09 December, 2022

Iceberg Slim

Robert Beck, better known as Iceberg Slim, was a former American pimp who later became a writer. Beck's novels were adapted into films.

Robert Maupin was born in Chicago, Illinois. He spent his childhood in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and Rockford, Illinois, until he returned to Chicago. When his mother was abandoned by his father, she established a beauty shop and worked as a domestic to support both of them in Milwaukee.[2] In his autobiography, Maupin expressed gratitude to his mother for not also abandoning him. She earned enough money working in her salon to give her son the privileges of a middle-class life such as a college education, which at that time was difficult for the average person.

Slim attended Tuskegee University in Tuskegee, Alabama, but having spent time in the "street culture", he soon began bootlegging and was expelled as a result. According to his memoir, Pimp, Slim started pimping at 18 and continued until age 42. The book claims that during his career he had over 400 women, both black and white, working for him. He said he was known for his frosty temperament and for staying calm in emergencies, which, combined with his slim build, earned him the street name Iceberg Slim. When verbal instruction and psychological manipulation failed to keep the women compliant, he beat them with wire hangers; in his autobiography he concedes he was a ruthless, vicious man.

Slim had been connected with several other well-known pimps, one of them Albert "Baby" Bell, a man born in 1899 who had been pimping for decades and had a Duesenberg and a bejeweled pet ocelot. Another pimp, who had gotten Slim hooked on cocaine, went by the name of "Satin" and was a major drug figure in the eastern part of the country.

Throughout his pimping career, Slim, who was known as Cavanaugh Slim, was noted for being able to effectively conceal his emotions, something he said he learned from Baby Bell: "A pimp has gotta know his whores, but not let them know him; he's gotta be god all the way."

In 1961, after serving 10 months of solitary confinement in a Cook County jail, Maupin decided he was too old for a life of pimping (he was 42) and was unable to compete with younger, more ruthless pimps.

In 1961, Maupin moved to Los Angeles and changed his name to Robert Beck, taking the last name of the man his mother was married to at the time. He met Betty Shue, who became his common-law wife and the mother of his three daughters, while he was working as an insecticide salesman. Betty encouraged Beck to write the story of his life as a novel, and they began sporadically writing some draft chapters. According to her, a white writer, whom Beck would later only refer to as "the Professor", became interested in writing Beck's life story; Beck became convinced that the man was trying to steal their idea for himself, so they cut him out of the deal and finished it without him. Bentley Morris of Holloway House recognized the merit of Pimp, and it was published in 1967.

The hip-hop writer Mark Skillz wrote that when Beck began work on Pimp, "he made two promises to himself: no glamorizing his former life and no snitching." Hip hop artist Fab 5 Freddy, a friend of Beck's, claimed that "Many of Bob's friends were still alive when he wrote that book. So he changed all of their names and descriptions. 'Baby' Bell became 'Sweet' Jones, his best friend 'Satin' became 'Glass Top', and he created composite characters of some of his former 'employees.'"

Reviews of Pimp were mixed. Although "he found his book being shelved next to other black authors of the angry '60s like Eldridge Cleaver's Soul on Ice and Malcolm X's The Autobiography of Malcolm X", Beck's vision was considerably bleaker than most other black writers of the time. His work tended to be based on his personal experiences in the criminal underworld and revealed a world of seemingly bottomless brutality and viciousness. His was the first insider look into the world of black pimps, to be followed by a half-dozen pimp memoirs by other writers.

In 1973, Hollie West questioned in The Washington Post whether societal changes and the women's movement would soon render the outlook expressed in Pimp obsolete: "The Iceberg Slim of yesteryear is considered an anachronism to the young dudes now out there on the block trying to hustle. They say he is crude and violent, overlooking his tremendous gift of the gab. Iceberg acknowledges that pimping has changed because 'women have changed.' The advent of women's lib, changing sexual mores, general affluence in this society and widespread use of drugs by pimps to control prostitutes have made an impact."

Pimp sold very well, mainly among black audiences. By 1973, it had been reprinted 19 times and had sold nearly 2 million copies. Pimp was eventually translated into German, French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Finnish, and Greek.

Following Pimp, Beck wrote several more novels, an autobiography, and a story collection. He sold over six million books before his death in 1992, making him one of the best-selling African-American writers.

In 1976, Iceberg Slim released the album Reflections, in which he recited passages from his autobiography over a funky musical backing supplied by the Red Holloway Quartet. The album, produced by David Drozen, was initially released on ALA records. It was reissued by Infinite Zero in 1994, then by Uproar Entertainment in 2008. Reviewing the album for AllMusic, Victor W. Valdivia wrote "For those who aren't easily offended, this album will be spellbinding. Slim's skills as a storyteller cannot be overstated; even at his crudest, he still spins riveting yarns." Valdivia praised the record for "the mixture of street smarts and the intellectual and emotional depth shown here", which, he said, was often lacking in Iceberg Slim's followers.

A popular Audiobook adaption of his autobiography “Pimp, The Story of My Life” narrated by Cary Hite, was released by Urban Audiobooks in 2011, and has become very popular due to the realistic portrayal talents of the voice actor. Cary later went on to voice other works of Iceberg Slim, including Long White Con, Trick Baby, and Airtight Willie and Me.

Slim's first novel, Trick Baby, was adapted as an eponymous 1972 movie directed by Larry Yust and produced independently for $600,000, with a cast of unknowns. Universal Pictures acquired the film for $1,000,000 and released it in 1973 to a considerable amount of Iceberg Slim fanfare; the movie grossed $11,000,000 at the US box office. The New York Times praised the film for its depiction of race relations and the friendship between two con men, set "in the grimier reaches of Philadelphia."

In 2006, independent film producers Dave Mortell and David Harb acquired the film rights to produce Mama Black Widow.

In 2009, television executive producer Rob Weiss, of the HBO show Entourage, and Mitch Davis purchased the film rights to produce Pimp.

After his release from prison in 1961, Beck met Betty Shue, who became his common-law wife and the mother of his three daughters (Melody, Misty and Camille) and one son (Leon) while he was working as an insecticide salesman. Shue encouraged Beck to write his life story and helped him write drafts.

Beck married Diane Millman Beck in 1982.

According to Beck's widow, Diane Millman Beck, Beck's final years were plagued by financial worries and deteriorating health. Beck suffered from diabetes and became increasingly reclusive. He died from liver failure on April 30, 1992, aged 73.

Garth Owen-Smith

Garth Owen-Smith was a South African-Namibian environmentalist. He was awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize in 1993, jointly with Margaret Jacobsohn, for their efforts on conservation of wildlife in Namibia, where illegal hunting was threatening species such as elephants, lions and black rhinos.

Owen-Smith died on April 11, 2020.

Eugen Weber

Eugen Joseph Weber was a Romanian-born American historian with a special focus on Western civilization.

Weber became a historian because of his interest in politics, an interest dating back to at least the age of 12. He described his political awakening as a realization of social injustices: "It was my vague dissatisfaction with social hierarchy, the subjection of servants and peasants, the diffuse violence of everyday life in relatively peaceful country amongst apparently gentle folk".

Weber's books and articles have been translated into several languages. He earned many accolades for his scholarship, including membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, membership to the American Philosophical Society, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies and the Fulbright Program. His 1,300-page Modern History of Europe: Men, Cultures, and Societies from the Renaissance to the Present (1971) was described "a phenomenal job of synthesis and interpretation that reflects Eugen's wide and deep learning," by his UCLA history colleague Hans Rogger. In addition to his distinguished American Awards and honors, he was awarded the Ordre des Palmes Académiques in 1977 for his contribution to French culture.

Born in Bucharest, Kingdom of Romania, he was the son of Sonia and Emmanuel Weber, a well-to-do industrialist. When Weber was ten, his parents hired a private tutor, but the tutor did not stay long. At age ten, Weber was already reading The Three Musketeers by Alexander Dumas, adventure novels by Karl May, poetry by Victor Hugo and Homer. Weber was also reading George Sand, Jules Verne and "every cheap paperback I could afford." At age 12, he was sent to boarding school in Herne Bay, in south-eastern England, and later to Ashville College, Harrogate.

During World War II, he served with the British Army in Belgium, Germany, and India between 1943 and 1947, and rising to the rank of captain. Afterward, Weber studied history at the Sorbonne and Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po) in Paris. While in France he met Jacqueline Brument-Roth, marrying her in 1950.

Returning to Britain, Weber entered Emmanuel College, Cambridge, studying French and European history under David Thomson and graduating with a BA in 1950. He remained at Cambridge to study for a PhD, but his dissertation thesis was rejected after the external examiner, Alfred Cobban of the University of London, gave a negative review, saying it lacked sufficient archival sources.

Weber briefly taught at Emmanuel College (1953–1954) and the University of Alberta (1954–1955) before settling in the United States, where he taught first at the University of Iowa (1955–1956) and then, until 1993 on his retirement, at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

Eugen Weber wrote a column titled "LA Confidential" for the Los Angeles Times. He also wrote for several French popular newspapers and, in 1989, presented an American public television series, The Western Tradition, which consisted of fifty-two lectures of 30 minutes each. He died in Brentwood, Los Angeles, California, aged 82.

Steady Nelson

Horace Steadman "Steady" Nelson , was a 20th-century American musician who specialized in Jazz and Swing during the Big Band era. 

Nelson was born in 1913 in Jefferson, Texas. He recorded over 60 sessions on trumpet and vocals with Woody Herman, Hal McIntyre, the Casa Loma Orchestra, Horace Hiedt, the NBC Radio orchestra and others. Nelson's most important works are his instrumental lead in "Woodchopper's Ball" and two solo vocal recordings with Woody Herman's band : "I’m Comin’ Virginia", and "Rosetta". Nelson has been declared a Texas Music Pioneer by the Texas Music Office, a division of the Office of the Governor of Texas.

Nelson died in 1988.

Louis Gottschalk

Louis Reichenthal Gottschalk was an American historian, an expert on Lafayette and the French Revolution. He taught for many years at the University of Chicago, where he was the Gustavus F. and Ann M. Swift Distinguished Service Professor of History.

He was born as Louis Gottschalk, the sixth of eight children of Morris and Anna (née Krystal) Gottschalk, Jewish immigrants to Brooklyn from Poland. He graduated from Cornell University with an A.B. in 1919, A.M. in 1920, and the Ph.D. in 1921, under the supervision of Carl L. Becker. During World War I, he served as an apprentice seaman from October 4, 1918 to November 11, 1918, a total of thirty eight days, at the Naval Unit at Cornell in Ithaca, New York. He taught briefly at the University of Illinois, and joined the University of Louisville faculty in 1923, but resigned in protest in 1927 after a friend and colleague in the history department was fired as part of an attempt by the university administration to abolish tenure. He joined the University of Chicago in 1927, was promoted to full professor in 1935, and chaired the history department from 1937 to 1942. He was given his endowed chair, the Gustavus F. and Ann M. Swift Distinguished Service Professorship of History, in 1959. In 1965, facing forced retirement from Chicago, he moved again to the University of Illinois at Chicago so that he could continue teaching.

From 1929 to 1943, he served as assistant editor of the Journal of Modern History; for three years following, he was acting editor. He was president of the American Historical Association in 1953 and the second president of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies.

He met poet Laura Riding, then known by her maiden name, Laura Reichenthal, while she was a student at Cornell and he was a graduate assistant there. They married on November 2, 1920, and he took her last name as his middle name. However, they divorced in 1925. He later married Fruma Kasden, in 1930; they had two sons. Fruma Gottschalk later taught Russian at the University of Chicago, and died in 1995.

Ralph E. Ablon

Ralph E. Ablon was an American executive. He built a large conglomerate from his family scrap metal company.

Ralph Emil Ablon was born on Oct. 26, 1916, in Tupelo, Miss., one of eight children of Zemore Ablon, a used-car salesman, and Louise (Strauss) Ablon, a homemaker.

The family moved to Dayton, Ohio, in 1929, and Ralph attended high school there. He majored in chemistry at the Ohio State University and was the business manager of the football team before graduating in 1938. He was briefly a graduate teaching assistant in English before marrying Sylvia Luria in 1939. He also served in the Navy.

Ablon died on November 2, 2021 at the age of 105.

Grantland Rice

Henry Grantland "Granny" Rice was an early 20th-century American sportswriter known for his elegant prose. His writing was published in newspapers around the country and broadcast on the radio.

Rice was born in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, the son of Bolling Hendon Rice, a cotton dealer, and Mary Beulah (Grantland) Rice. His grandfather Major H. W. Rice was a Confederate veteran of the Civil War.

Rice attended Montgomery Bell Academy and Vanderbilt University in Nashville, where he was a member of the football team for three years, a shortstop on the baseball team, a brother in the Phi Delta Theta fraternity, and graduated with a BA degree in 1901 in classics. On the football team, he lettered in the year of 1899 as an end and averaged two injuries a year. On the baseball team, he was captain in 1901.

In 1907, Rice saw what he would call the greatest thrill he ever witnessed in his years of watching sports during the Sewanee–Vanderbilt football game: the catch by Vanderbilt center Stein Stone, on a double-pass play then thrown near the end zone by Bob Blake to set up the touchdown run by Honus Craig that beat Sewanee at the very end for the SIAA championship. Vanderbilt coach Dan McGugin in Spalding's Football Guide's summation of the season in the SIAA wrote, "The standing. First, Vanderbilt; second, Sewanee, a mighty good second;" and that Aubrey Lanier "came near winning the Vanderbilt game by his brilliant dashes after receiving punts." Rice coached the 1908 Vanderbilt baseball team.

Rice was an advocate for the emerging game of golf in the United States. He became interested in the sport in 1909 while covering the Southern Amateur at the Nashville Golf Club. It was not his first golf event, but it was the one that seemed to pull him toward the game.

After taking early jobs with the Atlanta Journal and the Cleveland News, he later became a sportswriter for the Nashville Tennessean. The job at the Tennessean was given to him by former Sewanee Tigers coach Billy Suter, who coached baseball teams against which Rice played while at Vanderbilt. Afterwards he obtained a series of prestigious jobs with major newspapers in the northeastern United States. In 1914 he began his Sportlight column in the New York Tribune. He also provided monthly Grantland Rice Sportlights as part of Paramount newsreels from 1925 to 1954. He is best known for being the successor to Walter Camp in the selection of College Football All-America Teams beginning in 1925, and for being the writer who dubbed the great backfield of the 1924 Notre Dame Fighting Irish football team the "Four Horsemen" of Notre Dame. 

The passage added great import to the event described and elevated it to a level far beyond that of a mere football game. This passage, although famous, is far from atypical, as Rice's writing tended to be of an "inspirational" or "heroic" style, raising games to the level of ancient combat and their heroes to the status of demigods. He became even better known after his columns were nationally syndicated beginning in 1930, and became known as the "Dean of American Sports Writers". He and his writing are among the reasons that the 1920s in the United States are sometimes referred to as the "Golden Age of Sports". Rice's all-time All-America backfield was Jim Thorpe, Red Grange, Ken Strong, and Ernie Nevers.

His sense of honor can be seen in his own actions. Before leaving for service in World War I, he entrusted his entire fortune, about $75,000 (the equivalent of around $1.4 million today), to a friend. On his return from the war, Rice discovered that his friend had lost all the money in bad investments, and then had committed suicide. Rice accepted the blame for putting "that much temptation" in his friend's way. Rice then made monthly contributions to the man's widow throughout his life.

According to author Mark Inabinett in his 1994 work, Grantland Rice and His Heroes: The Sportswriter as Mythmaker in the 1920s, Rice very consciously set out to make heroes of sports figures who impressed him, most notably Jack Dempsey, Babe Ruth, Bobby Jones, Bill Tilden, Red Grange, Babe Didrikson, and Knute Rockne. Unlike many writers of his era, Rice defended the right of football players such as Grange, and tennis players such as Tilden, to make a living as professionals, but he also decried the warping influence of big money in sports.

Rice authored a book of poetry, Songs of the Stalwart, which was published in 1917 by D. Appleton and Company of New York.

Rice married Fannie Katherine Hollis on April 11, 1906; they had one child, the actress Florence Rice. Rice died at the age 73 on July 13, 1954, following a stroke. He is interred at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, New York City.

Rowland Scherman

 

Rowland Scherman is an American photographer.

Rowland Scherman was born in New York in 1937. He studied at Oberlin College, and was dark room apprentice at Life magazine. He was the first photographer for the newly formed Peace Corps in 1961. His photographs appeared in Life, Look, Time, National Geographic, Paris Match and Playboy, among many others, and he photographed many of the iconic musical, cultural, and political events of the 1960s, including the 1963 Newport Folk Festival, the Beatles first US concert, and Woodstock. He won a Grammy Award in 1968 for his photograph cover of Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits. His published collections include "Love Letters", an alphabet formed by posed dancers, and "Elvis is Everywhere." He lived in Birmingham, Alabama, and documented Alabama's Highway 11. He now lives on Cape Cod.  Rowland Scherman describes his day as the official photographer for USIA at the March on Washington, 1963. In his book, Timeless--photography of Rowland Scherman, Scherman shows and comments on some of his most famous pictures.

A documentary movie was made about Rowland Scherman by Chris Szwedo, called Eye on the Sixties; it has been shown on public television and at the Smithsonian.

Nathaniel "Traz" Powell

Nathaniel "Traz" Powell was one of the great African American sports pioneers in Miami's history. 

Powell was born and raised in Miami's Overtown section, Powell was a standout athlete at Booker T. Washington High School in the early 1940s. He went on to attend Florida A&M and was a 2-time Black College All American end. On December 6, 1947, Powell along with his Florida A&M teammates made history when they became the first black athletes to play in the Orange Bowl Stadium as part of the 1947 Orange Blossom Classic against Hampton Institute of Virginia. Powell scored the game's only touchdown making him the first African American to score at the Orange Bowl.

Following a brilliant college career, he returned home to Miami in 1948 and became the head coach at George Washington Carver High School in Coconut Grove. From 1948 to 1965, Powell led the Carver Hornets to 5 undefeated state championships. In 1966, Carver was downsized into a middle school as part the integration of the Miami-Dade County public school system. He then moved on to Mays High School in Goulds, where he won another state title in 1966. In 1968, Powell once again made history in the Orange Bowl when he led tiny Mays High to a 14-7 upset over traditional power Miami High. It was the first time the Stingarees had played an all-black high school.

By 1969, Mays was also downsized into a middle school and Powell's coaching career was over. In 21 years as a high school football coach, he compiled a 167-37-3 record and never had a losing season He later went on to coach track at Miami-Dade Community College North Campus and taught physical education. In 1980 Powell died from a heart attack.

Bill Payn

Cecil "Bill" Payn was born in He was a Springbok rugby player. He matriculated at Maritzburg College in Pietermaritzburg, Natal, South Africa. He played as a flanker. He was more commonly known as "Bill". 

He was born to James and Ellie (née Zietsman)Harding, Colony of Natal on 9 August 1893. He was a school teacher and married Winifred Ashton. Payn taught at Durban High School from 1915 to 1953. During world war two he was captured in Benghazi, Libya and served time in the Prisoner of War camps in Italy and Poland.

He played rugby for Natal and the Springboks. He made his International South Africa test debut on 16 August 1924, on the Kingsmead stadium in Durban, Natal South Africa playing as a flanker. This was a game between the Springboks and Great Britain. The Springboks won 7-3. He went on to play the next test against Great Britain as well, which was also his last. Payn's last test we played on 23 August 1924 at the Wanderers Stadium, Johannesburg, Transvaal, South Africa. The Springboks won 17-0.

He was a right arm slow bowler, who played cricket for his Province Natal. He ran the Comrades Ultra Marathon in 1922, and came 8th in this race, which was an up run held on 24 May 1922. His finishing time for the 90 km was 10:56:00. He ran the race in his rugby boots.

He died on 31 October 1959, in Durban, Natal, South Africa

Alexander Schmorell

Alexander Schmorell was a Russian-German student at Munich University who, with five others, formed a resistance group (part of the Widerstand) known as White Rose (German: Weiße Rose) which was active against the Nazi German regime from June 1942 to February 1943. In 2012, he was glorified as a saint and passion bearer by the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, and is venerated by Orthodox Christians throughout the world.

Alexander Schmorell was born in Orenburg, Russia on September 3/16, 1917 (Russia still used the Julian calendar when he was born) Schmorell's father was Hugo Schmorell, a German-born physician who was raised in the Russian Empire. Schmorell's mother was Natalia Vedenskaya, a Russian and the daughter of a Russian Orthodox priest. Schmorell was baptised in the Russian Orthodox Church. His mother died of typhus during the Russian Civil War when he was two years old. In 1920, his widowed father married a German woman, Elisabeth Hoffman, who, like him, was raised in Russia. In 1921 the family fled from Russia and moved to Munich, Weimar Germany, Schmorell was four years old at the time. In Germany, he grew up with his step-siblings Erich Schmorell (born 1921) and Natalie Schmorell (born 1925), as well as his Russian nanny, Feodosiya Lapschina. She took his late mother's place in his upbringing.

His nanny never learned how to speak German. Because of this, Alexander Schmorell grew up bilingual, speaking both German and Russian natively. His friends gave him the nickname 'Schurik', a nickname he would be called by his closer friends for the rest of his life. He was an Eastern Orthodox Christian who considered himself both German and Russian. As declared in the Gestapo's interrogations, he was a convinced Tsarist and then an archenemy of the Bolsheviks.

After his Abitur (equivalent to high level High School diploma), he was called into the Reich Labour Service (Reichsarbeitsdienst) and then into the Wehrmacht (German Army during the Nazi era). In 1937, he volunteered to join the Wehrmacht. At the last moment, however, he had second thoughts and refused to swear the Hitler Oath. Surprisingly, he was still allowed to join the Wehrmacht. In 1938, he took part in the Anschluss (the Nazi Annexation of Austria) and eventually in the invasion of Czechoslovakia.

After his military service, the artistically gifted Alexander Schmorell began studies in medicine in 1939 in Hamburg. In the autumn of 1940, he returned with his student corps to Munich where he came to know Hans Scholl, whom he met through Christoph Probst, his life-long friend.

In June 1942, Schmorell, together with Hans Scholl, began the Nazi Resistance Movement "The White Rose". Their form of resistance was simple but dangerous: writing leaflets. Quoting extensively from the Bible, Aristotle and Novalis, as well as Goethe and Schiller, the iconic poets of German bourgeoisie, the leaflets appealed to what Schmorell and Scholl considered the German intelligentsia, believing that these people would be easily convinced by the same arguments that also motivated the authors themselves. These leaflets were left in telephone books in public phone booths, mailed to professors and students, and taken by courier to other universities for distribution.

In June 1942, male students at the Ludwig Maximilian University were required to deploy to the Eastern Front over Summer break. Schmorell, along with Hans Scholl, Willi Graf, and Jurgen Wittenstein, served as medics on the Russian Front from June to November 1942. During this time, White Rose activities ceased, and were not continued until the medics came home from the deployment.

While in Russia, Schmorell felt like he was at home. Although he had been born in Russia, he had no memories of his homeland, as he had emigrated when he was only four years old. In Russia, Schmorell, Scholl, Graf, and Wittenstein would sneak out of camp at night and would gather at the home of Russian peasants, where Schmorell and his friends would take part in Russian festivities.

In August 1942, Schmorell came down with diphtheria. At first, he didn't tell his father and stepmother, as he didn't want to burden them. He only told them of his sickness after he had recovered.

Schmorell and his friends left Russia on October 31, 1942. Schmorell, who had become infatuated with Russia, considered deserting the Wehrmacht, but decided against it. They returned to Munich on November 5, 1942.

In December 1942, Schmorell, along with Hans Scholl, sought contact with Professor Kurt Huber. Together in 1943 they wrote the fifth leaflet, "Aufruf an alle Deutschen!" ('Appeal to all Germans!'), which Schmorell then distributed in Austrian cities.

On February 3, 1943, the news of the defeat of Stalingrad was broadcast to the German public. Later that day, Graf, Schmorell, and Scholl snuck out at night and graffitied public buildings with slogans such as "down with Hitler" and "Hitler the Mass murderer!" During the campaign, Schmorell would hold up the stencils while Graf painted the slogans on with tar paint. Scholl stood guard, armed with a pistol in case anyone walked in on their graffitiing. On February 8, 1943, Graf and Scholl graffitied again. This time, they used green oil-based paint. On February 15, 1943, Scholl, Schmorell, and Graf snuck out and graffitied the Feldherrnhalle, then a Nazi monument to the Nazis who were killed during the failed Beer Hall Putsch. The graffiti campaigns put the Gestapo on high alert.

On 18 February 1943, Sophie and Hans Scholl went to the Ludwig Maximilian University to leave flyers out for the students to read. They were seen by Jakob Schmid, a custodian at the University who was also a Gestapo informer. Schmid alerted the Gestapo, who took Hans and Sophie in custody. Alexander soon learned of their capture. He then went to Willi Graf's house with the intention of warning him that Hans and Sophie had been captured. Graf was not at home, so Schmorell left a coded message and went to one of his friend's houses. His friend helped him to get fake papers and gave him food and extra clothing. Schmorell's original plan was to enter a prisoner of war camp for Russia POWs, but that plan fell through when his contact did not show up. Schmorell then attempted to escape to Switzerland. Fierce weather forced him back, and he returned to Munich on February 24, 1943. At around 10 PM, the air raid alarm sounded. When Schmorell attempted to enter the air raid shelter, he was recognized by a former girlfriend. The Gestapo were called, and Schmorell was arrested. He was captured by the Gestapo on February 24, the same day as Sophie, Hans and Christoph's funeral. During the time between his capture and his trial, Schmorell was interrogated multiple times.

On July 13, 1943, Schmorell was executed by guillotine. 

Maxim Osipov

Maxim Alexandrovich Osipov is a Russian writer and cardiologist. His short stories and essays have won a number of prizes, and his plays have been staged and broadcast on the radio in Russia.

Osipov was born in Moscow and received his medical training at the Russian National Research Medical University. In the early 1990s, he was a research fellow at the University of California, San Francisco. Upon returning to Moscow, he continued to practice medicine, co-authored a textbook on clinical cardiology, and founded a publishing house, Practica, which specialized in medical, musical, and theological material. After moving to Tarusa, a town 101 kilometers from Moscow, Osipov began working at the local hospital. He also established a charitable foundation to ensure the hospital's survival and to improve its standard of care. He lived, wrote, and practiced medicine in Tarusa until March 2022. After the Russian invasion of Ukraine he left Russia. He first travelled to Armenia and then to Germany.

Stanislav Govorukhin

Stanislav Sergeyevich Govorukhin was a Soviet and Russian film director, actor, screenwriter, producer and politician. He was named People's Artist of Russia in 2006. His movies often featured detective or adventure plots.

Govorukhin was born in Berezniki, Sverdlovsk Oblast (now Perm Krai). His parents divorced before he was born. His father Sergei Georgievich Govorukhin came from Russian Don Cossacks and was arrested as part of the decossackization genocide campaign started by Yakov Sverdlov. He had been exiled to Siberia where he died around 1938 at the age of 30. His mother Praskovya Afanasievna Glazkova was a tailor. She came from the Volga region, from a simple Russian family of a village school teacher. She raised Sergei and his sister Inessa by herself and died at the age of 53.

Govorukhin started his career as a geologist in 1958. He then joined a television studio in Kazan and enrolled at the VGIK. During the Soviet period, Govorukhin became noted for his successful adaptations of adolescent classics, including Robinson Crusoe (1972), Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1981), In Search of the Castaways (1983) and Ten Little Niggers (an adaptation of Agatha Christie's original 1939 novel And Then There Were None) in 1987.

Most of his Soviet movies were made at the Odessa Film Studio. He was good friends with Vladimir Vysotsky and directed three movies starring him – Vertical (1967), White Explosion (1969) and The Meeting Place Cannot Be Changed (1979), one of the cult films of the late Soviet era. Several other of his films feature Visotsky's songs written as part of the soundtrack.

Apart from directing, he also wrote screenplays (including the top-grossing Soviet action film Pirates of the 20th Century directed by his fellow student Boris Durov in 1979) and started in movies as an actor. Being a trained mountaineer, he usually performed all the stunts himself. He also dedicated several movies to mountaineering, most notably Vertical and White Explosion which became some of the first examples of this subgenre in the Soviet cinema.

During the perestroika Govorukhin became less active at film making and more active in politics. He became one of the leaders of the Democratic Party of Russia. In 1990 he directed a much-publicized documentary highly critical of the Soviet society entitled We Can't Live Like This (also translates as You Can't Live Like That or This Is No Way to Live). Although his feature films were previously ignored by the critical establishment, this film won him the Nika Award for Best Director. It was at that time that Govorukhin released an extensive interview with Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

By the start of the 2000s he returned to cinema, co-starring with Alisa Freindlich in the detective TV series Female Logic and releasing another revenge movie, Voroshilov Sharpshooter (with Mikhail Ulyanov in the lead role). He directed a total of seven movies since then. In recent years he had been also actively working as a producer.

Govorukhin died on 14 June 2018 at the age of 82 following a long illness. He was buried at the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.

Oleg Yankovsky

Oleg Ivanovich Yankovsky was a Soviet and Russian actor who excelled in psychologically sophisticated roles of modern intellectuals. 

Oleg Ivanovich Yankovsky was born on February 23, 1944 in Jezkazgan, Kazakh SSR (now Kazakhstan). His family was of noble Russian, Belarusian and Polish ancestry. His father, Ivan Pavlovich, was Life-Guards Semenovsky regiment's Stabskapitän. Yankovsky's father was arrested during the purges in the Red Army after the Tukhachevsky case and was deported with his family to Kazakhstan, where he died in the camps of the Gulag system.

After the death of Stalin, the Yankovsky family was able to leave Central Asia for Saratov. Oleg's eldest brother, Rostislav, after graduating from the Saratov Theater School, went to Minsk to play at the Russian Theater. He took 14-year-old Oleg with him due to financial concerns, as in the family there was only one breadwinner – middle brother Nikolay. In Minsk, youngest Yankovsky made his debut on the stage – it was necessary to substitute the sick performer of the episodic role of the boy in the play The Drummer.

After leaving school, Yankovsky returned to Saratov, where in 1965 he graduated from the Saratov Theater School. After graduation, he was accepted into the troupe of the Saratov Drama Theater, where for eight years of work he played a number of leading roles. After success in the role of Prince Myshkin in the play The Idiot in 1973, he was invited to the Lenkom Theatre.

Yankovsky's film career was launched when he was cast in two movies The Shield and the Sword (1968) by director Vladimir Basov about World War II and Two Comrades Were Serving (1968) by Yevgeni Karelov about Russian Civil War.

During his prolific screen career, Yankovsky appeared in many film adaptations of Russian classics, notably A Hunting Accident (1977) and The Kreutzer Sonata (1987). A leading actor of Mark Zakharov's Lenkom Theatre since 1975, he starred in the TV versions of the theatre's productions, An Ordinary Miracle (1978) and The Very Same Munchhausen (1979) being the most notable. For his role in Roman Balayan's Flights in Dreams and Reality (1984), Yankovsky was awarded the USSR State Prize. He has been better known abroad for his parts in Tarkovsky's movies Mirror (as the father) and Nostalghia (in the main role).

In the early 1990s, Yankovsky also played quite different roles in Georgiy Daneliya’s tragic comedy Passport (1990) and in Karen Shakhnazarov’s historical and psychological drama The Assassin of the Tsar (1991). In 1991, he was the President of the Jury at the 17th Moscow International Film Festival.

Starting in 1993, Yankovsky ran the Kinotavr Film Festival in Sochi. He continued to receive awards for his work with several Nika Awards from the Russian Film Academy for his directorial debut Come Look at Me (2001) and Valery Todorovsky's Lyubovnik (2002). He appeared as Count Pahlen in Poor Poor Paul (2004) and as Komarovsky in a TV adaptation of Doctor Zhivago (2006), directed by Oleg Menshikov.

The last film Yankovsky appeared in was Tsar, which was released in 2009 and demonstrated at the Cannes Film Festival on 17 May 2009, just three days before his death. Yankovsky played the sophisticated role of Metropolitan Philip in his last film.

On May 20, 2009, Yankovsky died in Moscow, aged 65.

John Hammersley

John Michael Hammersley was a British mathematician best known for his foundational work in the theory of self-avoiding walks and percolation theory.

Hammersley was born in Helensburgh in Dunbartonshire, and educated at Sedbergh School. He started reading mathematics at Emmanuel College, Cambridge but was called up to join the Royal Artillery in 1941. During his time in the army he worked on ballistics. He graduated in mathematics in 1948. He never studied for a PhD but was awarded an ScD by Cambridge University and a DSc by Oxford University in 1959.

With Jillian Beardwood and J.H. Halton, Hammersley is known for the Beardwood-Halton-Hammersley Theorem.  Published by the Cambridge Philosophical Society in a 1959 article entitled “The Shortest Path Through Many Points,” the theorem provides a practical solution to the “traveling salesman problem.”

He held a number of positions, both in and outside academia. His book Monte Carlo Methods with David Handscomb was published in 1964. He is known for devising an early solution to the moving sofa problem in 1968.

He was an advocate of problem solving, and an opponent of abstraction in mathematics, taking part in the New Math debate.

He was a fellow (later professorial fellow) of Trinity College, Oxford, from 1961, reader in mathematical statistics at Oxford University from 1969, and elected Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1976.

He died on May 2, 2004.

Emlyn Lloyd

Emlyn Howard Lloyd was a mathematician, statistician and a leader in the field of stochastic hydrology research.

Emlyn was born on the 27th May, 1918 and received his primary education at Cwmbach Boys Elementary School. In the scholarship examination he obtained the top mark, and then transferred to the Trecynon School at the start of the autumn term 1929. His CWB School Certificate was exceptionally good, reaching matriculation standard and gaining five distinctions, four of which were in Arts subjects. Two years later in 1935, he sat his CWB Higher examination obtaining distinctions in all three of his subjects: mathematics, physics and chemistry. On the strength of his results he was awarded a state scholarship and consequently entered the Imperial College of Science and Technology, South Kensington. In 1938, he graduated with a first class honours degree in mathematics.

While still a student at Imperial College, he became very active in socialist politics, as well as singing in the College Choir. Also at this time, he met Herta (née Kasper) who was a refugee from Vienna. They married in London in 1940, living initially in Bloomsbury but moving to the suburbs following the wartime bombing raids.

During the war, Emlyn was ‘called up’ at the age of 21 years and was drafted by his university recruiting board to do scientific research under the War Office. This resulted in work for the Ordnance Board and for the aircraft industry. Then, at the end of the war, he joined the staff of Imperial College and began his long and distinguished research career. He began a PhD and by 1942 completed his doctorate in probability theory and mathematical statistics. During the period, 1942-1956, his four daughters were born.

Research topics that Emlyn developed in this initial period included stochastic reservoir theory, and the statistics of paper structure. The first involved the study of fluctuating river flows and the effect this has on stability and design of dams. The work in paper technology resulted in a consultancy with Wiggins Teape and involved the study of cellulose fibres and the nature of the paper that results from different types and sizes of fibres. The equations that were developed from this research are still taught to students of paper technology today.

After 29 years in London, Emlyn accepted the post of founding professor of mathematics at the new university of Lancaster. Not only was he to continue his first class research and establish a new research school, but in keeping with his senior position at the university he became inevitably more involved with university administration. He was a member of the Senate and associated committees throughout his entire period of service at Lancaster, and principal at Lonsdale (1967-82), which is one of the original colleges of the university. He retired from his post in September 1982 as professor emeritus and enjoyed an active retirement.

Emlyn was considered by those who knew him to be true scholar and gentleman. He was a charming and cultured man, committed not only to his own academic work but to literature, music and the arts as well. He was a kind tutor and never allowed his mental superiority to intimidate or discourage his students. He would prefer to criticise those with whom he disagreed with words such as: "I’m not entirely happy with ...". His students recognised his qualities as a superb teacher and as one who put the needs of his students as a priority for his consideration.

Emlyn was diagnosed with cancer in early 2007 at the same time as he was caring for Herta who had become seriously ill some time previously. After Herta died towards the end of 2007, Emlyn’s illness progressed and he relied increasingly on his daughters and visiting helpers; but he remained cheerful and uncomplaining. He was familiar with a wide range of composers and their work, and gained much solace from listening to music when confined to hospital towards the end of his life. He succumbed to his illness on June 9th, 2008, shortly after his ninetieth birthday in Lancashire, near the Lake District which he loved so much.

Otto Creutzfeldt

Otto Detlev Creutzfeldt was a German physiologist and neurologist. He was the son of Hans Gerhard Creutzfeldt and the younger brother of Werner Creutzfeldt, a professor of internal medicine.

Creutzfeldt attended the gymnasium (high school) in Kiel. At university he first studied the humanities, but soon switched to medicine, and obtained his M.D. at Freiburg University in Germany in 1953. From 1953 and 1959 he was an assistant and trainee in physiology with Prof. Hoffmann (Freiburg), in psychiatry with Prof. Miiller (Bern), and in neurophysiology and neurology with Prof. Jung (Freiburg). He continued to work for two years as a research anatomist at UCLA Medical School before moving to the Max Planck Institute for Psychiatry in Munich, where he stayed from 1962 to 1971. Creutzfeldt obtained there his degree in clinical neurophysiology (University of Munich). In 1971 he became one of the nine directors of the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, as head of the Department of Neurobiology.

He died on January 23, 1992.

Robert Rosen

Robert Rosen was an American theoretical biologist and Professor of Biophysics at Dalhousie University.

Rosen was born on June 27, 1934 in Brownsville (a section of Brooklyn), in New York City. He studied biology, mathematics, physics, philosophy, and history; particularly, the history of science. In 1959 he obtained a PhD in relational biology, a specialization within the broader field of Mathematical Biology, under the guidance of Professor Nicolas Rashevsky at the University of Chicago. He remained at the University of Chicago until 1964, later moving to the University of Buffalo — now part of the State University of New York (SUNY) — at Buffalo on a full associate professorship, while holding a joint appointment at the Center for Theoretical Biology.

His year-long sabbatical in 1970 as a visiting fellow at Robert Hutchins' Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions in Santa Barbara, California was seminal, leading to the conception and development of what he later called Anticipatory Systems Theory, itself a corollary of his larger theoretical work on relational complexity. In 1975, he left SUNY at Buffalo and accepted a position at Dalhousie University, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, as a Killam Research Professor in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics, where he remained until he took early retirement in 1994. He died on December 28, 1998. 

He served as president of the Society for General Systems Research, now known as the International Society for the Systems Sciences (ISSS), in 1980-81.

Daniil Kharms

Daniil Ivanovich Kharms was an early Soviet-era Russian avant-gardist and absurdist poet, writer and dramatist.


Alfred Louis Bacharach

Alfred Louis Bacharach British chemist and writer on musical subjects. Bacharach was an innovator in the fortification of baby milks with vitamin D, which brought about the almost complete eradication of rickets in the northern cities of Britain. 

He was born in London, and graduated from Cambridge. After five years in the Wellcome Research Laboratory, he joined the Glaxo Laboratories in 1920. He pioneered the development of biological assay methods for vitamins and also in microbiological assay procedures. 

He wrote Science and Nutrition (1938), and edited The Nation's Food (1946), Evaluation of Drug Activities: Pharmacometrics (in two volumes, with D.R. Laurence, 1964), Exploration Medicine (with O.G. Edholm, 1965), and The Physiology of Human Survival (1965). Bacharach, an accomplished pianist, edited The Musical Companion (1934; new edition, 1957), Lives of the Great Composers (1935), British Music of Our Time (1946), and The Music Masters (1957).

Newman Levy

Newman Levy was an American lawyer, poet, playwright and essayist.

Levy followed his father, well-known criminal attorney Abraham Levy, into law, but also pursued his own dreams of being a writer. Born in Manhattan, he graduated from New York University School of Law in 1911 and worked as an Assistant District Attorney, but found time to write three books of light verse and an autobiography. He socialized with New York's literary elite, and collaborated with Edna Ferber on $1200 a Year: A Comedy in Three Acts.

Levy died on March 22, 1966.

Nathan Divinsky

Nathan Joseph Harry Divinsky was a Canadian mathematician, university professor, chess master, chess writer, and chess official. Divinsky was also known for being the former husband of the 19th prime minister of Canada, Kim Campbell. Divinsky and Campbell were married from 1972 to 1983.

He was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, in 1925, and was a contemporary and friend of Canadian Grandmaster and lawyer Daniel Yanofsky. Divinsky received a Bachelor of Science from the University of Manitoba in 1946. He received a Master of Science in 1947, and a PhD in Mathematics under A. A. Albert in 1950 from the University of Chicago after which he returned to Winnipeg and was on the staff of the Mathematics Department of the University of Manitoba for most of the '50s. Divinsky then moved to Vancouver where he served as a mathematics professor, and also as an assistant dean of science, at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, where he spent the remainder of his professional career.

He was featured in many segments relating to mathematics and chess on the Discovery Channel Canada program @discovery.ca, now called Daily Planet. During the first two seasons of the show, he presented a weekly contest segment emphasizing math puzzles.

Divinsky served on the Vancouver School Board, from 1974 to 1980, and was the Chair from 1978 to 1980. He served as an alderman on Vancouver's city council from 1981 to 1982.

Divinsky learned his early chess as a teenager at the Winnipeg Jewish Chess Club, along with Yanofsky. He tied for 3rd–4th places in the Closed Canadian Chess Championship, held at Saskatoon 1945, with 9.5/12, along with John Belson; the joint winners were Yanofsky and Frank Yerhoff at 10.5/12. In the 1951 Closed Canadian Chess Championship, held at Vancouver, Divinsky scored 6/12 to tie for 5th–7th places. He won the Manitoba Championship in both 1946 and 1952, and finished runner-up in 1945. He tied for first place in the 1959 Manitoba Open. Divinsky scored 7.5/11 at Bognor Regis 1966, finishing in a tie for 7–13th places.

He represented Canada twice at the Chess Olympiads, in 1954 at Amsterdam (second reserve board, 0.5/1), and in 1966 at Havana (second reserve board, 4.5/8). Divinsky served as playing captain for both teams, and was the non-playing captain for the 1988 Canadian Olympiad team. Divinsky attained the playing level of National Master in Canada, and received through the Commonwealth Chess Association (founded by English Grandmaster Raymond Keene) the honorary title of International Master (although he did not receive this title officially from FIDE, the World Chess Federation).

Divinsky was also a Life Master at Bridge from 1972.

Divinsky served for 15 years, from 1959 to 1974, as editor of the magazine Canadian Chess Chat, and contributed occasionally to other Canadian chess magazines. He played an important role in chess organization in Canada from the 1950s. He first served as Canada's representative to FIDE (the World Chess Federation), from 1987 to 1994, and served again in this post in 2007. During both terms, he served as a member of the FIDE General Assembly, since Canada is a zone of FIDE. He is a member of the Canadian Chess Hall of Fame, served as President of the Chess Federation of Canada in 1954, and was a Life Governor of the CFC.

He has written several books on chess. Chess historian Edward Winter in a 1992 review was very critical of Divinsky's The Batsford Chess Encyclopedia, calling it "A Catastrophic Encyclopedia". Winter in 2008 selected it as one of the five worst chess books in English from the past two decades. Winter's 1989 review of Divinsky and Raymond Keene's book Warriors of the Mind was also negative. In this book, the authors compared great chess champions throughout history using an advanced mathematical treatment; while necessarily imperfect due to generational evolution in chess, it was in fact the pioneering work in this field.

Divinsky was married three times. He had three daughters from his first marriage: Judy, Pamela, and Mimi. Divinsky met Kim Campbell, 22 years younger, while she was an undergraduate student at the University of British Columbia in the late 1960s. Their relationship continued while Campbell did graduate work at the London School of Economics, and the two were married in 1972. It was his second marriage and her first. Divinsky was a strong influence in interesting Campbell in political activity. The two divorced in 1983, but they remained on good terms. Their marriage produced no children. He died, aged 86, in Vancouver, survived by his third wife Marilyn Goldstone.

José Berzosa

José Eugenio Velicia Berzosa was a Spanish priest known for being the creator of Las Edades del Hombre together with the writer José Jiménez Lozano, a series of exhibitions dedicated to to the sacred art of Castilla y León. He was awarded in 1997 with the El Norte de Castilla and National prizes for Restoration and Conservation of Cultural Assets (posthumously), from the Ministry of Culture of the Government of Spain.

He completed his first studies at the local school and later went to the diocesan seminary to begin his ecclesiastical studies. He completed a degree in Canon Law at the Pontifical University of Salamanca. 

He was ordained a priest in 1955, being assigned to the parish of Olmedo, belonging at that time to the diocese of Ávila. There he spent five years and met José Jiménez Lozano, a resident of the town of Alcazarén, with whom years later he would create the first exhibition of Las Edades del Hombre.

In 1960 he was called to the capital of Valladolid by Archbishop José García y Goldaraz, occupying different positions: chaplain of Catholic Action, spiritual director of the Colegio Mayor San Juan Evangelista and curate of the parish of San Ildefonso, taking charge of the construction of a new temple. He was also director of the "Nuestra Señora del Carmen" Women's Branch Center.

Years later, with Archbishop José Delicado Baeza , he left parish tasks in San Ildefonso to dedicate himself to other diocesan positions: pastoral vicar of urban parishes, delegate of the Secular Apostolate, diocesan judge, delegate of the Media, pro-vicar general of the diocese, episcopal vicar of Zone 2 City, episcopal delegate for the Faith and Culture Dialogue and, finally, curator of Las Edades del Hombre during its first six editions, until his death.

The idea for this series of exhibitions comes from a similar event, "Thesaurus", that a friend of his organized in Barcelona. His friend, the writer José Jiménez Lozano, helped him make the idea come true. He obtained economic and technical collaboration from the Caja de Salamanca y Soria, the architect Pablo Puente Aparicio and Eloísa García de Wattenberg , director of the National Museum of Sculpture .

The initial project included four editions: the first, in the Cathedral of Valladolid (1988-1989), dedicated to the Plastic Arts; the second, in the Cathedral of Burgos (1990), addressed the historical documents of the archives; the third, in the Cathedral of León (1991-1992), was dedicated to music; and what was originally going to be the fourth and last, in the Cathedral of Salamanca (1993-1994), dedicated to the dialogue between Faith and Art, between ancient and contemporary art (El contrapunto y su morada).

The success of these editions led to the organization of a fifth, in Antwerp (1995), the great Flemish city of the s. XVI, showing the relationship of Castilla y León with Flanders. A sixth edition was commissioned from him, taking place in the Cathedral of El Burgo de Osma, on the occasion of the anniversary of the Diocese, entitled The six-story city. Although he selected the pieces and visited their assembly, his failing health prevented him from attending the opening, and he died a few weeks later.

Ernst Carl Gerlach Stueckelberg

Ernst Carl Gerlach Stueckelberg was a Swiss mathematician and physicist, regarded as one of the most eminent physicists of the 20th century. Despite making key advances in theoretical physics, including the exchange particle model of fundamental forces, causal S-matrix theory, and the renormalization group, his idiosyncratic style and publication in minor journals led to his work not being widely recognized until the mid-1990s.

Born into a semi-aristocratic family in Basel in 1905, Stueckelberg's father was a lawyer, and his paternal grandfather a distinguished Swiss artist. A highly gifted school student, Stueckelberg initially began a physics degree at the University of Basel in 1923.

While still a student, Stueckelberg was invited by the distinguished quantum theorist Arnold Sommerfeld, to attend his lectures at the University of Munich. He went on to gain a Ph.D. on cathode physics in 1927. Later that year he went to Princeton University, becoming an assistant professor in 1930. He was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 1931.

He returned to Switzerland in 1932, working first at the University of Basel before switching the following year to the University of Zurich. In 1934 he moved again to the University of Geneva, which together with the University of Lausanne became his principal bases for the rest of his career.

Stueckelberg's sojourn in Zurich led to contact with leading quantum theorists Wolfgang Pauli and Gregor Wentzel, which in turn led him to focus on the emerging theory of elementary particles.

In 1934 he devised a fully Lorentz-covariant perturbation theory for quantum fields. The approach proposed by Stueckelberg was very powerful, but was not adopted by others at the time, and has now been all but forgotten. However, besides being explicitly covariant, Stueckelberg's methods avoid vacuum bubbles.

Stueckelberg developed the vector boson exchange force model as the theoretical explanation of the strong nuclear force in 1935. Discussions with Pauli led Stueckelberg to drop the idea, however. It was rediscovered by Hideki Yukawa, who won a Nobel Prize for his work in 1949 — the first of several Nobel Prizes awarded for work which Stueckelberg contributed to, without recognition.

In 1938 Stueckelberg recognized that massive electrodynamics contains a hidden scalar, and formulated an affine version of what would become known as the Abelian Higgs mechanism. He also proposed the law of conservation of baryon number.

The evolution parameter theory he presented in 1941 and 1942 is the basis for recent work in relativistic dynamics.

In 1941 he proposed the interpretation of the positron as a positive energy electron traveling backward in time.

In 1943 he came up with a renormalization program to attack the problems of infinities in quantum electrodynamics (QED), but his paper was rejected by the Physical Review.

In 1952 he proved the principle of semi-detailed balance for kinetics without microscopic reversibility.

In 1953 he and the mathematician André Petermann discovered the renormalization group.

In 1976 he was awarded the Max Planck medal.

Stueckelberg is buried at the Cimetière des Rois (Cemetery of Kings), which is considered the Genevan Panthéon.