30 November, 2022

Robert Sobukwe

Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe was a prominent South African anti-apartheid revolutionary and founding member of the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), serving as the first president of the organization.

Sobukwe was regarded as a strong proponent of an Africanist future for South Africa and opposed political collaboration with anyone other than Africans, defining "African" as anyone who lives in and pays his allegiance to Africa and who is prepared to subject himself to African majority rule. In March 1960, Sobukwe organized and launched a non-violent protest campaign against pass laws, for which he was sentenced to three years in prison on grounds of incitement. In 1963, the enactment of the "Sobukwe Clause," allowed an indefinite renewal of his prison sentence, and Sobukwe was subsequently relocated to Robben Island for solitary confinement. At the end of his sixth year at Robben Island, he was released and placed under house arrest until his death in 1978.


Jack Harlan

Jack Rodney Harlan was an American botanist, agronomist, plant collector, and campaigner for crop plant biodiversity conservation.

Born in Washington, DC, Jack Harlan was the son of Harry Harlan, a plant breeder who worked on barley at the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), and who travelled around the world on seed collecting expeditions in search of new genetic material for use the USDA's crop breeding programs. Harry Harlan was a friend of the famous Russian plant breeding expert Nikolai Vavilov, and at the age of fifteen Jack Harlan met Vavilov when the latter stayed at the Harlan house during an international conference. This meeting inspired Jack to become a plant collector himself, and plans were made for him to travel to Russia after finishing his undergraduate degree to work with Vavilov. However the trip was cancelled as a result of Vavilov's deteriorating relationship with the Soviet authorities.

Harlan earned a B.S. from George Washington University in 1938. He went on to study under the famous botanist and geneticist G. Ledyard Stebbins at the University of California, where he received a Ph.D. in genetics in 1942.

From 1942 to 1951 he worked at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, where he worked on breeding forage crops and improving the grazing quality of rangelands in Oklahoma.

In 1951 Harlan became a university lecturer and researcher, working first as a professor of agronomy at Oklahoma State University at Stillwater, Oklahoma, where he refused to sign an oath of loyalty, and later as a professor of plant genetics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He co-founded the Crop Evolution Laboratory there in 1966.

He moved to New Orleans, Louisiana in the 1980s and served as an adjunct professor at Tulane University. Harlan published a variety of papers in the area of crop biodiversity, and publicized his concerns that modern agricultural practices were contributing to the extinction of older, traditional varieties of crops.

Harlan died on August 26, 1998.

James Lance

James Waldo Lance was an Australian neurologist. He was the founder of the School of Neurology at the University of New South Wales and president of the International Headache Society in 1987–89, and a "world authority on the diagnosis and treatment" of headache and migraine.

Lance was born in Wollongong, New South Wales on 29 October 1926. His parents operated a local department store in Wollongong. His maternal grandfather, James Douglas Stewart, was professor of veterinary science at the University of Sydney and a member of the CSIRO.

He was sent to study at Tudor House School, Moss Vale, in the Southern Highlands of the New South Wales (having been sent there in the hope of the fresh air would alleviate his asthma) and then at Geelong Grammar School and The King's School, Parramatta.

Lance studied medicine at the University of Sydney, from which he graduated as MBBS in 1950.

In the years 1950–51 he was resident medical officer at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital and in 1952–53 he took up a fellowship at the National Health and Medical Research Council at Sydney University, graduating with a Doctor of Medicine degree.

In 1954 Lance trained in London, United Kingdom as a neurologist and then worked as assistant house physician at the National Hospital (now known as the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery) in Queen Square, London.

Returning to Sydney, he worked as a tutor (1956–60) at St Paul’s College and a visiting lecturer (1956–62) at Sydney University, then at the Northcott Neurological Centre, Cammeray (1956–57), Sydney Hospital (1956–61) and St Luke’s Hospital, Elizabeth Bay (1957–61).

In 1960 he travelled to the United States where he undertook research at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

In 1961 he joined the just established School of Medicine at the University of New South Wales was the founder of the Department of Neurology. He was to stay at this university for his whole academic career (1961–92), beginning as senior lecturer, and being later appointed as associate professor, as professor of neurology (with a personal chair), and finally as Professor Emeritus.

During this period, he also saw patients at the Prince Henry and Prince of Wales Hospitals (1961–92) and served as foundation director of the Institute of Neurological Sciences (1990–91).

In 1980 he was elected as a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science.

Following early physiology experiments with special reference to the corticospinal (pyramidal) tract, Lance published a paper in the 1950s on an "attempt to regrow the severed pyramidal tract" and "restore movement to paralyzed limbs."

While at the Northcott Neurological Centre, having noted that "less than 50% of migraine sufferers" were receiving effective treatment from their healthcare providers, he undertook to analyses 500 case histories of migraine and vascular headache patients. This "Herculean task" resulted in a paper published in 1960 that is now recognized as a "citation classic."

While in Massachusetts in 1963, he worked with the neurologist Raymond Adams on post-hypoxic myoclonus (now called the Lance-Adams syndrome).

During his period at the Prince Henry Hospital, he conducted research on the physiology of migraine, with special reference to serotonin and its "effects on blood vessels and brain pathways involved in pain." This work led to the "groundbreaking" discovery of the triptan family of drugs, including (after collaborative research with the United Kingdom's Glaxo) of sumatriptan, the first clinically available triptan and a key medicine now used to resolve acute migraine attacks.

He died on 20 February 2019.


Cyrus S. Ching

Cyrus S. Ching was a Canadian-American who became an American industrialist, federal civil servant, and noted labor union mediator. He was the first director of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS) and the Wage Stabilization Board.

Ching was born on his father's farm in Prince Edward Island, Canada on May 21, 1876. The Chings were of Welsh heritage (the family name was originally spelled Chynge). He was the only boy in a family with eight children.

Ching was educated in a one-room schoolhouse. When he was 16, he was a spectator in a local courtroom, and the experience inspired him to become a lawyer. He attended Prince of Wales College, a college preparatory academy, after a well-off uncle paid for his high school education. He transferred to a local business college and studied bookkeeping and stenography. In 1895, he left Prince Edward Island to work for an Albertan grain elevator company.

On October 31, 1899, Ching moved to Boston, Massachusetts, and took a job as a clerk with the West End Street Railway. He became an instructor, teaching motormen how to operate the new elevated rail cars. In 1901, Ching was nearly electrocuted on the job while repairing a rail car. Although he was expected to be blind and his face heavily scarred for life, he left the hospital after two months with only minimal scar damage to his hands. Since Massachusetts had yet to enact worker's compensation protection, Ching was fired by the company during his hospitalization. Afterward, however, the company rehired him—this time as a manager, training motormen on the city's streetcars.

Ching became a naturalized American citizen in 1909. In 1912, he obtained his law degree from the Evening Institute for Younger Men (now Northeastern University). The same year, he married the former Anna MacIntosh. After her death, Ching married Mildred Vergosen.

While working for the public transit system, Ching witnessed the 1912 Boston streetcar strike. Ching had warned management that 11 years of frozen wages, lack of communication and general disregard for workers' issues would lead to a strike. Management refused to heed his warnings. In June 1912, the Amalgamated Association of Street Car Employees struck the transit system. The Mayor of Boston, John "Honey Fitz" Fitzgerald, and the Governor of Massachusetts, Eugene Foss, accused the president of the company of bribing state legislators to obtain favorable treatment. The president resigned, leading to an end to the strike in August 1912. The system's new president appointed Ching as company negotiator. Ching promised to end the use of management spies, which quickly led to a labor agreement. When the American Federation of Labor (AFL) forced the Amalgamated to give up jurisdiction over 34 separate job titles to various craft unions, Ching consented to the change—and negotiated another 34 labor contracts.

When the United States entered World War I in 1918, Ching attempted to enlist but was turned down because the military refused to induct anyone taller than 6'4" (Ching was 6'7"). Rather than continue to work for the transit company, Ching went to work for the United States Rubber Company in 1919 as director of industrial relations. U.S. Rubber had 34 subsidiary units, most of which were independent. When employees assisted by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) engaged in a recognition strike at the company's Dominion Rubber unit in Montreal, Ching convinced both Dominion and U.S. Rubber officials to agree to binding arbitration. The workers subsequently rejected the IWW in favor of affiliating with the AFL. Ching later secured company acquiescence in the formation of workers' councils in every U.S. Rubber factory. Yet Ching opposed widespread unionization of U.S. Rubber due to the AFL's insistence on craft unionism.

Unions began forming in the American rubber industry after passage of the National Industrial Recovery Act in June 1933. Goodyear, B. F. Goodrich, and Firestone all were quickly organized by the AFL. But workers at U.S. Rubber remained by and large satisfied with working conditions, and unionization made little inroad among company employees. Ching, however, saw unionization coming. Although the United Rubber Workers (URW) had made few inroads among the company's workers, Ching met with URW and Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) organizers and arranged for card check elections at U.S. Rubber factories. Unionization of the company proceeded without the acrimony observed at other rubber manufacturers, and contracts were quickly signed.

Ching's career as a mediator began in 1941. William S. Knudsen, chairman of the National Defense Advisory Commission, asked Ching to mediate a dispute at a Bethlehem Steel factory in upstate New York. When the union struck in February 1941, Bethlehem Steel executives demanded that the governor crush the strike using the New York Army National Guard. Ching not only refused to ask for military intervention, he demanded that Bethlehem Steel executives meet with him in Washington, D.C. At a meeting a few days later, Ching surprised the company by having Philip Murray, president of the United Steelworkers of America, and Sidney Hillman, associate director of the Office of Production Management and a former CIO leader, at the meeting. Ching had won Murray's consent to a quick election at the plant. When the employer claimed the union effort was led by a mere handful of agitators, Ching demanded that the company prove its claim by holding a snap National Labor Relations Board election. Management, its bluff called, reluctantly agreed. An election was held 10 days later which the union won by a vote of 75 percent to 25 percent. The strike ended, and a contract was signed.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt named Ching to the National Defense Mediation Board (NDMB) in early 1941. The Board collapsed shortly before the attack on Pearl Harbor after Ching and a majority of the Board's members voted against imposing the union shop on the "captive mines." A later panel overturned the ruling in 1942, but Ching continued to espouse a philosophy of consensual collective bargaining rather than government imposition in employer-union relations.

President Roosevelt then named Ching to the War Labor Board, the NDMB's successor. He served from February 1942 to September 1943, then returned to U.S. Rubber. Ching retired from the company in August 1947.

Passage of the Taft-Hartley Act over President Harry S. Truman's veto on June 23, 1947, established the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service as an independent agency. John R. Steelman, Assistant to the President of the United States (the office later became the White House Chief of Staff), asked Ching to head up the new agency. Ching initially refused, but Truman himself asked Ching to direct the new agency in order to forestall congressional opposition to funding the new agency. Ching served until the end of the Truman administration. During his time in office, Ching advised Truman to invoke the Taft-Hartley Act during a strike at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in December 1947, and mediated several important strikes—including the 1949 steel strike, the 1949 Hawaii dockworkers' strike, and several coal strikes. He also spent much of his time fighting off attempts to put FMCS back under the authority of the United States Department of Labor.

Ching took a leave of absence from FMCS in October 1950 to head the Wage Stabilization Board, a Korean War-era agency created in September 1950 to limit wage increases and help stabilize the economy as defense mobilization ramped upward. He was the agency's first director. He quit the Board in April 1951 when President Truman reconstituted the panel, and returned to FMCS.

After departing FMCS in September 1952, President Dwight Eisenhower asked Ching to lead a panel which would arbitrate labor disputes at Oak Ridge. Ching agreed, and remained head of the arbitration panel until his death.

Cyrus Ching published his memoirs, Review and Reflection: A Half Century of Labor Relations, in 1953. He received an honorary degree from Bowdoin College the same year. A partial scholarship was endowed in 1956 in honor of Ching at the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations.

In 1961, the Dept. of Labor presented Ching with its Award of Merit for his service in labor-management relations.

Ching died at his home in Washington, D.C., of a heart attack on December 27, 1967.

C.E.D. Joad

Cyril Edwin Mitchinson Joad was an English philosopher and broadcasting personality. He appeared on The Brains Trust, a BBC Radio wartime discussion programme. He popularized philosophy and became a celebrity, before his downfall in a scandal over an unpaid train fare in 1948.

Sir David Weatherall

Sir David John Weatherall was a British physician and researcher in molecular genetics, haematology, pathology and clinical medicine.

David Weatherall was born in Liverpool. He was educated at Calday Grange Grammar School and then attended Medical School at the University of Liverpool where he served as Treasurer of the Liverpool Medical Students Society in 1954.

He graduated from medical school in 1956. After house staff training, he joined the Army for 2 years, as part of the national service and was stationed in Singapore. There he treated the daughter of a Gurkha soldier with thalassemia, which sparked a lifelong interest in this disease. He used car batteries and filter paper for electrophoresis while there.

Returning from military service, he took a fellowship at Johns Hopkins University. He returned to Liverpool, where he rose to the rank of Professor of Haematology. His research concentrated on the genetics of the haemoglobinopathies and, in particular, a group of inherited haematological disorders known as the thalassemias that are associated with abnormalities in the production of globin, the protein component of haemoglobin. Weatherall was one of the world's experts on the clinical and molecular basis of the thalassemias and the application for their control and prevention in developing countries.

In 1974, Weatherall moved to Oxford, as he was appointed Nuffield Professor of Clinical Medicine at the University of Oxford. He worked with the biochemist John Clegg until his retirement in 2000. They were able to separate the α and β chains of haemoglobin and to demonstrate that the relative lack of production of these proteins resulted in α and β thalassaemia.

In 1989, Weatherall founded the Institute of Molecular Medicine at Oxford, which was renamed the Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine in his honour in 2000 upon his retirement. From 1991–1996 he was a member of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics. In 1992, he assumed the most prestigious chair, that of Regius Professor of Medicine, which he held until retirement.

He was a member of the National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education that published an influential report in 1997.

In 2002, Weatherall wrote a major report on the application of genomics for global health for the World Health Organization. During this year, he also became Chancellor of Keele University.

In 2009, a working group report under Weatherall's Chairmanship concluded that there was a strong scientific case to maintain biomedical research activities using non-human primates in carefully selected areas.

Weatherall died on December 8, 2018 at the age of 85.

A. Arnold Gillespie

Albert Arnold "Buddy" Gillespie was an American cinema special effects artist.

He was born on October 14, 1899, in El Paso, Texas. Gillespie joined MGM as a set designer in 1925, a year after it was founded. He was educated at Columbia University and the Arts Students League. His first project was the silent film Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ, released that same year. He worked at the studio in various capacities until 1962. In 1936, he became the head of MGM's Special Effects Department.

He died on May 3, 1978, in Los Angeles, California.

Warren Rohsenow

Warren Max Rohsenow was a researcher and professor of mechanical engineering. 

He was born in Chicago on February 12, 1921, he lived in Fort Worth and Kansas City prior to moving back to Chicago and entering college. Attending various schools, he became an accomplished musician - particularly drums and piano - participating in many dance bands and orchestras. While he was heavily involved with accelerated academics, music, clubs, and sports, he still found time to earn his Eagle Scout badge before he graduated from high school at age 16.

Attending Northwestern University, he received the B.S. in Mechanical Engineering in 1941. Of course, he continued to make music with the orchestra and marching band, filling in with anything that was needed, as well as many professional gigs. Continuing in mechanical engineering at Yale University, he earned an M.A. in 1943 and rapidly completed the requirements for the D.Eng., which was awarded in 1944. He was an instructor during his graduate program, teaching mechanics, thermodynamics, and heat-power engineering. Receiving a commission in the US Navy after graduating from Yale, he served with the gas turbine division of the Naval Engineering Experiment Station developing temperature instrumentation for a domestically produced gas turbine considered for ship propulsion. He wrote one of his early papers on thermocouple error when measuring hot gas temperatures. A few other engineering problems related to the war effort occupied his attention during his two-year active service

He joined the M.I.T. faculty in 1946, working in the Heat Measurements Laboratory and teaching undergraduate thermodynamics and heat transfer, as well as developing the first graduate courses in heat transfer at the Institute. He published papers on improving gas turbine regenerators and began an extensive research effort on boiling heat transfer initially sponsored by the Office of Naval Research. The latter work focused on forced convection subcooled boiling, covering the entire range of heat fluxes including burnout. This program led to the installation of two 36-kW motor-generators for direct-resistance heating of the test tubes. To avoid physical destruction of the tubes, a dynamite- cap switch was developed to interrupt the current as the tube temperature rapidly increased at the initiation of burnout. The dynamite switch was lost in the mists of time, but the motor-generators were used by many students during the next 60 years. A laboratory report series was initiated in 1950 to facilitate rapid dissemination of research results, and a steady stream of papers appeared in conference proceedings and in research journals. He was co-author of the first report (1950) and the last report, Number 106 (1990).

His most important paper started out in report form in 1951: "A Method of Correlating Heat Transfer Data for Surface Boiling of Liquids." The proposed method was simple but effective: The boiling curve for forced convection subcooled (surface) boiling was considered a superposition of single-phase forced convection and nucleate pool boiling. The pool boiling component obtained by subtraction was then correlated by dimensionless groups. The exponent of each group was found to be approximately the same for many liquids, leaving only to be determined the lead constant, Csf, which depends on surface and fluid. In the past 50 years, many researchers have used this general approach. This paper earned him the ASME Junior Award in 1952 and the ASME Classic Paper Award in 2002. To testify to the staying power of this approach, he was co-author of two related papers in IJHMT (2004).

The laboratory was renamed the Heat Transfer Laboratory in 1956, with him as director. A wide variety of additional studies of very complex phenomena was undertaken: boiling and condensing of liquid metals, forced convection film boiling, thermal contact resistance, condensation of refrigerants, improvement of cooling towers, enhancement of heat transfer, and heat transfer in underground electrical cables. He was an author on over 100 journal papers as well as several hundred conference papers, book chapters, and technical reports.

For many years, he headed the Thermal Science Division of the M.I.T. Department of Mechanical Engineering. He was largely responsible for developing the graduate program in heat transfer, which was highlighted by his courses in conduction and convection heat transfer. He had a much broader responsibility, serving as Graduate Officer of the department for nearly 30 years. His research and teaching experience led to the 1961 textbook Heat, Mass and Momentum Transfer, co-authored with H.Y. Choi. This was one of the first undergraduate heat transfer textbooks written. The book was used for many years in undergraduate and intermediate heat transfer courses at M.I.T. He was senior editor and contributor to the definitive Handbook of Heat Transfer (1973), its two-volume successor, Handbook of Heat Transfer Fundamentals and Handbook of Heat Transfer Applications (1985), and the 3rd edition Handbook of Heat Transfer (1998). He also edited Developments in Heat Transfer (1964). The typical handbook chapter summarized the fundamentals and gave a comprehensive list of formulas that could be used in practice to estimate heat transfer coefficients. In 1960, he organized a two-week intensive summer course, "Developments in Heat Transfer," which was offered for the next 16 years.

His research work primarily involved graduate students working toward their degrees, and he supervised over 150 graduate theses in Mechanical Engineering, Nuclear Engineering, and Ocean Engineering. He was "Doctor Father" to over 40 students, half of whom have assumed professorships at leading universities, assuring that he had many "Technical Grandchildren" and even "Technical Great-Grandchildren."

A member of ASME since 1943, he served as chairman of the Boston section (1955-56) and was chairman of the Heat Transfer Division (1961-62). He was an early proponent of the International Heat Transfer Conferences, now held regularly every four years. He was a founder of the International Centre for Heat and Mass Transfer (originally in Yugoslavia, now headquartered in Turkey), serving as Vice president and President. He was a founding member of the Editorial Advisory board of IJHMT, and served on the advisory boards of several other journals. He was a member of delegations establishing cooperative programs with other countries, notably the US-USSR Cooperative Agreement in Heat and Mass Transfer (1979).

Besides being an outstanding leader in heat transfer and thermal power research and education, he had a deep insight into engineering challenges and technology development. He consulted for many major corporations, including courtroom appearances. In 1957, he co-founded, with J.P. Barger, Dynatech Corporation (initially Microtech Research) in Cambridge, MA. He served as Chairman of the Board of Directors. The consulting and manufacturing company grew to 3000 employees worldwide and was listed on the New York Stock Exchange, before it was sold in 1997.

His accomplishments were recognized with major professional society awards: Pi Tau Sigma Gold Medal (1951), ASME Junior Award (1952), American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1956), ASME Heat Transfer Memorial Award (1967), ASME Fellow (1968), AIChE and ASME Max Jakob Memorial Award (1970), US National Academy of Engineering (1975), ASME Centennial Medallion (1980), ASME Honorary Member 1988, and ASME Medal (2001). In 1997, the ASME Gas Turbine Committee of the Heat Transfer Division awarded the first Warren M. Rohsenow Prize for the best conference presentation. In 2004, the first ASME Bergles-Rohsenow Young Investigator in Heat Transfer was recognized.

He retired from M.I.T. in 1985

He passed away on June 3, 2011 at the age of 90.


John Waterlow

John Conrad Waterlow was a British physiologist who specialized in childhood malnutrition. 

Waterlow was educated at Eton College. Whilst at school, Warterlow was inspired by a lecture about Leprosy in West Africa given by Tubby Clayton. Consequently, he went on to study natural sciences at Trinity College, Cambridge in 1935, before changing to study medicine and physiology instead. He graduated in 1935 with a first class degree in physiology and went on to qualify as a doctor in 1942 having studied at the London Hospital Medical College, during which much time was spent treating casualties of The Blitz.

After qualifying as a doctor, he was attached to the Medical Research Council's (MRC) military personnel research programme, working under BS Platt, where he spent a year studying heat stroke and heat exhaustion in Basra. After the second world war had ended, Platt became the head of a new research unit at the MRC, focusing on nutrition and Waterlow followed him and worked with the unit. During this time, Platt imprinted the a prediction on Waterlow that, "Nutrition will be the problem of the future". He was sent to the Caribbean in 1945 to investigate why large numbers of children there were dying and discovered that many had oedematous malnutrition and fatty livers, but was unsure why this was the case. To investigate the cases, he made a microbalance using the newly invented adhesive Araldite, to weigh 2 mg samples of liver tissue and also a microrespirometer to measure the enzyme activity in the samples. The microrespirometer is said to have been much more sensitive than those used by other biochemists at the time and the microbalance was sensitive to within one millionth of a gram. He subsequently discovered that the syndrome he was observing was the same as Kwashiorkor which had been described a few years earlier in Africa. Waterlow set about investigating the biochemical basis of Kwashiorkor, both in the West Indies and at several field stations in Africa. He was the founding editor of the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1982.

Whilst in the Caribbean he established 'The Tropical Metabolism Research Unit' at the University of the West Indies in Jamaica.

Leif Mills

Leif Anthony Mills was a British trade unionist.

Mills was educated at Kingston Grammar School and went on to study at Balliol College, Oxford before undertaking national service in the Royal Military Police. He then joined the National Union of Bank Employees (later renamed the Banking Insurance and Finance Union - BIFU), becoming Assistant General Secretary in 1962, then Deputy General Secretary in 1968, and finally General Secretary in 1972, serving until 1996.

Mills stood unsuccessfully for the Labour Party in Salisbury at the 1964 general election, and again in a 1965 by-election. Although his first speech to the Trades Union Congress was followed by BIFU's expulsion, for registering under the Industrial Relations Act, he subsequently held a number of TUC posts, including that of President in 1994/5. He also served on the Monopolies and Mergers Commission, and more recently with the Covent Garden Market Authority.

In 1999, Mills published a biography of Frank Wild, while his Men of Ice appeared in 2008.

He was appointed CBE in the 1995 Birthday Honours.

He died on 17 December 2020 at the age of 84,

Charles Thomas

Antony Charles Thomas was a British historian and archaeologist who was Professor of Cornish Studies at Exeter University, and the first Director of the Institute of Cornish Studies, from 1971 until his retirement in 1991. 

He was born April 26, 1928, the son of Donald Woodroffe Thomas and Viva Warrington Thomas, his wife.

He attended Elmhirst Preparatory day school, Camborne and Upcott House School, Okehampton. In 1940 he received a scholarship to Bradfield College, but on the advice of a family friend was instead sent to Winchester College on a 'Headmaster's Nomination'. In 1945 at the age of 17 he joined the army as a Young Soldier and later was an ammunition examiner in the Royal Army Ordnance Corps; he would serve in Northern Ireland, Portsmouth, Scotland and Egypt, the latter of which helped inspire his interest in archaeology. He demobilised in 1948 at which point he matriculated into Corpus Christi College, Oxford, receiving a BA Honours degree in Jurisprudence in 1951. He then studied under V. Gordon Childe at the UCL Institute of Archaeology and received a Diploma in Prehistoric Archaeology in 1953.

Thomas' first public lecture was entitled 'The Glebe Lands of Camborne' for the Camborne Old Cornwall Society in 1946, while on a week's leave from the Army in Portsmouth. His academic career officially began as a part-time Workers' Educational Association lecturer in archaeology in Cornwall 1954–58. He became Lecturer in Archaeology at the University of Edinburgh from 1958 to 1967. From 1967 to 1971, he was appointed the first Professor of Archaeology at the University of Leicester. During this period, he became a FSA in 1960 and was awarded a Leverhulme Fellowship for 1965 to 1967.

In 1972 Thomas founded and became director of the Institute of Cornish Studies, affiliated with the University of Exeter at which he was now the first Professor of Cornish Studies. At this time he also launched and edited its learned journal, Cornish Studies. 

In 1983, he was awarded a Doctorate of Literature by the University of Oxford. He was Sir John Rhys Fellow of the University of Oxford and Visiting Senior Research Fellow at Jesus College from 1985 to 1986.

He retired as Director of the Institute and Professor of Cornish Studies in 1991; he was awarded an Emeritus Fellowship at Exeter by the Leverhulme Trust (1992–94). Thomas was also awarded Doctor of Letters, honoris causa, by the National University of Ireland in 1996.

He died on April 7, 2016.


Archaeological work

Thomas' first archaeological excavation was at the Bronze Age barrow on Godrevy headland, St Ives Bay in 1950, and he initially saw himself as a prehistorian.[10][11] He was Director of excavations at Gwithian, Cornwall (1949–1963), which revealed an important post-Roman occupation.[12]


He was best known for his contributions to early medieval archaeology, particularly to the archaeology of early Christianity in Britain and Ireland. After Gwithian, excavations at early Christian sites included Nendrum Monastery, County Down in 1954; a chapel at East Porth, Teän, Isles of Scilly in 1956;[13] Iona Abbey, Argyll in 1956–1963;[14] Ardwall Island, Kirkcudbright;[15] and Abercorn, West Lothian 1964–65.[16] His first major work in this field was The Early Christian Archaeology of North Britain (1971), followed by similarly influential volumes including Christianity in Roman Britain to AD 500 (1981) and And Shall These Mute Stones Speak?: post-Roman inscriptions in Western Britain (1994).

William A. Sewell

William Arthur Sewell was a university professor of English.

Arthur Sewell was born in Goole, Yorkshire, England on 9 August 1903. He was appointed to the chair of English at Auckland University College in 1933 and moved to New Zealand. In 1945 he returned to England from Auckland. In 1946 he became the Byron professor of English at the University of Athens. . He was then director of the British Institute in Barcelona (1952–53), and professor of English at the University of Ankara (1954–56) and the American University of Beirut (1956–65). He returned to New Zealand in 1965 to become professor of English at the University of Waikato until he retired in 1969. 

He died in Hamilton on 19 April 1972.

William H. Sewell

William Hamilton Sewell was a United States sociologist and the chancellor of the University of Wisconsin–Madison during the 1967–1968 school year.

Sewell was born on November 27, 1909, in Perrinton, Michigan. He attended Michigan State University, where he received his BA in 1933 and his MA in 1934, both in sociology. He then attended the University of Minnesota, where he received his Ph.D. in sociology in 1939 with a dissertation supervised by F. Stuart Chapin. He briefly taught at Michigan State and Oklahoma State before he became a professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin in 1946, where he became the chancellor in 1967.

Sewell was known for his research in the sociology of inequality, especially in schooling, as well as his empirical approach to sociology.

Sewell became chancellor of the Madison campus in 1967, in the midst of the Vietnam War and student protests. After a tough year due to the protesting, in June 1968, he resigned as chancellor and returned to research and teaching. In 1971 Sewell served as president of the American Sociological Association. He was elected to the United States National Academy of Sciences in 1976 and the American Philosophical Society in 1979.

Sewell, Sr. died in Madison, Wisconsin, in 2001.

George Mosse

Gerhard "George" Lachmann Mosse was an American historian, who emigrated from Nazi Germany first to Great Britain and then to the United States. He was professor of history at the University of Iowa, the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and also in Israel, at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Best known for his studies of Nazism, he authored more than 25 books on topics as diverse as constitutional history, Protestant theology, and the history of masculinity. In 1966, he and Walter Laqueur founded The Journal of Contemporary History, which they co-edited.

Mosse was born in Berlin to a prominent, well-to-do German Jewish family. His mother Felicia (1888-1972) was the only daughter of the publisher and philanthropist Rudolf Mosse, the son of a doctor imprisoned for revolutionary activity in 1848, and the founder of a publishing empire that included the leading, and liberal, newspapers the Berliner Morgen-Zeiting and Berliner Tageblatt. These were the most highly regarded and prestigious papers produced by the big three of Berlin publishing during the Weimar Republic, Ullstein, Scherl (taken over by Hugenberg), and Mosse.

A maternal uncle, Albert Mosse, a constitutional scholar, had helped frame Japan's Meiji Constitution. Mosse believed there was photograph from the year 1936 in which Hermann Göring and the Japanese Crown Prince (possibly confused by Mosse with the 1937 visit of Prince Chichibu) stand before his uncle's grave in the Jewish cemetery in Schönhauser Allee.

Mosse's father Hans Lachmann (1885-1944) (he adopted the double-barrel Lachmann-Mosse following his marriage) was the grandson of a wealthy and religious Jewish grain merchant. He rose to manage his father-in-law's media empire. In 1923 he commissioned the architect Erich Mendelsohn to redesign the iconic Mossehaus where the Tageblatt was published (the building was restored in the 1990s).

In his autobiography, Mosse described himself as a mischievous child given to pranks. He was educated at the noted Mommsen-Gymnasium in Berlin and from 1928 onwards at Schule Schloss Salem, a famously spartan boarding school that exposed the scions of rich and powerful families to a life devoid of privilege. The headmaster at Salem, Kurt Hahn, was an advocate of experiential education and required all pupils to engage in physically challenging outdoor activities. Although Mosse disliked the school's nationalistic ethos, he conceded that its emphasis on character building and leadership gave him "some backbone." He preferred individual sports, such as skiing, to team activities.

Mosse described his parents, who practiced Reform Judaism and were anti-Zionist, as being, in their own minds, completely integrated as Germans ("gänzlich eingedeutscht"). He suggested that they did not take seriously the threat posed by Adolf Hitler and the Nazis until henchmen of the new regime forced his father, at gunpoint, to sign over control of the publishing house. Mosse may have been speaking metaphorically: his father in April 1933 had left for Paris seeking refuge, not only from the Nazis but also from business creditors. In the wake of the global financial crisis, these had foreclosed on the publisher the previous autumn.

Insolvency could not be avoided, and the regime seized the opportunity to force a transfer of ownership. In Paris, Lachmann-Mosse received an invitation from Hermann Göring to return to the Berliner Tageblatt as its business manager with the protective status of an Honorary Aryan (Ehrenarier); Mosse suspected that the motive was to wrest control of the network of foreign press agencies and offices that had remained in the family's possession. His father spurned the offer and never returned to Germany.

With his wife and children in Switzerland, from Paris Mosse-Lachmann secured a divorce and married Karola Strauch (the mother of Harvard physicist Karl Strauch). In 1941 the couple moved to California where his father died, a celebrated patron of the arts, in 1944.

From Switzerland, Mosse moved to England, where he enrolled at the Quaker Bootham School in York. It was here, according to his autobiography, that he first became aware of his homosexuality. A struggling student, he failed several exams, but with the financial support of his parents he was admitted to study history at Downing College, Cambridge, in 1937. Here he first developed an interest in historical scholarship, attending lectures by G. M. Trevelyan and Helen Maude Cam.

In 1939, Mosse's family relocated to the United States, and he continued his undergraduate studies at the Quaker Haverford College, earning a B.A. in 1941. He went on to graduate studies at Harvard University, where he benefited from a scholarship reserved for students born in Berlin-Charlottenburg. His 1946 PhD dissertation on English constitutional history of the 16th and 17th centuries, supervised by Charles Howard McIlwain, was subsequently published as The Struggle for Sovereignty in England (1950).

With others of what he describes politically as the "Spanish Civil War generation", Mosse was a member of the Socialist Club at Harvard. They were, he concedes, naive about the nature of the Soviet Union, seen first and foremost as the opponent of fascism, and the indispensable ally against Hitler.

Mosse's first academic appointment as an historian was at the University of Iowa, where he focused on religion in early modern Europe and published a concise study of the Reformation that became a widely used textbook. Here he organized opposition to McCarthyism and, in 1948, support for the Progressive Party presidential campaign of Henry A. Wallace. Despite being in the center of a conservative farm state, he experienced no personal repercussions. Against Joseph McCarthy he found allies among conservative Republicans who regarded the red-baiting senator as a "disruptive radical".

In 1955, Mosse moved to the University of Wisconsin–Madison and began to lecture on modern history. His The Culture of Western Europe: The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, an Introduction (1961), which summarizes these lectures, was also widely adopted as a textbook.

Mosse taught for more than thirty years at the University of Wisconsin, where he was named a John C. Bascom Professor of European History and a Weinstein-Bascom Professor of Jewish Studies, while concurrently holding the Koebner Professorship of History at Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Beginning in 1969, Mosse spent one semester each year teaching at the Hebrew University. He also held appointments as a visiting professor at the University of Tel Aviv and the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. After retiring from the University of Wisconsin in 1989, he taught at Cambridge University and Cornell University. He was named the first research historian in residence at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Mosse died on January 22, 1999.

Charles Gottfried Bunge

Charles Gottfried Bunge was a German sculptor, enamel artist and painter in Emmering near Fürstenfeldbruck .

Charles Bunge was born in Munich, the son of metal artist Albert Gustav Bunge and Claire Mellin from London. He had a younger brother, Gustav, who died in France in 1944 at the age of 21. The parents ran a metal art workshop for brass, copper and bronze work in Emmering. Since both of them had to take care of their company intensively, the sons were often left to their own devices. The grandmother who looked after them was very religious and passed much of this on to the children. Charles was considered headstrong. He followed his father in his artistic career and became a painter, sculptor and enamel artist. At first he worked in his father's workshop. His education was more self-taught and from his friend and teacherWilli Baumeister (1889–1955) inspired. As a representative of non-representational painting in the 1920s to 1950s, he initiated Bunge's turn to abstraction. In 1952 Charles Bunge married the painter Elisabeth Wargau from Fürstenfeldbruck and together they founded the "Bunge-Wargau" workshop in Emmering. The marriage produced two children: Daniel (born 1956), who also painted, and Rena (1958–2014), who worked as a goldsmith.

From his war service on the Russian front, Charles Bunge suffered from war trauma , neurorheumatism and, as a result, sensitivity to the weather, as well as frozen feet. These experiences shaped his political and moral views as well as his social commitment. He was involved in the peace movement of the 1950s and 1960s, fought against the rearmament of the Federal Republic of Germany and helped conscientious objectors with their justifications. He was a member of the Communist Party and the Buddhist Society. Bunge was also a vegetarian. 

On December 25, 1964 he died at the age of 44 as a result of a heart attack.

Ira Baldwin

Ira Lawrence Baldwin was the founder and director emeritus of the Wisconsin Academy Foundation. He began teaching bacteriology at the University of Wisconsin in 1927 and a few years later moved into what became a career in administration. He held positions as chair of the Department of Bacteriology, dean of the Graduate School, dean and director of the College of Agriculture, university vice president for academic affairs, and special assistant to the president. He was also involved in programs for agricultural development both in the United States and abroad. Ira Baldwin wrote a hostile review of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, titled "Chemicals and Pests," in the journal Science.

Ira Baldwin was born in 1895 on a 40-acre farm in Indiana. In his youth, he earned money to attend college by selling ducks and husking corn. He served state-side as a second lieutenant in an artillery unit. Baldwin attended college at Purdue and earned a Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin.

George W. Merck, a key member of the panel advising President Franklin D. Roosevelt on aspects of biological warfare, brought many scientists into uniform for a top secret, coordinated effort to defend against possible enemy use of biological weapons and to devise a capability to respond in kind to such an attack. Among them was Baldwin, then a professor of bacteriology at the University of Wisconsin. In 1943, Baldwin became the first scientific director of the U.S. Army Biological Warfare Laboratories at Camp Detrick, Maryland.

Baldwin and other scientists were called in for a secret meeting in Washington. After hearing that Germany and Japan were going to start the use of biological warfare, they were asked if it was possible for the United States to produce a substantial amount of their own biological agents. Baldwin responded with, "If you could do it in a test tube, you could do it in a 10,000-gallon tank. If you get enough tanks I'm sure you will get tons." About a month after the meeting, Baldwin was individually called by Colonel William Kabrich of the Army's Chemical Warfare Service and asked if he would lead the project. Although it only took him a day to say yes, Baldwin went through a lot of thought processing as he assessed the moral ramifications of what he was about to do. What he said to Kabrich was, "you start out with the idea in war of killing people, and that to me is the immoral part of it. It doesn't make much difference how you kill them."

Baldwin found a site suitable for making the deadly microbes. It had to be close enough to Washington, but not too close. He chose an abandoned airfield in Maryland called Detrick Field, which later became known as Camp Detrick. Next, Baldwin hired a staff, recruiting many who had worked with him at the University of Wisconsin, along with other scientists and military personnel. At the end of the research, Baldwin and his crew had successfully produced a large amount of biological agent to use in warfare. Baldwin was most proud of the safety arrangements that came with the operation. Nothing went wrong, and everything came out as planned, if not better.

After World War II, Baldwin returned to the University of Wisconsin, becoming the vice president of academic affairs in 1948 and special assistant to the university's president a decade later. Even after he resigned as leader of the operation, Baldwin stayed active with the biological weapons program. He continued to be worried that opponents of the United States might try to subtly use microbes to harm the country. He therefore suggested many experiments, that ended up taking place, to test how certain places would be affected by possible environmental changes that come from biowarfare. He died a few days before his 104th birthday in 1999.

Ira Brown Cross

Ira Brown Cross was an American Institutionalist labor economist.

Cross was born in 1880 in Decatur, Illinois, a descendent of New England pilgrims.  Ira B. Cross received his B.A. and MA. from Wisconsin in 1905/06 under the Institutionalist giant John R. Commons.  While still a student, Cross became politically active,  serving on the Wisconsin Tax Commission in 1905 and joining the Socialist Party in 1906. 

Cross received his Ph.D. from Stanford in 1909.  Cross stayed on as professor at Stanford until 1914, when he moved across the bay to join the University of California Berkeley, becoming full professor in 1919.

Although best known as a labor economist, especially his monumental 1935 treatise, Ira Cross also taught money and banking courses at Berkeley until his retirement in 1951.

Cross died in 1977. 

Dr. Bruce Benward

Dr. Bruce C. Benward was an author and professor . 

He was born June 29, 1921 in Churubusco, Indiana. He received his undergraduate and masters degrees from Indiana University and his Ph D from Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y. 

Dr. Benward was Professor Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin - Madison, was the author of numerous music theory textbooks including, Ear Training: A Technique for Listening, Sightsinging Complete, Practical Beginning Theory, and the Music in Theory and Practice series. His distinguished teaching career, spanning nearly 50 years, included appointments as Professor of Music Theory and Chairman of the Music Department at the University of Arkansas and at the University of Wisconsin as well as having received an honorary doctorate from Bowling Green State University. 

He served on the editorial boards for the Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy, College Music Symposium and Computers in Music Research and was an onsite examiner for the National Association of Schools for Music for 40 years. He also served as a distinguished visiting Professor of Music Theory at Florida State University. 

His career-long research in perception and analysis resulted in the development of the macro analysis system and the founding of the Macro Analysis Creative Research Organization. Dr. Benward was widely regarded as one of the most gifted music theory pedagogues since his textbooks first appeared in the 1960?s and was recognized for having exerted a wide influence on the teaching of music theory both through his writings and through the generations of teachers whom he taught.

Dr. Benward on died September 15, 2007.

Basil Davidson

Basil Risbridger Davidson  was a British journalist and historian who wrote more than 30 books on African history and politics. According to two modern writers, "Davidson, a campaigning journalist whose first of many books on African history and politics appeared in 1956, remains perhaps the single-most effective disseminator of the new field to a popular international audience."

Basil Davidson was born in Bristol, United Kingdom on 9 November 1914 and left school at 16 and moved to London. In 1938, he gained a job at the Paris correspondent of The Economist and later as the diplomatic correspondent of The Star. He travelled widely in Italy and Central Europe in the 1930s.

Davidson was recruited by the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) and MI6, D Section. As part of his Mission, he was sent to Budapest, Hungary in December 1939 under the cover of establishing a news service. In April 1941, with the Nazi invasion, he fled to Belgrade, Yugoslavia. In May, he was captured by Italian forces and was later released as part of a prisoner exchange.

From late 1942 to mid-1943, he was chief of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) Yugoslav Section in Cairo, Egypt, where he was James Klugmann's supervisor. He parachuted into Bosnia on 16 August 1943, and spent the following months serving as a liaison with the Partisans, as he would describe in his 1946 book, Partisan Picture. Davidson moved east into Srem and the Fruška Gora in Yugoslavia. He was nearly captured or killed several times. SOE posted him to Hungary to try to organize a rebel movement there, but Davidson found that the conditions were unsuitable and crossed back over the Danube into the Fruška Gora. The Germans encircled the Fruška Gora in June 1944 in a last attempt to liquidate the Partisans there, but Davidson and the others made a narrow escape. After Soviet forces entered into Yugoslavia, Davidson was airlifted out. From January 1945 Davidson was liaison officer with partisans in Liguria and Genoa, Italy. He was present for the surrender of the German forces in Genoa on 26–27 April 1945. He finished the war as a lieutenant-colonel and was awarded the Military Cross and was mentioned in despatches on two occasions.

Davidson returned to journalism after the war. He was employed initially by The Times in Paris but was widely considered to have communist sympathies after his wartime role as the Cold War began. He left in 1949 and became the secretary of the pressure-group, the Union of Democratic Control (UDC) and began to work for the left-leaning New Statesman. However, the Cold War prevented him from returning to Central Europe and instead Davidson became interested in Africa after being invited to South Africa by trade unionists opposed to Apartheid. He published several articles and books critical of white-rule in South Africa and colonial rule in Africa, passing to the Daily Herald (1954–57) and the Daily Mirror (1959–62).

He began a career as a popular writer. He published five novels and 30 other books, mainly on African history and politics. These consolidated his reputation as one of the leading authorities on Africa in the era of independence. From 1969, Davidson was involved in the Anti-Apartheid Movement and eventually became the movement's vice-president. He was a strong supporter of Pan-Africanism, especially from the 1980s, and was critical of the white-minority government in Rhodesia and of the American-backed União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola (UNITA) in Angola. He spent long periods in Angola and in Eritrea during its struggle for independence from Ethiopia. In 1984, Davidson produced an eight-part documentary series for Channel 4 entitled Africa.

Although not an academic, Davidson gained a reputation as an authority on African affairs and received a number of honorary positions at universities, including the School of Oriental and African Studies. Davidson also gained honorary degrees from universities in Europe and Africa, as well as a number of civic decorations. In 1976, he won the Medalha Amílcar Cabral. He received honorary degrees from the Open University of Great Britain in 1980, and the University of Edinburgh in 1981. For his film series Africa, he won the Gold Award, from the International Film and Television Festival of New York in 1984. In 2002 he was decorated by the Portuguese president Jorge Sampaio as Grande Oficial da Ordem do Infante D. Henrique.

Davidson died on 9 July 2010.

Ries Mulder

Marinus Ries Mulder was a Dutch painter, lecturer and writer. His painting style was influenced by Cubism, which he taught during his tenure as a leading lecturer of Modern Art in Indonesia.

Ries grew up in a family of ten children. After three years at the Hogere Burgerschool he studied painting in Utrecht and decided to become a painter. Ries apprenticed to the painter Piet van Wijngaerdt. He also contacted Otto van Rees (artist), Lambert Simon and Charles Eyck. Between 1933 and 1939, he assisted Charles Eyck in creating several frescoes, including frescoes in the Genazzano convent of the Augustinian sisters in Utrecht and in churches in Limburg (including Sint-Hubertuskerk (Genhout)).

Ries also contributed to the handover. van Charles Eyck at the World's Fair in Paris in 1937. From 1936 to 1939, he participated in various group exhibitions called "Youth of Utrecht", also known as the "School of Utrecht". Many of these exhibitions were organized by the Art Love Society (founded 1807), which is still located on Nobelstraat 12 in Utrecht. During this time, Ries mainly painted landscapes and still life. He also exhibited at Consthuys Sint Pieter, Achter Sint Pieter, 16 in Utrecht. This exhibition has the motto "Art doesn't have to be expensive", and the first year the price of a work of art was a maximum of 25 guilders, which was increased to 50 guilders in 1937. Works by Breitner, Paul Citroen, Wally Moes, Otto van Rees and by many others are on display. In his mid-thirties he shared a studio at 55 Oude Gracht with Otto van Rees and Gerrit Rietveld. The studio is located above the office of the publisher of the magazine “Community, the monthly magazine for Catholic Reconstruction”. From this magazine emerged the division “The New Community” where Ries made several illustrations. He also wrote many books and periodicals, including The Windrose in 1940 (De Windroos - yearbook for Catholic youth) and Sundial in 1940 (Zonnewijzer - Almanac for Catholic families).

Otto van Rees influenced the cubist painting style of Ries Mulder, while Charles Eyck encouraged his figurative painting.

In 1940 Ries was invited by a friend to make a research visit in Indonesia. Excerpt from an interview in Utrechts Nieuwsblad: “On the one hand I am very curious about the Indies, the tropical landscape and the people there, on the other hand I love the Netherlands, the sky and the beautiful atmosphere…”. February 7, 1940 he departed by ship from Trieste, Italy. He took forty still lifes, interiors and landscapes of Limburg in the Netherlands. These paintings were unfortunately lost during the Japanese occupation of Indonesia. Ries Mulder had lived in Magelang and Jakarta. Here he received many portrait commissions from wealthy Chinese families. He wanted to return after one year, but the war took him seven years. For five years she was imprisoned in the Japanese internment camps Tjilatjap, Tjimahi (Cimahi) and Pekanbaru, where she worked as a barracks nurse or in a military hospital. At the Cimahi camp he made many stages sets from simple materials.

In 1946 Ries returned to The Netherlands where he shared a studio with Otto van Rees in Utrecht. Together with Daan Wildschut, he again helped Charles Eyck, this time he helped to paint the walls and ceiling of the Church of Our Lady in Helmod.

During this period, Ries developed his own Cubist style.

During World War II, Ries met in the Japanese prison camp and together they made plans to start training art teachers in Bandung. Finally, in 1947, Simon Admiraal got permission from the Dutch Government to start the Art Teacher University Course in Bandung. In 1948 Ries was invited by the Ministry of Education. He started his career as a painting and art appreciation teacher in Bandung. The training is intended for Indonesian students who have only been able to go abroad to attend the training. In 1950 the art teacher training turned into a fine arts academy: the Indonesian Fine Arts Academy (ASRI). This training is part of the Bandung Technical University, currently the Bandung Institute of Technology. The accompanying teachers are Simon Admiraal (drawing), Piet Pijpers (crafts) and Jack Zeylemaker (decorative drawing). The teaching method was developed by Ries himself. During the eleven years Ries lived in Indonesia, he continued to work on his trademark style. Before the war he mainly made figurative and impressionistic paintings, but his work is now increasingly abstract, and the influence of Otto van Rees and Charles Eyck is evident. Georges Braque and Picasso also inspired him. Subjects are laid out into angular geometric shapes, separated from each other by sharp black lines (stained glass). The Bandung period was characterized by the modernist cole de Paris style, then the Cubist style changed to a strict geometric-abstract canvas arrangement. His style is very modern compared to most other Dutch painters in Indonesia.

Naturally, his disciples were affected by this. Until then, Indonesian artists mostly painted figurative, expressionistic, or impressionistic.

The abstract movement in Indonesia emerged from Bandung, West Java. As both a painter and lecturer, Ries Mulder, began inserting abstract art into his teaching at the Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB) in the 1950s, hence giving birth to a new generation of artists, such as But Muchtar, Mochtar Apin, Ahmad Sadali and Rita Widagdo. Several of Ries Mulder's students went on to become famous artists, as the Dutch art historian Dr. Helena Spanjaard describes: " Mulder is highly important; he educated some of the best Indonesian painters."

Ries Mulder's influence on the development of modern Indonesian art is enormous. Through his style and way of teaching art history and art appreciation, young Indonesian artists became acquainted with Western styles and thoughts. For Bandung's conservative art world, this style was very modern. Internationally oriented Dutch and Indonesian elites highly appreciated this work, and the ITB Bandung was eager to keep up with international developments in the arts. In 1954 Ries Mulder held a solo exhibition at the Kunstkring Bandungse.

In the same year 1954, assistant teachers and students of the Art Faculty in Bandung organized an exhibition for 11 painters, that featured their experimentation in a cubist style. This exhibition showed works of Ahmad Sadali, But Muchtar, Popo Iskandar and Kartono Yodhukusumo created significant furor and controversy. The painter and art critic Trisno Sumardjo decried the works as "bloodless, formal, self-absorbed, not grounded in the reality of their country and its environment and social issues". It was this exhibition, that started the debate "East versus West", e.g., criticizing Ries Mulder as eradicating Indonesian art values by conveying European norms.

In 1958 during a conflict called the West New Guinea dispute Sukarno severed all ties with The Netherlands because the Dutch refused to hand over Papua New Guinea to Indonesia. The Dutch in Indonesia were given a choice: take Indonesian citizenship or leave the country. Ries Mulder decided to return to The Netherlands in 1959, much to the chagrin of his students. From 1959, Ries Mulder lived with his three sisters in the house at Achtersloot in IJsselstein. It was difficult for him to return to Holland. He made many trips to the Dordogne, Spain and North Africa. His later works consist mainly of cityscapes in soft pastel colors, built on geometric planes and separated from each other by black contours. Ries Mulder died in 1973 in IJsselstein.


Karl Paul Link

Karl Paul Gerhard Link was an American biochemist best known for his discovery of the anticoagulant warfarin.

He was born in LaPorte, Indiana to a Lutheran minister of German descent as one of ten children. He was schooled locally, and attended the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he studied agricultural chemistry at the College of Agriculture from 1918 to 1925, obtaining an MS in 1923 and a PhD in 1925.

He was then chosen by the national Education Board for a postdoctoral scholarship and relocated to Europe. He briefly worked with carbohydrate chemist Sir James Irvine at the University of St Andrews in Scotland and from 1926 in Graz, Austria with Fritz Pregl, inventor of microchemistry and Nobel Laureate. Finally, he spent several months with organic chemist and future Nobel laureate Paul Karrer in the latter's lab in Zurich; during this period Link suffered from tuberculosis, requiring recuperation in Davos. After his return from Europe, he acquired his taste for dressing eccentrically, as he was often seen in large bow ties, flannel shirts, and sometimes a cape.

He was offered an assistant professorship at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1927 and was promoted to associate professor in 1928. He worked initially on plant carbohydrates and resistance to disease. He married Elizabeth Feldman on September 20, 1930; they were to have three sons.

In the subsequent years, most of his research focused on plant carbohydrates. However, the most fruitful period began when Ed Carson, a Wisconsin farmer, attracted Link's attention to "sweet clover disease", described in 1924 by veterinarian Frank Schofield. In this condition, cows bled to death after consuming hay made from spoilt sweet clover. Carson's stock had been affected, and he brought a dead cow, blood that would not clot, and 100 pounds of sweet clover hay. Under the direction of Link, PhD students Harold Campbell, Ralph Overman, Charles Huebner, and Mark Stahmann crystallized the putative poison—a coumarin-related compound—and synthetized and tested it; it turned out to be dicoumarol (3,3'-methylenebis-(4 hydroxycoumarin)).

Dicoumarol was subjected to clinical trials in Wisconsin General Hospital and the Mayo Clinic. It was for several years the most popularly prescribed oral anticoagulant.

Warfarin, one of the several compounds synthesized as part of the coumarin research, was patented in 1945. The patent was assigned to the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF), for which reason it was given the name Warfarin. Link and researchers Stahmann and Ikawa jointly owning the patent. Initially marketed as rat poison, warfarin would later, in the 1950s, become the second most important anticoagulant for clinical use.

Link was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1946. He received several awards for his work, including the 1955 Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research and the 1960 Albert Lasker Award for Clinical Medical Research. He remained closely involved in the biochemistry of warfarin and related compounds.

His work in later years was hampered by poor health (tuberculosis) as he was then relocated to Lake View sanatorium, and upon his return was never able to fully regain his momentum in research. Nevertheless, he remained a full professor until 1971, when he retired. He was a lifelong pioneer of liberal causes, and his wife was active in the pacifist movement.

Link died from heart failure on November 21, 1978.