outlived by his second wife and children.

Jai Ganesh · 2022-04-26 21:45:31

1057) Ben Roy Mottelson

Summary

Ben R. Mottelson, in full Ben Roy Mottelson, (born July 9, 1926, Chicago, Ill., U.S.), is an American-Danish physicist who shared the 1975 Nobel Prize for Physics with Aage N. Bohr and James Rainwater for his work in determining the asymmetrical shapes of certain atomic nuclei and the reasons behind such asymmetries.

Having taken his doctorate in theoretical physics at Harvard University in 1950, Mottelson accepted a fellowship at the Niels Bohr Institute of Theoretical Physics in Copenhagen and then joined the faculty of the Nordic Institute for Theoretical Nuclear Physics there; he subsequently became a naturalized Danish citizen.

From experiments conducted in collaboration with Bohr in the early 1950s, Mottelson discovered that the motion of subatomic particles can distort the shape of the nucleus, thus challenging the widely accepted theory that all nuclei are perfectly spherical. Subsequently it was discovered that such asymmetries occur in atoms of all elements.

Details

Ben Roy Mottelson (born July 9, 1926) is an American-Danish nuclear physicist. He won the 1975 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the non-spherical geometry of atomic nuclei.

Early life

Mottelson was born in Chicago, Illinois in July 1926, the son of Georgia (Blum) and Goodman Mottelson, an engineer. He graduated from Lyons Township High School in LaGrange, Illinois. He received a Bachelor's degree from Purdue University in 1947, and a Ph.D. in nuclear physics from Harvard University in 1950.

Career

He moved to Institute for Theoretical Physics (later the Niels Bohr Institute) in Copenhagen on the Sheldon Traveling Fellowship from Harvard, and remained in Denmark. In 1953 he was appointed staff member in CERN's Theoretical Study Group, which was based in Copenhagen, a position he held until he became professor at the newly formed Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics (Nordita) in 1957. He was a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley in Spring 1959. In 1971 he became a naturalized Danish citizen.

In 1950–51, James Rainwater and Aage Bohr had developed models of the atomic nucleus which began to take into account the behaviour of the individual nucleons. These models, which moved beyond the simpler liquid drop treatment of the nucleus as having effectively no internal structure, were the first models which could explain a number of nuclear properties, including the non-spherical distribution of charge in certain nuclei. Mottelson worked with Aage Bohr to compare the theoretical models with experimental data. In three papers which were published in 1952–53, Bohr and Mottelson demonstrated close agreement between theory and experiment, for example showing that the energy levels of certain nuclei could be described by a rotation spectrum. This work stimulated new theoretical and experimental studies.

Nobel Prize (1975)

Rainwater, Bohr and Mottelson were jointly awarded the 1975 Nobel Prize in Physics "for the discovery of the connection between collective motion and particle motion in atomic nuclei and the development of the theory of the structure of the atomic nucleus based on this connection".

Post-Nobel prize work

Bohr and Mottelson continued to work together, publishing a two-volume monograph, Nuclear Structure. The first volume, Single-Particle Motion, appeared in 1969, and the second volume, Nuclear Deformations, in 1975.

Professor Mottelson is a member of the Board of Sponsors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.[4]

He is an honorary member of the Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters, a member of the American Philosophical Society, and a foreign fellow of Bangladesh Academy of Sciences and the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. In 1969, he received the Atoms for Peace Award. He acted as director of ECT* (Trento, Italy) from 1993 to 1997.

Personal life

Mottelson is a dual citizen, as he holds both Danish and American passports. He lives in Copenhagen, Denmark. Mottelson was married to Nancy Jane Reno from 1948 until her death in 1975, and they had two sons and one daughter. Mottelson then married Britta Marger Siegumfeldt in 1983.

Jai Ganesh · 2022-04-27 20:49:49

1058) P. V. Sindhu

Summary

Pusarla Venkata Sindhu is a sporting icon of the 21st century and a shining beacon for sportswomen in India. The shuttler has risen to the top of the world in the last decade, winning dozens of titles across the globe.

After becoming the first Indian woman to win a silver medal at the Olympics and gold at the BWF World Championships, PV Sindhu added another piece of metal to her glittering cabinet by winning her second straight Olympic medal - a bronze at Tokyo 2020, thus becoming the first Indian sportswoman to win two Olympic medals.

PV Sindhu’s consistency at the highest level can somewhat be attributed to the sporting genes she inherited from her parents. Born July 5, 1995, in Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh to parents who were both volleyball players at the national level, sport already coursed through PV Sindhu’s veins since she was born.

While her parents may have been volleyball players, badminton caught PV Sindhu’s fancy after watching Pullela Gopichand in action, and by the age of eight, she was a regular at the sport.

Details

Pusarla Venkata Sindhu (born 5 July 1995) is an Indian badminton player. Considered one of India's most successful sportspersons, Sindhu has won medals at various tournaments including the Olympics and on the BWF circuit, including a gold at the 2019 World Championships. She is the first and only Indian to become the Badminton World Champion and only the second individual athlete from India to win two consecutive medals at the Olympic Games. She rose to a career-high world ranking of no. 2 in April 2017.

Sindhu broke into the Top 20 of the BWF World Rankings in September 2012, at the age of 17. She has won a total of five medals at the BWF World Championships and is just the second woman after China's Zhang Ning ever to win five or more singles medals in the competition. She represented India at the 2016 Summer Olympics (Rio), where she became the first Indian badminton player to reach the Olympic final. She won the silver medal after losing out to Spain's Carolina Marin. She made her second consecutive Olympic appearance at the 2020 Summer Olympics (Tokyo) and won a bronze medal, becoming the first-ever Indian woman to win two Olympic medals.

Sindhu won her first superseries title at the 2016 China Open and followed it up with four more finals in 2017, winning the titles in South Korea and India. In addition to that, she has won a silver medal each at the 2018 Commonwealth Games and 2018 Asian Games, and two bronze medals at the Uber Cup.

With earnings of US$8.5 million, $5.5 million and $7.2 million respectively, Sindhu made the Forbes' list of Highest-Paid Female Athletes in 2018, 2019 and 2021. She is a recipient of the sports honours Arjuna Award and Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna, as well as India's fourth highest civilian award, the Padma Shri. She was also honoured with the Padma Bhushan, the third highest civilian award in India, in January 2020.

Jai Ganesh · 2022-04-29 00:21:10

1059) Rafael Nadal

Summary

Rafael Nadal Parera (born 3 June 1986) is a Spanish professional tennis player. He is ranked world No. 4 in singles by the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP); he has been ranked world No. 1 for 209 weeks and finished as the year-end No. 1 five times. Nadal has won 21 Grand Slam men's singles titles, the most in history, including a record 13 French Open titles. He has won 91 ATP singles titles (including 36 Masters titles), with 62 of these on clay. Nadal's 81 consecutive wins on clay is the longest single-surface win streak in the Open Era.

Nadal was one of the most successful teenagers in ATP Tour history, reaching No. 2 in the world and winning 16 titles before his 20th birthday, including his first French Open and six Masters events. Nadal became No. 1 for the first time in 2008 after his first Major victory off clay against his rival, the longtime top-ranked Roger Federer, in a historic Wimbledon final. He also won an Olympic gold medal that year in singles in Beijing. After defeating Novak Djokovic at the 2010 US Open final, then 24-year-old Nadal became the youngest man in the Open Era to achieve the career Grand Slam, and the first man to win three Majors on three different surfaces (hard, grass and clay) in the same year. With his Olympic gold medal, he is one of only two men to complete the career Golden Slam in singles. Nadal is the only male player in history to complete the career Grand Slam and win an Olympic gold medal in both singles and doubles.

Since 2010, Nadal has continued to dominate at the French Open, winning at least four consecutive titles twice, while also winning three more US Open titles and another Australian Open title. He surpassed Djokovic and Federer's record for the most Major men's singles titles at the 2022 Australian Open, and became one of four men in history to complete the double career Grand Slam in singles. He also became the first and only man to win multiple Majors in three separate decades. From 2005 to 2017, Nadal was coached by his uncle Toni Nadal.

Nadal is the only left-handed member of the Big Three in men's singles. One of his main strengths is his forehand, which he routinely hits with extremely heavy topspin at difficult angles. He is one of the best at breaking serve, regularly appearing among the tour leaders in percentage of return games, return points, and break points won. Nadal has won the Stefan Edberg Sportsmanship Award five times, and was the Laureus World Sportsman of the Year in 2011 and 2021. He is also a recipient of the Grand Cross of the Order of Dos De Mayo, the Princess of Asturias Award, and the Medal of the City of Paris. Representing Spain, he has won two Olympic gold medals, and has contributed to five Davis Cup titles. Nadal has also opened a tennis academy in Mallorca, and is an active philanthropist.

Details

Rafael Nadal, in full Rafael Nadal Parera, by name Rafa Nadal, (born June 3, 1986, Manacor, Mallorca, Spain), is a Spanish tennis player who emerged in the early 21st century as one of the game’s leading competitors, especially noted for his performance on clay. He won a record 13 career French Open championships, and his total of 21 Grand Slam men’s singles titles was the most in tennis history.

Nadal grew up in a sports-minded family; his uncle Miguel Angel Nadal was a professional association football (soccer) player who competed in the 2002 World Cup. Rafael began playing tennis at age four, guided by another uncle, Toni Nadal, who remained his coach on the professional tour. In his early years, Nadal (who wrote with his right hand) played left-handed tennis with both a two-handed forehand and backhand. When he was 12, however, his uncle encouraged him to adopt a more conventional left-handed style. Nadal stuck with his two-handed backhand but switched to what became his signature one-handed forehand, the stroke that was credited with lifting him into the sport’s upper echelons.

Nadal, who officially turned professional in 2001, had appeared in only one Grand Slam tournament as a junior competitor when he reached the semifinals at the 2002 Wimbledon Championships. He began his professional career in earnest the next year, breaking into the top 50 in the world. In 2004 he played a crucial role in Spain’s defeat of the United States in the Davis Cup final. Toppling Andy Roddick—then number two in the world—in a four-set opening-day singles clash, Nadal became the youngest player (at 18 years 6 months) in the history of the international team competition to win a singles match for a victorious country.

Driving his forehand with a devastatingly potent heavy topspin and covering the court with alacrity, Nadal quickly became one of the top players on the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) tour. He also developed a rivalry with world number one Roger Federer. In 2005 Nadal set a record for a teenage male player by registering 11 tournament victories, including a triumph at his French Open (Roland Garros) debut, when he upset Federer in the semifinals. The next year, Nadal secured five more titles on the ATP tour, including his second straight French Open win—this time besting Federer in the final. He also reached his first final on the grass at Wimbledon before falling to Federer.

In 2007 Nadal extended his victories on clay surfaces to a record 81 consecutive matches before losing to Federer on May 20 in the final of the ATP Masters Series Hamburg (Germany). After bouncing back to win his third title at Roland Garros, Nadal lost to Federer in a grueling five-set Wimbledon final lasting 3 hours 45 minutes. The two met once again in the 2008 French Open final, where Nadal overpowered Federer to win his fourth straight tournament title, tying Björn Borg’s record for consecutive French Open wins. Nadal and Federer met in a third consecutive Wimbledon final in 2008. This time Nadal won his fifth career Grand Slam title—in a five-set match lasting 4 hours 48 minutes, then the longest men’s singles final in Wimbledon history—and thus became the first man since Borg (1980) to collect both the French Open and the Wimbledon title in the same year. In August 2008 Nadal won the men’s singles gold medal at the Olympic Games in Beijing, and he took over the number one world ranking from Federer in the same month.

In 2009 Nadal won his first Australian Open championship after he again bested Federer in a dramatic five-set final match. He set a record for consecutive wins at the French Open the following May, which was then broken at 31 when Nadal was upset in the fourth round of the tournament. At the end of the 2009 tennis season, Nadal helped Spain sweep the Czech Republic in the Davis Cup final. His dominance of the French Open returned in 2010 when he easily won the event for the fifth time in his career, which he followed by winning his second Wimbledon title in July of that year. In September he won his first U.S. Open and thus completed a career Grand Slam by having won all four of the slam’s component tournaments. In 2011 Nadal captured his sixth career French Open title, besting Federer in the final. After losing the next three consecutive Grand Slam finals to Novak Djokovic, Nadal reversed course and defeated Djokovic in the 2012 French Open final to break Borg’s record for the men’s French Open singles championships. He added another French title in 2013, becoming the first man to win the same Grand Slam singles event eight times. Later that year he captured a second career U.S. Open singles championship. In 2014 he won a ninth French Open championship.

Nadal was plagued by injuries throughout the remainder of the 2014 season, and he struggled to recover his form in 2015. During that year he failed to win a Grand Slam title, ending his record streak of having captured at least one major tournament in 10 straight years. His best performance at a Grand Slam in 2016 was just a fourth-round elimination at the U.S. Open, but Nadal gained a measure of redemption by capturing his second career Olympic gold medal at the Rio de Janeiro Games. He advanced to his first Grand Slam final in three years at the 2017 Australian Open, where he lost a thrilling five-set match to Federer. Nadal ended his Grand Slam title drought when he won a 10th career French Open championship in June 2017. Three months later he won his third U.S. Open singles title. At the 2018 Australian Open, Nadal was forced to withdraw in the quarterfinals because of an injury, but he recovered in time to claim another French Open championship, which was his 17th Grand Slam title.

After losing the Australian Open final in 2019, Nadal continued his dominance at Roland Garros that year by capturing his 12th career French Open singles championship. He later won the 2019 U.S. Open singles title, which was his 19th career Grand Slam championship, the second most for men behind Federer’s 20 titles. The following year he tied Federer when he won his 13th French Open title. (Their record was equaled in July 2021 by Djokovic.) After losing in the semifinals of the French Open in 2021, Nadal missed most of the year’s remaining tournaments, including Wimbledon and the U.S. Open, because of a foot injury. He entered the 2022 Australian Open with low expectations, but he stunned many observers by overcoming a two-set deficit to defeat Russia’s Daniil Medvedev in the final and claim his 21st Grand Slam title.

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Jai Ganesh · 2022-05-01 00:16:52

1060) Sachin Tendulkar

Summary

While a game is always bigger than a player, a lot of people will agree that Sachin Tendulkar was the closest thing to threatening that maxim, at least in India where he enjoyed an unprecedented following. His talent and achievements consistent over more than two decades made him a giant of a player, and even years after quitting the game he remains India’s favourite son.

A child prodigy, Tendulkar made his Test debut at the age of 16 in 1989 against Pakistan. Later on his first tours of England and Australia with the national team he got a few centuries and stellar cricket pundits from both countries concurred that a batting genius was born.

Over the next two decades, almost every record was smashed by the man who could play in any situation; who could drop anchor or weigh anchor with equal dexterity. In 2012, he became the first player to score 100 international tons besides being miles ahead in terms of runs scored in Tests and ODIs. He was also the first player to break the double-hundred barrier in ODIs in 2008 when he achieved the unthinkable in Gwalior against South Africa.

Tendulkar’s contribution goes beyond runs and artistry. He didn’t just pile up those runs, he also helped others around him improve their game and contribute in a big way, especially abroad. Consequently post mid-90s, India produced a slew of master batsmen, and while their own talent was undeniable, harnessing in many ways was done by Tendulkar. He retired from international cricket in 2013 and hours after his last game was conferred the highest civilian award in India, the Bharat Ratna, a first for a sportsperson. The 2011 World Cup winner continues to be involved with cricket in one way or another.

Details

Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar (born 24 April 1973) is an Indian former international cricketer who captained the Indian national team. He is regarded as one of the greatest batsmen in the history of cricket.

Tendulkar took up cricket at the age of eleven, made his Test match debut on 15 November 1989 against Pakistan in Karachi at the age of sixteen, and went on to represent Mumbai domestically and India internationally for close to twenty-four years. In 2002, halfway through his career, Wisden ranked him the second-greatest Test batsman of all time, behind Don Bradman, and the second-greatest ODI batsman of all time, behind Viv Richards. Later in his career, Tendulkar was part of the Indian team that won the 2011 Cricket World Cup, his first win in six World Cup appearances for India. He had previously been named "Player of the Tournament" at the 2003 edition of the tournament.

Tendulkar received the Arjuna Award in 1994 for his outstanding sporting achievements, the Khel Ratna Award, India's highest sporting honour, in 1997, and the Padma Shri and Padma Vibhushan awards in 1999 and 2008, respectively, two of India's highest civilian awards. A few hours after the end of his last match in November 2013, the Prime Minister's Office announced the decision to award him the Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian award. As of 2021, he is the youngest recipient to date and was the first sportsperson to receive the award. In 2012, Tendulkar was nominated to the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of the Parliament of India. In 2010, Time magazine included Tendulkar in its annual Time 100 list as one of the most influential people in the world.

Tendulkar was awarded the Sir Garfield Sobers Trophy for cricketer of the year at the 2010 ICC Awards. Having retired from ODI cricket in 2012, he retired from all forms of cricket in November 2013 after playing his 200th Test match. Tendulkar played 664 international cricket matches in total, scoring 34,357 runs.

In 2013, Tendulkar was included in an all-time Test World XI compiled in 2013 to mark the 150th anniversary of Wisden Cricketers' Almanack and he was only batsman of post war era along with Viv Richards to get featured in the team.

In 2019 he was inducted into the ICC Cricket Hall of Fame.

Jai Ganesh · 2022-05-03 00:06:56

1061) Sir Richard John Hadlee

Summary

Profile

Born on 3 July, 1951, it would be fair to say that Sir Richard Hadlee literally carried the entire New Zealand bowling on his shoulders. His retirement in 1990 left New Zealand short of a genuine match winner who had taken the small cricketing country to unprecedented levels of high in the longer form of the game, something that was a mere dream until then for the small brothers of Australia.

Hadlee was one of the 5 sons of Walter Hadlee and cricket was already in his blood. Drafted into the game at an early age, he debuted as a tear away quick and formed a good pair with his brother Daryll Hadlee during the 1971-72 season for Canterbury. With experience, Hadlee cut down on the speed and instead troubled batsmen with his whippy sideways bowling action. He could obtain life from the most docile of surfaces. The batsmen could never feel at home against a man who could generate disconcerting pace, bounce and movement off the surface.

Hadlee debuted against Pakistan in Wellington in 1973 but it was not until 1976 that the world came to notice of his supreme skills. India was his first victims, blitzed in a spell of 7/23. It was just the beginning of a long and illustrious career in which Sir Richard Hadlee became the first ever bowler to scalp 400 Test wickets.

In an illustrious test career, Hadlee reserved his best for arch rivals Australia scalping 130 wickets from 23 Test matches. It included figures of 15/ 123 at the Gabba giving New Zealand a famous victory. Hadlee was a part of 22 Kiwi victories and his role in those wins were outstanding, a rich haul of 173 wickets at an average of 13.06. Hadlee ended his test career by taking 5 wickets in his final bowling performance, and taking a wicket with the final ball of his test career.

Hadlee received his knighthood shortly after his retirement from the game in 1990. Hadlee ended a glittering Test career with 431 wickets from just 86 Tests and was the highest wicket taker for a long period of time before another great all-rounder, Kapil Dev overtook him. It must be said that Hadlee was one of the four best all-rounders during his time. The others being Kapil Dev, Sir Ian Botham and Imran Khan.

Hadlee played county cricket for Nottinghamshire and it was just fitting that he ended his international career at his adopted home in Trent Bridge. The north stand of the AMI stadium in Christchurch is named after the Hadlee brothers while Australia and New Zealand play an annual ODI contest named as the Chappell-Hadlee cup.

Hadlee has served as a media expert since his retirement and also had a stint as chairman of the national selection panel. Sir Richard Hadlee was inducted into the ICC Cricket Hall of Fame in 2009 and has also been awarded a honorary doctorate by the Nottingham University.

Details

Sir Richard John Hadlee (born 3 July 1951) is a New Zealand former cricketer. Hadlee is widely regarded as one of the greatest all-rounders in cricket history, and amongst the very finest fast bowlers.

Hadlee was appointed an MBE (Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) in the 1980 Queen's Birthday Honours List and knighted in the 1990 Queen's Birthday Honours List for services to cricket. He is a former chairman of the New Zealand board of selectors. In December 2002, he was chosen by Wisden as the second greatest Test bowler of all time. In March 2009, Hadlee was commemorated as one of the Twelve Local Heroes, and a bronze bust of him was unveiled outside the Christchurch Arts Centre.

On 3 April 2009, Hadlee was inducted into the ICC Cricket Hall of Fame. He is the most prominent member of the Hadlee cricket playing family.

Personal life

Hadlee was born on 3 July 1951 at St Albans, Christchurch. He is the son of Walter Hadlee, and the brother of Dayle and Barry. His former wife Karen also played international cricket for New Zealand.

In June 2018, Hadlee was diagnosed with bowel cancer and underwent tumour removal surgery.

Test career

A bowling all-rounder, in an 86-Test career he took 431 wickets (at the time the world record), and was the first bowler to pass 400 wickets, with an average of 22.29, and made 3124 Test runs at 27.16, including two centuries and 15 fifties.

Hadlee is rated by many experts as the greatest exponent of bowling with the new ball. He was the master of (conventional) swing and was the original Sultan of Swing. Hadlee was seen as one of the finest fast bowlers of his time, despite the contemporaneous presence of Dennis Lillee, Imran Khan, Andy Roberts, Michael Holding, Joel Garner, Kapil Dev, Ian Botham, Wasim Akram and Malcolm Marshall among others.

As one of the four top all rounders of his time, the others being Imran Khan, Kapil Dev and Ian Botham, Hadlee had the best bowling average of the four, but the lowest batting average.

Born in Christchurch, Hadlee made his first class debut for Canterbury in 1971/72 and his Test match debut in 1973 – on both occasions, his first delivery was dispatched to the boundary. Hadlee was an inconsistent performer at Test level for several years; however a breakthrough performance against India in 1976 in which he took 11 wickets in a game resulting in a win by New Zealand cemented his place in the side. In 1978, Hadlee helped New Zealand to a historic first win over England by taking 6 for 26 in England's second innings, bowling the visitors out for 64 chasing a target of 137.

In 1979/80, New Zealand faced the West Indies in a home Test series at a time when the West Indies were a formidable world cricket power. In the first Test in Dunedin New Zealand achieved a shock 1-wicket win, helped by Hadlee's 11 wickets in the game. In the second Test, Hadlee scored his maiden Test century, helping New Zealand draw the Test and win the series 1–0. The result was the start of a 12-year unbeaten home record for New Zealand in Test match series. Hadlee was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire, for services to cricket, in the 1980 Queen's Birthday Honours.

A tour to England in 1983 saw New Zealand register their first ever Test win on English soil, at Headingley. The match was remarkable for Hadlee's match return of 0 for 89, a very unusual occurrence in a New Zealand victory during his career. England eventually won the 4 Test series 3–1; however, Hadlee topped both batting and bowling averages for New Zealand in the series, and took his 200th Test wicket in the final Test at Nottingham. In the return Test series in New Zealand in 1984, New Zealand completed a remarkable three-day innings victory (including one day lost to rain) over England at Christchurch, in which England were dismissed for less than 100 in both of their innings. The match was also notable for Hadlee's superb all-round performance – he took 8 wickets in the match, and scored a rapid-fire 99 in New Zealand's only innings. These efforts led him to achieve the number 1 ranking in ICC Test Bowling Rankings for the year 1984 (he retained it for the next 4 years, till 1988).

1985/86 was the beginning of a period in which Hadlee developed from a very good fast bowler to a truly great one. In New Zealand's tour to Australia, an outstanding all-round performance helped destroy the home team in the first Test at Brisbane, beginning with a personal Test best 9 for 52 in Australia's first innings. A batting effort of 54 (to complement a fine 188 by Martin Crowe) combined with 6 more wickets in Australia's second innings, helped New Zealand to a crushing innings victory. Hadlee followed this up with 7 wickets in a loss in the second Test, and 11 wickets in a New Zealand victory in the third Test, giving his country their first series win on Australian soil and a personal haul of 33 wickets in 3 Tests. In the first Test of the return series in New Zealand, Hadlee took his 300th Test wicket by trapping Australian captain Allan Border LBW. The series was eventually won 2-1 by New Zealand by way of a victory in the third Test at Eden Park.

In 1986 Hadlee helped New Zealand to a 1–0 series win in England, their first over that country in England. Hadlee's outstanding personal performance in the second Test at Nottingham (his county 'home') where he took 10 wickets and scored 68 in New Zealand's first innings powered his team to victory. In this Test Hadlee, often a controversial character, added to this side of his reputation when he felled (and hospitalised) England wicketkeeper and Nottinghampshire teammate Bruce French with a nasty bouncer. During the New Zealand v West Indies Test at Christchurch in March 1987, Hadlee and captain Jeremy Coney had a disagreement in the dressing room prior to the game. It progressed to not talking to each other on the field, communicating through John Wright at mid-on.

In April 1987, New Zealand traveled to Sri Lanka where Hadlee recorded his second Test century. His 151 not out in the first Test helped New Zealand to save the game; however, the tour was cut short due to a bomb exploding near the New Zealand team's hotel in Colombo. Nonetheless, the team voted overwhelmingly to return home after that one Test of the scheduled three-Test tour.

Hadlee's appetite for competition against Australia surfaced again in 1987/88, when in the third Test of a 3 match series in Australia he captured 10 wickets and nearly inspired New Zealand to an unlikely series equaling victory. The Test ended with Australia's number eleven batsman Michael Whitney surviving a torrid last over bowled by an exhausted Hadlee. A wicket in that over would have given New Zealand victory, and Hadlee a world record 374th Test wicket, breaking current holder Ian Botham's record. In the following home series against England, the New Zealand public eagerly anticipated the wicket which would give Hadlee sole possession of the world record. However, Hadlee broke down injured on the first day of the first Test, and was forced to sit out the rest of the series. At an awards dinner at the end of the season, Australian commentator Richie Benaud, upon seeing Hadlee hobble up to the stage on crutches, said later that he thought Hadlee "would never play cricket again."

However, after a successful rehabilitation, the next opportunity for Hadlee to claim the Test wicket world record was against India in India in 1988. After touring India in 1976 Hadlee, plagued by stomach troubles, had decided never to play cricket there again, however the opportunity to make history was too strong a lure to pass up. He duly captured the record, and his 374th Test wicket, in the first Test of the series. In the second Test a 10 wicket haul helped New Zealand to a rare Test win in India, although the series was eventually lost 2–1.

In a home series against India in 1989/90, Hadlee become the first bowler in history to take 400 Test wickets when he dismissed Sanjay Manjrekar in the second innings of the first Test on his home ground in Christchurch, while a group of Old Boys from his former school sang their school song. Shortly after helping New Zealand to another Test victory over Australia at Wellington by taking his 100th first class 5 wicket haul in an innings, Hadlee announced that he would be retiring after the upcoming tour to England.

Shortly before the second Test of the England series at Lord's, the 1990 Queen's Birthday Honours were announced and included Hadlee's appointment as a Knight Bachelor, for services to cricket. Hadlee was not invested with his knighthood until 4 October 1990 after the end of his final Test match on 10 July 1990, although he became Sir Richard upon the publication date of the Honours List. Lt.-Col. Sir Maharajkumar Dr. Vijayananda Gajapathi Raju (better known as the Maharajkumar of Vizianagram or Vizzy) was the only other person to be knighted for services to cricket while an active Test cricketer, in 1936. Unlike Hadlee however, Vizzy's knighthood was recognised for his administrative efforts, not his services to cricket as a player. (Alastair Cook was subsequently knighted in 2019 while still a full-time first-class player, but shortly after his final Test match.) Due to most knighted cricketers being batsmen, Hadlee liked to state he was the first bowler to receive a knighthood since Sir Francis Drake. Hadlee celebrated the achievement by scoring 86 in New Zealand's first innings and winning the man of the match award. In the final Test of the series, Hadlee ended his Test career by taking 5 wickets in his final bowling performance, and taking a wicket with the final ball of his Test career.

When his father Walter was asked to vote, for the 2000 edition of Wisden, for his choice of the five cricketers of the 20th century, he included Richard, confessing it was "embarrassing ... But there's a job to be done. I will cite the bare facts." He had considered Dennis Lillee for his selection, but found Richard's Test match performance put him marginally ahead. In total, Richard Hadlee received thirteen votes from the 100 electors, coming the equal tenth as player of the century.

Nottinghamshire career

For Nottinghamshire, on often overgrassed Trent Bridge pitches, he gained some analyses that are remarkable in an era of covered pitches, notably his eight for 22 against Surrey in 1984. He represented Nottinghamshire between 1978 and 1987, but played only three full seasons due to injuries and Test calls. However, his bowling figures for those three seasons were quite remarkable:

* 1981: 4252 balls, 231 maidens, 1564 runs, 105 wickets for 14.89 each.
* 1984: 4634 balls, 248 maidens, 1645 runs, 117 wickets for 14.05 each.
* 1987: 3408 balls, 186 maidens, 1154 runs, 97 wickets for 11.89 each (the lowest average since 1969).

In those three seasons he was voted the PCA Player of the Year by his peers of the Professional Cricketers' Association (PCA). He won The Cricket Society Wetherall Award for the Leading All-Rounder in English First-Class Cricket in 1982, 1984, 1986 and 1987.

In the 1984 county season, Hadlee completed a feat rare in the modern age by doing the county 'double' – scoring 1000 runs and taking 100 wickets in the same season. Hadlee, and his immediate successor at Nottinghamshire Franklyn Stephenson, are the only two players to achieve this feat in English county cricket since the number of county games per season was reduced in 1969. The runs component of the double included Hadlee's highest first class score, 210* in a victory over Middlesex at Lord's. In 1987, his swan song, he narrowly missed the double as Nottinghamshire won the County Championship as they had in 1981. Hadlee's contribution with ball and bat to both and their other triumphs was immense. They next won the championship in 2005 with fellow Kiwi Stephen Fleming in charge.

Canterbury career

Because of seasonal differences, Hadlee also played provincial cricket in New Zealand, representing Canterbury.

The now-demolished north stand of the earthquake-damaged AMI Stadium was named the Hadlee stand after both Richard Hadlee and other members of the Hadlee family who have made contributions to Canterbury and New Zealand cricket. The Chappell–Hadlee Trophy in which New Zealand and Australia regularly compete in one-day matches is named after the Chappell family of Australia and the Hadlee family of New Zealand.

Hadlee was also a competent association football player, playing for southern league team Rangers A.F.C. in Christchurch.

Bowling style

Hadlee was a right-arm pace bowler. Initially extremely fast as a young man, as the years progressed he shortened his run-up, gaining improved accuracy and considerable movement off the wicket and in the air. Perhaps his most potent delivery was the outswinger, which became his main weapon in the latter stages of his career.

The most influential person as Hadlee developed and through his career was Dennis Lillee, who he saw as the exemplar of the fast bowler. "He was big, strong, fit, confident, aggressive, had marvelous skills, great technique, he intimidated the batsmen with sheer presence and of course he got you out!" In tough situations in a game Hadlee would ask himself what Lillee would do in equivalent circumstances, and would strive to copy his determination. In his book Menace, Lillee believed that determination was the greatest contribution to his success. Of Hadlee he considers him super skillful, the first true professional he saw in tests with serial away swingers on off stump with the occasional inswinger or cutter, the odd bouncer and a very rare yorker.

His economical action was notable for his close approach to the wicket at the bowler's end (to the point where he occasionally knocked the bails off in his approach), a line which meant he was able to trap many batsmen leg before wicket. He broke the Test-wicket taking record with his 374th wicket on 12 November 1988 in Bangalore, India. His 400th Test wicket was claimed on 4 February 1990, and with his final Test delivery, on 9 July 1990, he dismissed Devon Malcolm for a duck.

Batting style

Hadlee was an aggressive left-handed middle-order batsman. Though his record was not as strong against top international bowlers, he was effective at punishing lesser attacks. He finished his career scoring 15 Test fifties and two Test centuries, while for Nottinghamshire in 1984, 1986 and 1987 he averaged over 50 (only W.G. Grace and George Herbert Hirst have come comparably close to heading both batting and bowling averages in a season).

In August 1990, Hadlee established The Sir Richard Hadlee Sports Trust. It was opened to help sportsmen and women who were in situations of hardship to strive for success in their chosen sporting or cultural discipline. The criteria for the Sir Richard Hadlee Sports Trust are: the applicant must be under the age of 25, the applicant must be from the region of Canterbury New Zealand, the request for assistance is specifically for sporting or cultural purposes and applicant is disadvantaged, facing hardship or has special circumstances which prevent him or her from pursuing his or her sporting or cultural endeavors. The Sir Richard Hadlee Sports Trust relies on the generosity of the community, as well as its corporate sponsors CTV, Lion Nathan, Newstalk ZB, Pernod Ricard, Pope Print, PR South and Vbase.

International record and awards

* Hadlee became the first player to complete the double of scoring 1,000 runs and taking 100 wickets in ODI history
* He was the second fastest bowler to take five-wicket hauls in 25 Test matches, the fastest seamer to achieve this feat (62 matches) and the third fastest in terms of number of innings played
* He took a total of 36 five-wicket hauls in Test matches and five in ODIs, the former a record in Test cricket at the time of his retirement
* Hadlee took ten or more wickets in a Test match nine times, with best match bowling figures of 15/123 taken against Australia at The Gabba in 1985
* He made two Test match centuries, with a highest score of 151 not out made in 1987 against Sri Lanka at the Colombo Cricket Club Ground
* Hadlee produced the best single innings bowling figures by any fast bowler in the 20th century (9/52 in the 1st innings of the 1st Test match against Australia at The Gabba in 1985)

Sporting awards

Hadlee has received many awards throughout his career, including:

* Appointed MBE for services to New Zealand sport in 1980
* Awarded a Knighthood for services to cricket in 1990
* Winner of the Windsor Cup on 13 occasions, including 12 consecutive years, for the most meritorious bowling performance of the season
* New Zealand Sportsman of the Year 1980
* Wisden Cricketer of the Year – 1982
* New Zealand Sportsman of the Year 1986
* New Zealand Sportsperson of the last 25 years 1987 (shared with runner John Walker)
* New Zealand Sportsperson of the Decade 1987
* Bert Sutcliffe Medal in 2008[22]
* Inducted into the ICC Cricket Hall of Fame in 2009
* Awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Letters from the University of Nottingham
* Assessed as the twelfth best cricketer of all time in the ESPN Legends of Cricket.

Jai Ganesh · 2022-05-05 00:32:14

1063) Dominique Lapierre

Dominique Lapierre (born 30 July 1931 in Châtelaillon, Charente-Maritime, France) is a French author.

Life

Dominique Lapierre was born in Châtelaillon-Plage, Charente-Maritime, France. At the age of thirteen, he travelled to America with his father who was a diplomat (Consul General of France). He attended the Jesuit school in New Orleans and became a paper boy for the New Orleans Item. He developed interests in travelling, writing and cars.

Lapierre renovated a 1927 Nash that his mother gave him and decided to travel across America during his summer holidays. To earn his way he painted mail boxes. Later, he received a scholarship to study the Aztec civilization in Mexico. He hitch-hiked throughout America living an adventurous existence, wrote articles, washed windows in churches, gave lectures, and even found a job as a siren cleaner on a boat returning to Europe. One day a truck driver who picked him up on the road to Chicago stole his suitcase. He found the driver before the police did. The Chicago Tribune paid him $100 for his exclusive story. His twenty thousand miles of adventure beginning with just thirty dollars in his pocket led to his first book A Dollar for a Thousand kilometers. It became one of the best sellers of postwar France and other European countries.

Early works

When Lapierre was eighteen, he received a Fulbright Scholarship to study economics at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania. He bought a 1937 Chrysler convertible for $30 and fell in love with a fashion editor. They were married in New York City Hall on his 21st birthday and drove to Mexico in the old Chrysler for their honeymoon. With only $300 in their pockets, they had just enough to buy gas, sandwiches, and cheap rooms in truckers’ motels. In Los Angeles, they won another $300 in a radio game show for Campbell Soup. The prize included a case of soup, which was their only food for three weeks. Lapierre sold the Chrysler for $400 in San Francisco and bought two tickets on the SS Presidential Cleveland for Japan. The honeymoon lasted for a year. They worked their way across Japan, Hong Kong, Thailand, India, Pakistan, Iran, Turkey and Lebanon. When they returned to France, Lapierre wrote his second book, Honeymoon around the Earth.

Collaboration with Larry Collins

On his return to Paris after his honeymoon, he was conscripted into the French army. After one year in the tank regiment, he was transferred to the SHAPE headquarters to serve as an interpreter. One day in the cafeteria he met a young American corporal, Larry Collins, a Yale graduate and draftee. They became friends instantly. When Collins was discharged he was offered a job with Procter & Gamble. Two days before reporting to the new job, the United Press offered him a job as caption writer at their Paris office, for much less money than offered by Procter & Gamble. Collins took the offer from United Press and was soon picked up by Newsweek to be their correspondent in the Middle East. When Lapierre was discharged, he found work as a reporter for the magazine Paris Match. Collins became the godfather of the Lapierres' first child, Alexandra. On several occasions, Collins and Lapierre met while on assignment. In spite of their friendship they had to compete with each other for stories. But they decided to join forces to tell a big story which would appeal to both French and anglophone audiences. Their first bestseller Is Paris Burning? sold close to ten million copies in thirty languages. In this book they mixed the modern technique of investigation journalism with the classical methods of historical research.

After that they spent four years in Jerusalem to reconstruct the birth of the State of Israel for the book O Jerusalem!. Lapierre is proud that after spending a great deal of time in Jerusalem he knows each alley, square, street, and building in the Holy City intimately.

Two of Lapierre's books – Is Paris Burning? (co-written with Larry Collins) and City of Joy – have been made into films. Lapierre and Collins wrote several other books together, the last being Is New York Burning? (2005), before Collins' death in 2005.

Lapierre speaks fluent Bengali.

City of Joy Foundation and other humanitarian causes

The City of Joy is about the unsung heroes of the Pilkhana slum in Kolkata. Lapierre donated half the royalties he earned from this book to support several humanitarian projects in Kolkata, including refuge centres for leper and polio children, dispensaries, schools, rehabilitation workshops, education programs, sanitary actions, and hospital boats. To process and channel the charitable funds he founded an association called Action aid for Calcutta lepers' children (registered in France under the official name of Action pour les enfants des lépreux de Calcutta). Aware of the corruption in India, he organizes all his fund transfers to India in such a way as to ensure that the money reaches the right person for the right purpose. His wife since 1980, Dominique Conchon-Lapierre is his partner in the City of Joy Foundation.

The royalties from Five Past Midnight in Bhopal go to the Sambhavna clinic in Bhopal which provides free medical treatment to the victims of the 1984 Union Carbide Bhopal disaster. Lapierre also funds a primary school in Oriya Basti, one of the settlements described in Five Past Midnight in Bhopal.

Passion for cars and travelling

At the age of six, he developed a passion for automobiles. Each summer, while at his grandparents' Atlantic coast beach house, he marvelled at the wonders of his uncle's American cars. When he was a Fulbright exchange student at Lafayette College, he bought, for thirty dollars, a convertible Chrysler Royal he found in a junkyard. Forty-five years later, he saw a photograph of the same Chrysler in a French vintage car magazine. The automobile was about to be auctioned in Poitiers. He rushed to the auction, made a bid, and won it. When he was a student at the University of Paris, he acquired an old Amil car, which he and a classmate drove all the way to Ankara, Turkey. He has told stories about how he drove the car in reverse to have enough torque to get through the mountain passes. Later, in a Rolls-Royce he bought on his fortieth birthday, he drove from Bombay to Saint Tropez via Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran and Turkey.

Awards

He was awarded the Padma Bhushan, India's third highest civilian award in the 2008 Republic Day honours list.

Jai Ganesh · 2022-05-07 00:37:28

1064) James Rainwater

Leo James Rainwater (December 9, 1917 – May 31, 1986) was an American physicist who shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1975 for his part in determining the asymmetrical shapes of certain atomic nuclei.

During World War II, he worked on the Manhattan Project that developed the first atomic bombs. In 1949, he began developing his theory that, contrary to what was then believed, not all atomic nuclei are spherical. His ideas were later tested and confirmed by Aage Bohr's and Ben Mottelson's experiments. He also contributed to the scientific understanding of X-rays and participated in the United States Atomic Energy Commission and naval research projects.

Rainwater joined the physics faculty at Columbia in 1946, where he reached the rank of full professor in 1952 and was named Pupin Professor of Physics in 1982. He received the Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award for Physics in 1963 and in 1975 was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics, "for the discovery of the connection between collective motion and particle motion in atomic nuclei and the development of the theory of the structure of the atomic nucleus based on this connection".

Early life

Leo James Rainwater was born on December 9, 1917, in Council, Idaho, the son of a former civil engineer who ran the local general store, Leo Jaspar Rainwater and his wife Edna Eliza née Teague. He never used his first name and was always referred to as James or Jim. His father died in the great influenza epidemic of 1918 and Rainwater and his mother moved to Hanford, California, where she married George Fowler, a widower with two sons, Freeman and John. In time he also acquired a half-brother, George Fowler, Jr., who became naval officer. At high school he excelled in mathematics, chemistry and physics and was admitted to the California Institute of Technology on the strength of a chemistry competition. He received his Bachelor of Science degree as a physics major in 1939.

Manhattan Project

Rainwater then chose to undertake postgraduate studies at Columbia University. At the time this was an unusual move for a scholar from California, as Columbia was not then renowned for its physics; but this had recently changed. George B. Pegram had recently built up the physics department, and hired scientists like Enrico Fermi. At Columbia Rainwater studied under Isidor Isaac Rabi, Enrico Fermi, Edward Teller and John R. Dunning. Fermi was engaged in neutron moderator studies that would lead to the construction of the first nuclear reactor, while Dunning and Eugene T. Booth had built Columbia's first cyclotron, in the basement of the Pupin Physics Laboratories. Rainwater received his Master of Arts in 1941. For his Doctor of Philosophy thesis on "Neutron beam spectrometer studies of boron, cadmium, and the energy distribution from paraffin", written under Dunning's supervision, he built a neutron spectrometer and developed techniques for its use. Rainwater married Emma Louise Smith in March 1942. They had three sons, James, Robert and William and a daughter, Elizabeth Ann, who died from leukaemia when she was nine.

Fermi's reactor group moved to the Metallurgical Laboratory at the University of Chicago in 1942. Rainwater remained at Columbia, where he joined the Manhattan Project's Substitute Alloy Materials (SAM) Laboratories. The Manhattan Project was the Allied effort during World War II to develop atomic bombs. The SAM Laboratories' primary task was the development of gaseous diffusion technology for uranium enrichment, to produce fissile uranium-235 for use in atomic bombs. Rainwater worked with William W. Havens, Jr. and Chien-Shiung Wu, mostly on studies of neutron cross sections, using the neutron spectrometer. After the war, a dozen papers by Dunning, Havens, Rainwater and Wu would be declassified and published. So too was his thesis, published in the Physical Review in two parts with Havens's thesis, and he was awarded his doctorate in 1946. In 1963 he was awarded the United States Atomic Energy Commission's Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award, for his work on the Manhattan Project.

Later life

Rainwater remained at Columbia as an instructor. In 1948, he began teaching courses on nuclear structure. Niels Bohr and John Wheeler had developed a theoretical treatment for nuclear fission in 1939 that they based on the liquid drop model of the nucleus. This was superseded in 1949 by Maria Goeppert Mayer's nuclear shell model, which could explain more about the structure of heavy elements than the older theory but it still had limits. At a colloquium at Columbia in 1949, Charles H. Townes reported experimental results that indicated quadrupole moments greater than those indicated by the shell model. It occurred to Rainwater that this could be explained and the differences between the liquid drop and nuclear shell models could be reconciled, if the atomic nucleus were not spherical, as had been assumed but could assume other shapes. Rainwater published his theoretical paper in 1950. By chance, that year he was sharing an office with Aage Bohr, who took up the challenge of experimentally verifying Rainwater's theory. Bohr and Ben Mottelson published their results in three papers in 1952 and 1953 that conclusively confirmed the theory. Rainwater felt that his model was overlooked. He later recalled that:

When I made my proposal for use of a spheroidal nuclear model, it seemed to be an obvious answer which would immediately be simultaneously suggested by all theorists in the field. I do not understand why it was not. I was also surprised and dismayed to hear one or more respected theorists announce in every Nuclear Physics Conference which I attended through 1955 some such comment as, "Although the Nuclear Shell Model seems empirically to work very well, there is at present no theoretical justification as to why it should apply."

With funding from the Office of Naval Research, Rainwater built a synchrotron, which became operational in 1950, at the Nevis Laboratories, on an estate on the Hudson River at Irvington, New York, willed to Columbia University by the DuPont family. He became a full professor in 1952 and was the director of Nevis Laboratories from 1951 to 1954 and again from 1957 to 1961. He worked with his student Val Fitch on studies of muonic atoms, atoms where an electron is replaced by a muon. After 1965, he worked on turning the Nevis synchrotron into a meson facility. When a reporter rang in 1975 to inform him that he had won the Nobel Prize in Physics, he initially thought that it was for his work on muonic atoms. Several hours passed before he discovered that it was for his work on nuclear structure, the Nobel Prize being shared with Bohr and Mottelson.

He was a fellow of the American Physical Society, the New York Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and was a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Institute of Physics, the American Association of Physics Teachers and the Optical Society of America.

Rainwater succeeded Robert R. Wilson as Michael I. Pupin Professor of Physics in 1983.

Rainwater collapsed after a lecture at the Pupin Laboratories in 1985 but was revived by a student who knew how to administer CPR. In declining health, he retired and became a professor emeritus in February 1986. He died from cardiopulmonary arrest at St. John's Riverside Hospital in Yonkers, New York on May 31, 1986. He was survived by his wife, three sons and half-brother George.

Leo_James_Rainwater%20200px.jpg

Jai Ganesh · 2022-05-08 00:15:47

1065) Ronnie O'Sullivan

Summary

Ronald Antonio O'Sullivan OBE (born 5 December 1975) is an English professional snooker player who is the current world champion and world number one. Widely recognised as one of the most talented and accomplished players in the history of the sport, he has won the World Snooker Championship seven times, a modern era record he holds jointly with Stephen Hendry. He has also won a record seven Masters and record seven UK Championship titles for a total of 21 Triple Crown titles, the most won by any player. He holds the record for the most ranking titles in professional snooker, with 39, and has held the world number one ranking on multiple occasions.

After winning the IBSF World Under-21 Snooker Championship and Junior Pot Black as an amateur, O'Sullivan turned professional in 1992, aged 16. He won his first professional ranking event at the 1993 UK Championship aged 17 years and 358 days, making him the youngest player to win a ranking title, a record he still holds. He is also the youngest player to win the Masters, which he first achieved in 1995, aged 19 years and 69 days. Now noted for his longevity in the sport, he has made a record-equalling 30 Crucible appearances and is the oldest world champion in snooker history; he was aged 46 years and 148 days when he won his seventh title in 2022.

O'Sullivan made his first competitive century break at age 10 and his first competitive maximum break at age 15. One of the sport's most prolific break-builders, he is the only player to have attained 1,000 century breaks in professional competition, a record he has since extended to over 1,100 centuries. He has made the highest number of officially recognised maximum breaks in professional competition, with 15, and holds the Guinness World Record for the fastest competitive maximum break, compiled in a time of 5 minutes and 8 seconds at the 1997 World Championship.

O'Sullivan has struggled during his career with depression, mood swings, and drug and alcohol abuse, and has been disciplined multiple times by the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association for his behaviour and comments. Outside his playing career, he works as a pundit and presenter for Eurosport's snooker coverage. He has written crime novels, autobiographies and a health and fitness book, and has starred in the miniseries Ronnie O'Sullivan's American Hustle. He was awarded an OBE in 2016.

He won consecutive Masters in 2016 and 2017 for a record seven Masters titles. He won consecutive UK Championships in 2017 and 2018 for a record seven UK titles and a total of 19 titles in the Triple Crown Series, surpassing Hendry's total of 18. During the 2017–18 season, he won five ranking events. In the last frame of the 2019 Players Championship final, he made his 1,000th century break in professional competition, becoming the first player to reach that milestone. At the 2019 Tour Championship, he won his 36th ranking title, equalling Hendry's record and attaining the world number one ranking for the first time since May 2010.

At the 2020 World Championship, he came from 14 to 16 behind in his semi-final against Selby to win 17–16; he then defeated Kyren Wilson 18–8 in the final to win his sixth world title. The tournament also marked his 28th consecutive Crucible appearance, surpassing the 27 consecutive appearances made by Hendry. At the 2021 Tour Championship, he reached 1,100 century breaks in professional competition, and also reached his 58th ranking final, breaking Hendry's record of 57 ranking final appearances. O'Sullivan lost five consecutive ranking finals in the 2020–21 season, but he ended a 16-month title drought by winning his 38th ranking title at the 2021 World Grand Prix.

At the 2022 World Championship, O'Sullivan made his 30th Crucible appearance, equalling Steve Davis's record. He defeated Trump 18–13 in the final to win his seventh world title, equalling Hendry for the most world titles in the modern era. Aged 46 years and 148 days, he became the oldest world champion in snooker history, surpassing Reardon, who was 45 years and 203 days when he won his last title in 1978. O'Sullivan also surpassed Hendry's record of 70 Crucible wins, setting a new record of 74.

O'Sullivan's other career highlights include four Welsh Open titles, four Shanghai Masters titles, three Champion of Champions titles, and two China Open titles.

Ronnie O’Sullivan is an English snooker player best known as one of the most talented and awarded athletes in the sport.

Ronnie O’Sullivan (England) has won the 2022 World Snooker Championship by defeating Judd Trump (England) against 18-13 in the finals, which were held from April 16 to May 2, 2022 at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, England. The tournament was organised by the World Snooker Tour and sponsored by sports betting company Betfred. The Total prize money is 2,395,000 Euros and the Winner gets a share of 500,000 Euros.

O’Sullivan (Aged 46) becomes the oldest world champion in Crucible history, eclipsing Ray Reardon, who won his sixth title aged 45 in 1978. It was Ronnie O’Sullivan’s seventh World Snooker Championship title, previously in 2001, 2004, 2008, 2012, 2013 and 2020, equalling Stephen Hendry’s modern-day record of seven world titles (Hendry won all of his in the 1990s).

Math Is Fun Forum

#1076 2022-03-30 00:59:56

Re: crème de la crème

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Re: crème de la crème

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Re: crème de la crème

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