Michael Oakeshott (1901 - 1990)

Michael Oakeshott was the son of Francs Maude (Hellicar) and Joseph Francis Oakeshott, a civil servant and a major member of the Fabian Society. George Bernard Shaw was a friend. Michael Oakeshott attended St. George’s School, Harpenden from 1912 to 1920. He enjoyed his schooldays, and the Headmaster Cecil Grant later became a friend. During […]

Eric Voegelin (1901 - 1985)

Eric Voegelin worked throughout his life to account for the endemic political violence of the twentieth century, in an effort variously referred to as a philosophy of politics, history, or consciousness. In Voegelin’s Weltanschauung, he “blamed a flawed utopian interpretation of Christianity for spawning totalitarian movements like Nazism and Communism.” Voegelin eschewed any ideological labels […]

Hans Jonas (1903 - 1993)

Hans Jonas was born in Mönchengladbach, on 10 May 1903. He studied philosophy and theology at the University of Freiburg, the University of Berlin and the University of Heidelberg, and finally earned his Doctor of Philosophy in 1928 from the University of Marburg with a thesis on Gnosticism entitled Der Begriff der Gnosis (The Concept […]

Richard Wagner (1813 - 1883)

Richard Wagner (/ˈvɑːɡnər/; German: [ˈʁiçaʁt ˈvaːɡnɐ]; 22 May 1813 – 13 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is primarily known for his operas (or, as some of his later works were later known, “music dramas”). Unlike most opera composers, Wagner wrote both the libretto and the music for each […]

Martin Heidegger (1889 - 1976)

Martin Heidegger (/ˈhaɪdɛɡər, -dɪɡər/; German: [ˈmaɐ̯tiːn ˈhaɪdɛɡɐ]; 26 September 1889 – 26 May 1976) was a German philosopher and a seminal thinker in the Continental tradition and philosophical hermeneutics. According to the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, he is “widely acknowledged to be one of the most original and important philosophers of the 20th century”. Martin […]

Ernst Bloch (1885 - 1977)

Ernst Bloch was born in Ludwigshafen, the son of a Jewish railway-employee. After studying philosophy, he married Else von Stritzky, daughter of a Baltic brewer in 1913, who died in 1921. His second marriage with Linda Oppenheimer lasted only a few years. His third wife was Karola Piotrowska, a Polish architect, whom he married in […]

Theodor Adorno (1903 - 1969)

Theodor Adorno (/əˈdɔːrnoʊ/; German: [aˈdɔʀno]; born Theodor Ludwig Wiesengrund; September 11, 1903 – August 6, 1969) was a German philosopher, sociologist, and composer known for his critical theory of society. He was a leading member of the Frankfurt School of critical theory, whose work has come to be associated with thinkers such as Ernst Bloch, Walter Benjamin, […]

Michel Foucault (1926 - 1984)

Michel Foucault (French: [miʃɛl fuko]; born Paul-Michel Foucault, 15 October 1926 – 25 June 1984) was a French philosopher, historian of ideas, social theorist, and literary critic. His theories addressed the relationship between power and knowledge, and how they are used as a form of social control through societal institutions. Though often cited as a post-structuralist […]

John Backus (1924 - 2007)

John Warner Backus (December 3, 1924 – March 17, 2007) was an American computer scientist. He directed the team that invented and implemented FORTRAN, the first widely used high-level programming language, and was the inventor of the Backus–Naur form (BNF), a widely used notation to define formal language syntax. He later did research into the […]

Alan Turing (1912 - 1954)

Alan Mathison Turing OBE FRS (/ˈtjʊərɪŋ/; 23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954) was an English computer scientist, mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst and theoretical biologist. He was highly influential in the development of theoretical computer science, providing a formalisation of the concepts of algorithm and computation with the Turing machine, which can be considered a model […]

Anita Borg (1949 - 2003)

She was born Anita Borg Naffz in Chicago, Illinois. She grew up in Palatine, Illinois; Kaneohe, Hawaii; and Mukilteo, Washington. Anita Borg got her first programming job in 1969. Although she loved math while growing up, she did not originally intend to go into computer science and taught herself to program while working at a […]

Lillian Gilbreth (1878 - 1972)

Lillian Gilbreth was born in Oakland, California on May 24, 1878. She was the second of eleven children of William Moller, a builder’s supply merchant, and Annie Delger. Both parents were of German descent. She was educated at home until she was nine years old, when her formal schooling began at a public elementary school, […]

Edith Clarke (1883 - 1959)

Edith Clarke was born February 10, 1883, in Howard County, Maryland to John Ridgely Clarke and Susan Dorsey Owings, one of nine children. After being orphaned at age 12, she was raised by her older sister. She used her inheritance to study mathematics and astronomy at Vassar College, where she graduated in 1908. After college, […]

Jilly Rizzo (1917 - 1992)

Ermenigildo “Jilly” Rizzo (May 6, 1917 – May 6, 1992) was an American restaurateur and entertainer. As a young man, Jilly Rizzo worked with his father delivering Italian ice to cafes. Rizzo opened Jilly’s Saloon, a lounge on West 49th Street, then moved to 256 West 52nd Street at the intersection with Eighth Avenue in […]

Jack Richardson (1929 - 2011)

Jack Richardson was born in Toronto, Ontario, and had early musical training playing in various school bands. By 1949 he was playing professionally in “The Westernaires”  who had a regular radio program. In 1958 he was working as an account executive for McCann-Erickson, a firm that produced a regular television program and in the mid […]

Deke Richards (1944 - 2013)

Deke Richards (born Dennis Lussier, April 8, 1944 – March 24, 2013), also known as Deke Lussier, was an American songwriter and record producer, one of many white musicians/songwriters who were affiliated with Motown. He is notable for being a member of both The Clan and The Corporation, the latter being a hitmaking production team […]

Annabelle Lyon (1916 - 2011)

Annabelle Lyon (New York City, January 8, 1916 – November 4, 2011, Mansfield, Massachusetts) was an American ballerina. She was a principal dancer with American Ballet Theatre. She was raised in Memphis, where her father Max ran a chain of grocery stores. She took her first ballet lessons there and, showing talent, received a scholarship […]

Harry Lundeberg (1901 - 1957)

Harry Lundeberg left his home in Oslo, Norway at age 14, joined the Seamen’s Union of Australia in 1917 and transferred into the Sailors’ Union of the Pacific in Seattle in 1923. He sailed for 21 years on sailing ships and steamers of a variety of flags, eventually earning American citizenship. In 1934, Lundeberg was […]

Victor Hugo (1802 - 1885)

Victor Marie Hugo (/ˈhjuːɡoʊ/; French: [viktɔʁ maʁi yɡo] ( listen); 26 February 1802 – 22 May 1885) was a French poet, novelist, and dramatist of the Romantic movement. He is considered one of the greatest and best-known French writers. Outside France, his best-known works are the novels Les Misérables, 1862, and The Hunchback of Notre-Dame […]

Gustave Flaubert (1821 - 1880)

Gustave Flaubert was born on 12 December 1821, in Rouen, in the Seine-Maritime department of Upper Normandy, in northern France. His first finished work was November, a novella, which was completed in 1842. In September 1849, Gustave Flaubert completed the first version of a novel, The Temptation of Saint Anthony. He read the novel aloud to Louis […]

Marcel Proust (1871 - 1922)

Marcel Proust was born in Auteuil (the south-western sector of Paris’s then-rustic 16th arrondissement) at the home of his great-uncle on 10 July 1871, two months after the Treaty of Frankfurt formally ended the Franco-Prussian War. He was born during the violence that surrounded the suppression of the Paris Commune, and his childhood corresponded with […]

Theodore Roethke (1908 - 1963)

Theodore Roethke was born in Saginaw, Michigan and grew up on the west side of the Saginaw River. His father, Otto, was a German immigrant, a market-gardener who owned a large local 25 acre greenhouse, along with his brother (Theodore’s uncle). Much of Theodore’s childhood was spent in this greenhouse, as reflected by the use […]

Richard Bong (1920 - 1945)

Richard Bong’s ability as a fighter pilot was recognized at training in northern California. He was commissioned a second lieutenant and awarded his pilot wings on January 19, 1942. His first assignment was as an instructor (gunnery) pilot at Luke Field, Arizona from January to May 1942. His first operational assignment was on May 6 […]

Sidney Burbank (1807 - 1882)

Sidney Burbank was born in Lexington, Massachusetts in October 1807, the son of Lt. Col. Sullivan Burbank, an officer in the US Army since the War of 1812. Sidney Burbank attended the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, graduating 17th in a class of 46 in 1829. Burbank was assigned to the […]

Daniel Theron (1872 - 1900)

Daniel Theron became a Boer Army Captain and was put in charge of organizing and leading the Boer Intelligence scouts, the Theron se Verkenningskorps (TVK) (Theron’s Reconnaissance Corps). To save horses for combat, he developed the use of bicycles for despatch and reconnaissance. His 105 recruits were equipped with various items including revolvers, binoculars and sometimes […]

Jonathan Demme (1944 - 2017)

Jonathan Demme broke into feature film working for exploitation film producer Roger Corman early in his career, co-writing and producing Angels Hard as They Come (1971), a motorcycle movie very loosely based on Rashomon, and The Hot Box (1972). He then moved on to directing three films for Corman’s studio New World Pictures: Caged Heat […]

Gordon Langford (1930 - 2017)

Gordon Langford won an Ivor Novello Award for best light music composition for his March from the Colour Suite in 1971. He is perhaps best known as a brass band composer and arranger, with a string of CDs to his name. In particular, the test pieces Facets of Glass and Rhapsody for trombone are well […]

Eddie Macon (1927 - 2017)

Eddie Macon was a track star at Edison High School. He was drafted into the United States Army during World War II in 1945, and was stationed for seven months at Yokohama, Japan after the war’s conclusion. Upon returning to the United States, he joined the San Joaquin Delta College track team, before transferring to […]

Erin Moran (1960 - 2017)

Erin Moran’s first acting role was at the age of five, in a television commercial for First Federal Bank. At the age of six, she was cast as Jenny Jones in the television series Daktari, which ran from 1966 to 1969. She made her feature-film debut in How Sweet It Is! (1968) with Debbie Reynolds, […]

Kathleen Crowley (1929 - 2017)

Born on December 26, 1929 in Green Bank, New Jersey as Betty Jane Crowley, she graduated from Egg Harbor High School in 1946. On August 7, 1949, the 19-year-old Crowley won the title of Miss New Jersey at a contest held at Asbury Park. As the winner, she entered the Miss America pageant held in […]