William Windom

William Windom was an American actor. Known as a character actor of the stage and screen, he is perhaps best known for his recurring role as Dr. Seth Hazlitt alongside Angela Lansbury in the CBS mystery series Murder, She Wrote (1984–1996).

Windom made his television debut in 1949 in the NBC anthology series The Philco Television Playhouse. He continued acting in shows such as Studio One, Masterpiece Playhouse, Omnibus, and Kraft Television Theatre. During this time he also appeared on The Twilight Zone, Gunsmoke, Mission: Impossible, and Star Trek. He then gained acclaim in his television career for his portrayal of cartoonist John Monroe in the short-lived NBC sitcom My World and Welcome to It (1969–1970) winning him the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series.

He then guest starred in various programs including Columbo, Night Gallery, Marcus Welby M.D., and Quincy M.E. before gaining acclaim for his a recurring role on CBS's mystery series Murder, She Wrote (1986-1996) portraying Dr. Seth Hazlitt of Cabot Cove opposite Angela Lansbury. During this time he would also appear on the shows St. Elsewhere, Magnum, P.I., Newhart, L.A. Law, and Murphy Brown as well as voicing Uncle Chuck in Sonic the Hedgehog. His final television appearances include roles in Fox's Ally McBeal, and CBS's The District.

Windom's also known for his film roles in the Academy Award-winning To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), The Americanization of Emily (1964), The Detective (1968), Brewster McCloud (1970), and Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971) as well as several John Hughes films, Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987), She's Having a Baby (1988), and Uncle Buck (1989), as well as Miracle on 34th Street (1994), and True Crime (1999).

Windom was born on September 28, 1923 in New York City, (in the Borough of Manhattan), the son of Isobel Wells (née Peckham) and Paul Windom, an architect. He was the great-grandson of the United States Secretary of the Treasury of the same name, whom the actor physically resembled. He attended Williams College before enlisting in the U.S. Army. He participated in the Army Specialized Training Program where he studied at The Citadel, Antioch College and the University of Kentucky.

Windom then became a paratrooper with Company B, 1st Battalion 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division. While stationed in Frankfurt during the Allied occupation of Germany he enrolled in Biarritz American University in France and became involved in drama.

During his early screen career in the 1950s, Windom appeared in TV series including Omnibus and Robert Montgomery Presents, and continued his guest-starring roles in series during the 1960s such as the "Five Characters in Search of an Exit" 1961 episode of The Twilight Zone, that he claimed was his West Coast television debut. He played The Major, one of the five characters who are in an unidentified place, which is revealed at the end of the episode. He reported some years later that Richard Widmark was originally offered the role, but when Widmark learned that the pay was only to be $1,000 for the week, he turned it down. Actress Susan Harrison, who played The Ballerina, got first billing, while Windom got second. 

His first leading role in television came in the sitcom The Farmer's Daughter (1963–1966), a series (based on the 1947 film) about a young Minnesota woman (played by Inger Stevens) who becomes the housekeeper for a widowed congressman (Windom), which ran for three seasons.

Windom's first role in film was alongside Gregory Peck in the Oscar-winning To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) as Horace Gilmer, the prosecutor of Tom Robinson (Brock Peters), to Peck's defense lawyer Atticus Finch.

He continued in American television appearances, including The Donna Reed Show, Gunsmoke and Star Trek (playing Commodore Matt Decker, commander of the doomed USS Constellation in the popular 1967 episode "The Doomsday Machine", a role he would reprise nearly 40 years later for Star Trek: New Voyages). He played a recurring role (3 episodes) in "The Invaders" in 1967.

In 1968, Windom starred alongside Peter Falk and Gene Barry in the TV movie Prescription: Murder, the pilot for the TV series Columbo. He would guest star in another edition of the series (titled "Short Fuse") in 1972. In 1971 he played a supporting role alongside Jimmy Stewart, George Kennedy and Kurt Russell in the Columbia production "Fools' Parade".

Windom starred with Frank Sinatra in the film The Detective (1968), playing a homophobic killer, a role that received great reviews from The New York Times. The following year, he had the lead role as cartoonist John Monroe in the sitcom My World and Welcome to It. Although the series only aired for one season, he won the 1970 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series.

After the cancellation of the series, Windom toured the country for a time in a one-man Thurber show. After the run was completed, he filmed the pilot for a new series Is There a Doctor in the House? with Rosemary Forsyth. The pilot was written with both actors in mind for the two starring roles, and while it was well received by the critics and in viewership ratings in both its first run and a re-run in the summer of 1971, it was not picked up for a series.

After a host of roles in film, TV movies and guest appearances in TV series during the 1970s and 1980s, Windom joined the series Murder, She Wrote in 1985 as Dr. Seth Hazlitt. His initial appearance was in October 1985. (He had previously appeared as a guest star playing another character in April 1985.) The producers enjoyed his work, and consequently invited him to return at the beginning of the second season to take on the role permanently. Windom briefly left the show in 1990 to work on the first television version of Parenthood (based on the 1989 film of the same name), playing the role of patriarch Frank Buckman (played by Jason Robards in the film and, later, Craig T. Nelson in the second TV version). The show was ultimately canceled after 12 episodes and Windom returned to Murder, She Wrote as a semi-regular for the remainder of the run of that series.[citation needed] In all, Windom appeared in 53 episodes of Murder, She Wrote, second only to the show's main star, Angela Lansbury.

Windom continued to appear in film and TV guest roles during the 1990s and 2000s, with appearances in the films Sommersby (1993), Miracle on 34th Street (1994), and Clint Eastwood's True Crime (1999), and episodes of series, including Ally McBeal (2000) and The District (2001), before making his final acting appearance in the 2005 drama Yesterday's Dreams.

Bill married his first wife, Carol Keyser, in New York in August 1947. They worked together and he also worked for her father selling insurance for three years. They divorced in December 1955. In 1958 He married actress Barbara Joyce in Edgartown, Massachusetts. She was six years older than Bill. However, he soon moved to California and remained there for work. Bill said the marriage lasted just three years, but the divorce was not finalized until 1963. A few weeks later, he married his third wife, Barbara Clare. She was the granddaughter of MGM founder Louis B. Mayer and 11 years Bill's junior. Bill became stepfather to Barbara's two daughters from a previous marriage. His first child, Rachel, was born in 1964. Bill and Barbara divorced in 1968. In October 1969 he married his fourth wife Jacqulyn D. Hopkins, 19 years his junior. They had two daughters, Heather Juliet in 1970 and Hope Teresa in 1973.

In 1974, Bill met Patricia (Fehrle) Tunder while shooting a TV movie; she was working for the production company. Almost a year later, in July 1975, he filed for divorce from Jacqulyn.

Bill and Patricia, 12 years his junior, married in 1975 on New Year's Eve. In 1978 Bill welcomed his final child, a son named Rebel Russell.

Windom was a tournament chess player, a sailor, a tennis player and a life member of the USCF.

Windom died on August 16, 2012, at the age of 88 at his home in Woodacre, California from congestive heart failure.

Karl Mundt

Karl Earl Mundt was an American educator and a Republican member of the United States Congress, representing South Dakota in the United States House of Representatives (1939–48) and in the United States Senate (1948–73).

Mundt was born on June 3, 1900 in Humboldt, South Dakota. He was the son of Ferdinand John Mundt (1875–1947) and Rose (Schneider) Mundt (1874–1965). Both of his parents were the descendants of German immigrants. Mundt attended public schools in Humboldt, Pierre, and Madison, graduating from Madison High School in 1919. In high school, he excelled in oratory and debate, which became lifetime passions. After receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree from Carleton College in Minnesota in 1923 with a major in economics, he became a teacher and principal at Bryant High School in Bryant, South Dakota. As a first-year teacher he taught speech, psychology, sociology, and government, coached the debate, oratory, and extemporaneous speech teams, and began a school newspaper. After his first year, he was promoted to Superintendent of Bryant schools, a position he held until 1927. As superintendent, he continued to coach debate and oratory.

In 1924, Mundt married Mary Elizabeth Moses (1900–1985), a college classmate who also taught at Bryant High School. In 1927, both Karl and Mary Mundt received Master of Arts degrees from Columbia University following four years of summer study there. Beginning in 1928, they both taught at Eastern State Normal School (now Dakota State University), continuing there until 1936. Karl headed the speech department and taught psychology and economics, while Mary taught drama and French.

In 1936, Mundt was the Republican candidate for the House of Representatives in South Dakota's 1st congressional district, losing in a Democratic year to Fred H. Hildebrandt. He won the seat in the 1938 election, a year more favorable to Republicans, and was re-elected four times. In 1948, he was elected to the Senate seat previously held by Harlan J. Bushfield. He resigned his House seat on December 30, 1948, having been appointed to the Senate to fill the vacancy created by the resignation of Senator Vera C. Bushfield, who had succeeded her husband after his death in September 1948. Mundt was re-elected to the Senate in 1954, 1960, and 1966. In 1960, he was challenged for reelection by then-U.S. Representative George McGovern and nearly defeated.

On 23 November 1969 he suffered a severe stroke and was subsequently unable to attend sessions of Congress, although he received extensive speech and physical therapy. His wife, Mary, led his staff in Mundt's place and refused calls for the crippled Senator to resign. Mundt was stripped of his committee assignments by the Senate Republican Conference in 1972, but he remained in office through the end of his term on January 3, 1973. He did not seek reelection in 1972, and was succeeded in the Senate by the Democrat James G. Abourezk.

Karl Mundt died in Washington, D.C. on  August 16, 1974 of a heart ailment and was buried at Graceland Cemetery in Madison, South Dakota.

Ralph J. Gleason

Ralph Joseph Gleason was an American music critic and columnist. 

He contributed for many years to the San Francisco Chronicle, was a founding editor of Rolling Stone magazine, and cofounder of the Monterey Jazz Festival. A pioneering rock critic, he helped the San Francisco Chronicle transition into the rock era.

Ralph Joseph Gleason was born in New York City on March 1, 1917. He graduated from Columbia University (where he was news editor of the Columbia Daily Spectator) in 1938. In 1939, Gleason co-founded Jazz Information, with Eugene Williams, Ralph de Toledano, and Jean Rayburn (maiden name; 1918–2009, who married Ralph Gleason in 1940).

During World War II, he worked for the Office of War Information. After WWII, Gleason moved to the San Francisco Bay Area and in 1950, began writing for the San Francisco Chronicle. Gleason wrote a syndicated column on jazz, hosted radio programs, and cofounded the Monterey Jazz Festival. He also wrote liner notes for Lenny Bruce's comedy albums and testified for the defense at Bruce's San Francisco 1962 obscenity trial. 

He wrote liner notes for a broad variety of releases, including the 1959 Sinatra album No One Cares and the 1970 Davis album Bitches Brew. From 1948 to 1960, he doubled as an associate editor and critic for DownBeat. He also taught music appreciation courses at University of California Extension (1960-1963) and Sonoma State University (1965-1967).

Gleason was a widely respected commentator when he began to support several Bay Area rock bands, including Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead, in the late 1960s. Although Gleason was sometimes criticized for minimizing the importance of or simply ignoring acts from Los Angeles, others judged that he was making a valid distinction between works of creative vitality and music business product. In any case, Gleason was a key contributor to the growth and range of the Bay Area's vibrant music scene of the 1960s and after.

Gleason was a contributing editor to Ramparts, a prominent leftist magazine based in San Francisco, but quit after editor Warren Hinckle criticized the city's growing hippie population. With Jann Wenner, another Ramparts staffer, Gleason founded the bi-weekly music magazine, Rolling Stone, to which he contributed as a consulting editor until his death in 1975. He was in the midst of an acrimonious split with Wenner and the magazine when he died. For ten years he also wrote a syndicated weekly column on jazz and pop music that ran in the New York Post and many other papers throughout the United States and Europe.

Gleason's articles also appeared other publications, including The New York Times, The Guardian, The Times, New Statesman, Evergreen Review, The American Scholar, Saturday Review, the New York Herald Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Sydney Morning Herald, Playboy, Esquire, Variety, The Milwaukee Journal1 and Hi-Fi/Stereo Review.

For National Educational Television (now known as PBS), Gleason produced a series of twenty-eight programs on jazz and blues, Jazz Casual, featuring Dizzy Gillespie, B.B. King, John Coltrane, Dave Brubeck, the Modern Jazz Quartet, Vince Guaraldi with Bola Sete, Jimmy Witherspoon, and Sonny Rollins, among others. The series ran from 1961 to 1968. He also produced a two-hour documentary on Duke Ellington, which was twice nominated for an Emmy.

Other films for television included a four-part series on the Monterey Jazz Festival, the first documentary for television on pop music, Anatomy of a Hit, and the hour-long programs on San Francisco rock, Go Ride the Music, for the series Fanfare, episode 9, for National Educational Television, A Night at the Family Dog, episode 10, for National Educational Television, and West Pole.

Gleason's name shows up in tribute on Red Garland's "Ralph J. Gleason Blues" from the 1958 recording Rojo (Prestige PRLP 7193), re-released on Red's Blues in 1998.

Gleason's lasting legacy, however, is his work with Rolling Stone. His name, alongside that of Hunter S. Thompson, still remains on the magazine's masthead today, more than four decades after his death.

On June 3, 1975, Gleason died of a heart attack at the age of 58 in Berkeley, California.

George Gamow

George Gamow (March 4, 1904 – August 19, 1968), born Georgiy Antonovich Gamov (Ukrainian: Георгій Антонович Гамов, Russian: Георгий Антонович Гамов), was a Russian-born Soviet and American polymath, theoretical physicist and cosmologist. He was an early advocate and developer of Lemaître's Big Bang theory. He discovered a theoretical explanation of alpha decay by quantum tunneling, invented the liquid drop model and the first mathematical model of the atomic nucleus, and worked on radioactive decay, star formation, stellar nucleosynthesis and Big Bang nucleosynthesis (which he collectively called nucleocosmogenesis), and molecular genetics.

In his middle and late career, Gamow directed much of his attention to teaching and wrote popular books on science, including One Two Three... Infinity and the Mr Tompkins series of books (1939–1967). Some of his books are still in print more than a half-century after their original publication.

Gamow was born in Odessa, Russian Empire. His father taught Russian language and literature in high school, and his mother taught geography and history at a school for girls. In addition to Russian, Gamow learned to speak some French from his mother and German from a tutor. Gamow learned English in his college years and became fluent. Most of his early publications were in German or Russian, but he later used English for both technical papers and for the lay audience.

He was educated at the Institute of Physics and Mathematics in Odessa[2] (1922–23) and at the University of Leningrad (1923–1929). Gamow studied under Alexander Friedmann in Leningrad, until Friedmann's early death in 1925, which required him to change dissertation advisors. At the university, Gamow made friends with three other students of theoretical physics, Lev Landau, Dmitri Ivanenko, and Matvey Bronshtein. The four formed a group they called the Three Musketeers, which met to discuss and analyze the ground-breaking papers on quantum mechanics published during those years. He later used the same phrase to describe the Alpher, Herman, and Gamow group.

Upon graduation, he worked on quantum theory in Göttingen, where his research into the atomic nucleus provided the basis for his doctorate. He then worked at the Theoretical Physics Institute of the University of Copenhagen from 1928 to 1931, with a break to work with Ernest Rutherford at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge. He continued to study the atomic nucleus (proposing the "liquid drop" model), but also worked on stellar physics with Robert Atkinson and Fritz Houtermans.

In 1931, Gamow was elected a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR at age 28 – one of the youngest in its history.[3][4][5] During the period 1931–1933, Gamow worked in the Physical Department of the Radium Institute (Leningrad) headed by Vitaly Khlopin [ru]. Europe's first cyclotron was designed under the guidance and direct participation of Igor Kurchatov, Lev Mysovskii and Gamow. In 1932, Gamow and Mysovskii submitted a draft design for consideration by the Academic Council of the Radium Institute, which approved it. The cyclotron was not completed until 1937.[6]

In the early 20th century, radioactive materials were known to have characteristic exponential decay rates, or half-lives. At the same time, radiation emissions were known to have certain characteristic energies. By 1928, Gamow in Göttingen had solved the theory of the alpha decay of a nucleus via tunnelling, with mathematical help from Nikolai Kochin.[7][8] The problem was also solved independently by Ronald W. Gurney and Edward U. Condon.[9][10] Gurney and Condon did not, however, achieve the quantitative results achieved by Gamow.

Classically, the particle is confined to the nucleus because of the high energy requirement to escape the very strong nuclear potential well. Also classically, it takes an enormous amount of energy to pull apart the nucleus, an event that would not occur spontaneously. In quantum mechanics, however, there is a probability the particle can "tunnel through" the wall of the potential well and escape. Gamow solved a model potential for the nucleus and derived from first principles a relationship between the half-life of the alpha-decay event process and the energy of the emission, which had been previously discovered empirically and was known as the Geiger–Nuttall law.[11] Some years later, the name Gamow factor or Gamow–Sommerfeld factor was applied to the probability of incoming nuclear particles tunnelling through the electrostatic Coulomb barrier and undergoing nuclear reactions.

Gamow worked at a number of Soviet establishments before deciding to flee the Soviet Union because of increased oppression. In 1931, he was officially denied permission to attend a scientific conference in Italy. Also in 1931, he married Lyubov Vokhmintseva (Russian: Любовь Вохминцева), another physicist in Soviet Union, whom he nicknamed "Rho" after the Greek letter. Gamow and his new wife spent much of the next two years trying to leave the Soviet Union, with or without official permission. Niels Bohr and other friends invited Gamow to visit during this period, but Gamow could not get permission to leave.

Gamow later said that his first two attempts to defect with his wife were in 1932 and involved trying to kayak: first a planned 250-kilometer paddle over the Black Sea to Turkey, and another attempt from Murmansk to Norway. Poor weather foiled both attempts, but they had not been noticed by the authorities.[12]

In 1933, Gamow was suddenly granted permission to attend the 7th Solvay Conference on physics, in Brussels. He insisted on having his wife accompany him, even saying that he would not go alone. Eventually the Soviet authorities relented and issued passports for the couple. The two attended and arranged to extend their stay, with the help of Marie Curie and other physicists. Over the next year, Gamow obtained temporary work at the Curie Institute, University of London, and the University of Michigan.

In 1934, Gamow and his wife moved to the United States. He became a professor at George Washington University (GWU) in 1934 and recruited physicist Edward Teller from London to join him at GWU. In 1936, Gamow and Teller published what became known as the "Gamow–Teller selection rule" for beta decay. During his time in Washington, Gamow would also publish major scientific papers with Mário Schenberg and Ralph Alpher. By the late 1930s, Gamow's interests had turned towards astrophysics and cosmology.

In 1935, Gamow's son, Igor Gamow was born (in a 1947 book, Gamow's dedication was "To my son IGOR, Who Would Rather Be a Cowboy"). George Gamow became a naturalized American in 1940. He retained his formal association with GWU until 1956.

During World War II, Gamow did not work directly on the Manhattan Project producing the atomic bomb, in spite of his knowledge of radioactivity and nuclear fusion. He continued to teach physics at George Washington University and consulted for the US Navy.

Gamow was interested in the processes of stellar evolution and the early history of the Solar System. In 1945, he co-authored a paper supporting work by German theoretical physicist Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker on planetary formation in the early Solar System.[13] Gamow published another paper in the British journal Nature in 1948, in which he developed equations for the mass and radius of a primordial galaxy (which typically contains about one hundred billion stars, each with a mass comparable with that of the Sun).[14]

Gamow's work led the development of the hot "big bang" theory of the expanding universe. He was the earliest to employ Alexander Friedmann's and Georges Lemaître's non-static solutions of Einstein's gravitational equations describing a universe of uniform matter density and constant spatial curvature. Gamow's crucial advance would provide a physical reification of Lemaître's idea of a unique primordial quantum. Gamow did this by assuming that the early universe was dominated by radiation rather than by matter.[15] Most of the later work in cosmology is founded in Gamow's theory. He applied his model to the question of the creation of the chemical elements [16] and to the subsequent condensation of matter into galaxies,[17] whose mass and diameter he was able to calculate in terms of the fundamental physical parameters, such as the speed of light c, Newton's gravitational constant G, Sommerfeld's fine-structure constant α, and Planck's constant h.

Gamow's interest in cosmology arose from his earlier interest in energy generation and element production and transformation in stars.[18][19][20] This work, in turn, evolved from his fundamental discovery of quantum tunneling as the mechanism of nuclear alpha decay, and his application of this theory to the inverse process to calculate rates of thermonuclear reaction.

At first, Gamow believed that all the elements might be produced in the very high temperature and density early stage of the universe. Later, he revised this opinion on the strength of compelling evidence advanced by Fred Hoyle and others, that elements heavier than lithium are largely produced in thermonuclear reactions in stars and in supernovae. Gamow formulated a set of coupled differential equations describing his proposed process and assigned, as a PhD dissertation topic, his graduate student Ralph Alpher the task of solving the equations numerically. These results of Gamow and Alpher appeared in 1948 as the Alpher–Bethe–Gamow paper.[21] Before his interest turned to the question of the genetic code, Gamow published about twenty papers on cosmology. The earliest was in 1939 with Edward Teller on galaxy formation,[22] followed in 1946 by the first description of cosmic nucleosynthesis. He also wrote many popular articles as well as academic textbooks on this and other subjects.[23]

In 1948, he published a paper dealing with an attenuated version of the coupled set of equations describing the production of the proton and the deuteron from thermal neutrons. By means of a simplification and using the observed ratio of hydrogen to heavier elements, he was able to obtain the density of matter at the onset of nucleosynthesis and from this the mass and diameter of the early galaxies.[24] In 1953 he produced similar results, but this time based on another determination of the density of matter and radiation, at the time at which they became equal.[25] In this paper, Gamow determined the density of the relict background radiation, from which a present temperature of 7 K was predicted – a value which was slightly more than twice the presently-accepted value.

In 1967, he published reminiscences and recapitulation of his own work as well as the work of Alpher and Robert Herman (both with Gamow and also independently of him).[26] 

In 1953, Francis Crick, James Watson, Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin discovered the double helix structure of the DNA macromolecule. Gamow attempted to solve the problem of how the ordering of four different bases (adenine, cytosine, thymine and guanine) in DNA chains might control the synthesis of proteins from their constituent amino acids.[28] Crick has said that Gamow's suggestions helped him in his own thinking about the problem.[29] As related by Crick,[30] Gamow observed that the 43 = 64 possible permutations of the four DNA bases, taken three at a time, would be reduced to 20 distinct combinations if the order was irrelevant.[31] Gamow proposed that these 20 combinations might code for the twenty amino acids which, he suggested, might well be the sole constituents of all proteins. Gamow's contribution to solving the problem of genetic coding gave rise to important models of biological degeneracy.[32][33]

The specific system that Gamow was proposing (called "Gamow's diamonds") proved to be incorrect. The triplets were supposed to be overlapping, so that in the sequence GGAC (for example), GGA could produce one amino acid and GAC another, and also non-degenerate (meaning that each amino acid would correspond to one combination of three bases – in any order). Later protein sequencing work proved that this could not be the case; the true genetic code is non-overlapping and degenerate, and changing the order of a combination of bases does change the amino acid.

In 1954, Gamow and Watson co-founded the RNA Tie Club. This was a discussion group of leading scientists concerned with the problem of the genetic code, which counted among its members the physicists Edward Teller and Richard Feynman. In his autobiographical writings, Watson later acknowledged the great importance of Gamow's insightful initiative. However, this did not prevent him from describing this colorful personality as a "zany", card-trick playing, limerick-singing, booze-swilling, practical–joking "giant imp".[34]

Gamow worked at George Washington University from 1934 until 1954, when he became a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1956, he moved to the University of Colorado Boulder, where he remained for the rest of his career. In 1956, Gamow became one of the founding members of the Physical Science Study Committee (PSSC), which later reformed teaching of high-school physics in the post-Sputnik years.

In 1959, Gamow, Hans Bethe, and Victor Weisskopf publicly supported the re-entry of Frank Oppenheimer into teaching college physics at the University of Colorado, as the Red Scare began to fade (J. Robert Oppenheimer was the older brother of Frank Oppenheimer, and both of them had worked on the Manhattan Project before their careers in physics were derailed by McCarthyism).[35]: 130  While in Colorado, Frank Oppenheimer became increasingly interested in teaching science through simple hands-on experiments, and he eventually moved to San Francisco to found the Exploratorium.[35]: 130–152  Gamow would not live to see his colleague's opening of this innovative new science museum, in late August 1969.[35]: 152 

In his 1961 book The Atom and its Nucleus, Gamow proposed representing the periodic system of the chemical elements as a continuous tape, with the elements in order of atomic number wound round in a three-dimensional helix whose diameter increased stepwise (corresponding to the longer rows of the conventional periodic table).

Gamow continued his teaching at the University of Colorado Boulder and focused increasingly on writing textbooks and books on science for the general public. After several months of ill health, surgeries on his circulatory system, diabetes, and liver problems, Gamow was dying from liver failure, which he had called the "weak link" that could not withstand the other stresses.

In a letter written to Ralph Alpher on August 18, he had written, "The pain in the abdomen is unbearable and does not stop". Prior to this, there had been a long exchange of letters with his former student, in which he was seeking a fresh understanding of some concepts used in his earlier work, with Paul Dirac. Gamow relied on Alpher for deeper understanding of mathematics.

On August 19, 1968, Gamow died at age 64 in Boulder, Colorado, and was buried there in Green Mountain Cemetery. The physics department tower at the University of Colorado at Boulder is named after him.

John Galsworthy

John Galsworthy was an English novelist and playwright. 

Notable works include The Forsyte Saga (1906–1921) and its sequels, A Modern Comedy and End of the Chapter. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1932.

Galsworthy was born at what is now known as Galsworthy House (then called Parkhurst)[1] on Kingston Hill in Surrey, England, the son of John and Blanche Bailey (née Bartleet) Galsworthy. His family was prosperous and well established, with a large property in Kingston upon Thames that is now the site of three schools: Marymount International School, Rokeby Preparatory School, and Holy Cross Preparatory School. He attended Harrow and New College, Oxford. He took a Second in Law (Jurisprudentia) at Oxford in 1889, then trained as a barrister and was called to the bar in 1890. However, he was not keen to begin practising law and instead travelled abroad to look after the family's trans-European shipping agency. During these travels, he met Joseph Conrad in 1893, then the first mate of a sailing-ship moored in the harbour of Adelaide, Australia, and the two future novelists became close friends. In 1895 Galsworthy began an affair with Ada Nemesis Pearson Cooper (1864–1956), the wife of his cousin Major Arthur Galsworthy. After her divorce ten years later, they were married on 23 September 1905 and stayed together until his death in 1933. Before their marriage, they often stayed clandestinely in a farmhouse called Wingstone that was in the village of Manaton on Dartmoor, Devon. In 1908 Galsworthy took a long lease on part of the building, and it was their regular second home until 1923.

From the Four Winds, a collection of short stories, was Galsworthy's first published work in 1897. These and several subsequent works were published under the pen name of John Sinjohn, and it was not until The Island Pharisees (1904) that he began publishing under his own name, probably owing to the recent death of his father. His first full-length novel, Jocelyn, was published in an edition of 750 under the name of John Sinjohn—he later refused to have it re-published. His first play, The Silver Box (1906),—in which the theft of a prostitute's purse by a rich 'young man of good family' is placed beside the theft of a silver cigarette case from the rich man's father's house by 'a poor devil', with very different repercussions, though justice was clearly done in each case—became a success, and he followed it up with The Man of Property (1906), the first book of a Forsyte trilogy. Although he continued writing both plays and novels, it was as a playwright that he was mainly appreciated at the time. Along with those of other writers of the period, such as George Bernard Shaw, his plays addressed the class system and other social issues, two of the best known being Strife (1909) and The Skin Game (1920).

He is now far better known for his novels, particularly The Forsyte Saga, his trilogy about the eponymous family and connected lives. These books, as with many of his other works, deal with social class, and upper-middle class lives in particular. Although sympathetic to his characters, he highlights their insular, snobbish, and acquisitive attitudes and their suffocating moral codes. He is viewed as one of the first writers of the Edwardian era who challenged some of the ideals of society depicted in the preceding literature of Victorian England. The depiction of a woman in an unhappy marriage furnishes another recurring theme in his work. The character of Irene in The Forsyte Saga is drawn from Ada Pearson, though her previous marriage was not as miserable as that of the character. The publishers William Heinemann were responsible for the publication of much of his work.

In 1924 he agreed to write a preface free of charge, to secure the publication of The Spanish Farm, the debut novel of family friend R. H. Mottram; the book was duly published by Chatto and Windus to great acclaim.

Through his writings Galsworthy campaigned for a variety of causes, including prison reform, women's rights, and animal welfare, and also against censorship. Galsworthy was a supporter of British involvement in the First World War. In an article for The Daily News on 31 August 1914 Galsworthy called for war on Germany to protect Belgium. Galsworthy added "What are we going to do for Belgium — for this most gallant of little countries, ground, because of sheer loyalty, under an iron heel?" During the First World War he worked in a hospital in France as an orderly, after being passed over for military service, and in 1917 turned down a knighthood, for which he was nominated by Prime Minister David Lloyd George, on the precept that a writer's reward comes simply from writing itself.

Galsworthy opposed the slaughter of animals and fought for animal rights. He was also a humanitarian and a member of the Humanitarian League. He opposed hunting and supported the League for the Prohibition of Cruel Sports.

Galsworthy was offered and refused a knighthood in 1918, but he was incorrectly stated to have received the knighthood because his letter to decline the knighthood was lost. Galsworthy was in 1921 elected to be the first president of the PEN International literary association. He was appointed to the Order of Merit in 1929. He was awarded the 1932 Nobel Prize for Literature, after his nomination by Henrik Schück who was a member of the Swedish Academy, and he donated the prize money from the Nobel Prize to PEN International. He was too ill to attend the Nobel Prize Ceremony on 10 December 1932, and he died seven weeks later.

Galsworthy during the final seven years of his life lived at Bury, West Sussex, but he died from a brain tumour at his London home, Grove Lodge in Hampstead, and he was cremated at Woking, after which his ashes were scattered over the South Downs from an aeroplane.

Benny Goodman

Benjamin David Goodman was an American clarinetist and bandleader known as the "King of Swing".

From 1936 until the mid-1940s, Goodman led one of the most popular swing big bands in the United States. His concert at Carnegie Hall in New York City on January 16, 1938, is described by critic Bruce Eder as "the single most important jazz or popular music concert in history: jazz's 'coming out' party to the world of 'respectable' music."

Goodman's bands started the careers of many jazz musicians. During an era of racial segregation, he led one of the first integrated jazz groups, his quartet and quintet. He performed nearly to the end of his life while exploring an interest in classical music.

George Carter

Wilfred George Carter was a British engineer, who was the chief designer at Glosters from 1937. 

He was awarded the C.B.E. in 1947 and was appointed Technical Director of Gloster Aircraft in 1948 remaining on the board of directors until 1954. He continued to serve Glosters for a number of years after his retirement in a consultancy role until 1958. He designed the first British jet aircraft.

Carter had his apprenticeship with W. H. Allen Sons and Co. Ltd of Bedford from 1906–1912. From 1916-20 he was Chief Draughtsman of Sopwith Aviation Company, then Chief Designer from 1920–1924 of Hawker Engineering Co. Ltd, working on the Heron and Hornbill fighter aircraft, and the Horsley bomber. From 1924–1928 he worked with Short Bros of Rochester, designing a seaplane for the 1927 Schneider Trophy. From 1928–1931, Carter worked for de Havilland. From 1935–1936, he also worked for Avro.

Carter joined the Gloucestershire (later Gloster) Aircraft Company, at Brockworth, Gloucestershire, in 1931. He initially worked on the De Havilland DH.72 bomber (only one was ever built), which was given to Gloster from de Havilland.

At Gloster Aircraft, Carter was instrumental in the design of two of the most significant biplane fighters for the RAF, the Gauntlet and Gladiator. Carter also designed the Gloster F.9/37 a promising twin-engine (Bristol Taurus) fighter design that never entered production, before he turned to work on jet aircraft. He was Chief Designer from 1936–1948. In 1934 Gloster had been taken over by Hawker, causing the chief designer, Henry Folland, to leave, making way for his successor.

It was during a visit by Frank Whittle to Gloster that Carter became involved in the development of jet aircraft. At the time Gloster were working on a twin-boom fighter, for specification F.18/37 - also used for the Hawker Typhoon, to be powered by a Napier Sabre piston engine which attracted the attention of Whittle who thought that the layout would be suitable for his new engine. Although the design Whittle saw would not progress beyond the project stage, within a few weeks, Carter was asked by the Air Ministry to submit plans for a brand new aircraft to use Whittle's engine. He agreed to the project before seeing the engine for himself. While not impressed with the engine itself, when he saw it running he was convinced that it could develop into a suitable powerplant given what they had managed to achieve in the somewhat primitive conditions at Lutterworth.

The Gloster E.28/39 was designed primarily to prove the concept of turbojet powered flight, the Air Ministry however insisted that the design include provision for four guns and 2,000 rounds of ammunition even if these were not fitted in the prototype. The contract to build the E.28/39 also known as the Pioneer was placed with Gloster on 3 February 1940. The aircraft was built in secret at the Regents garage, Cheltenham and first flew on 15 April 1941 at RAF Cranwell, becoming the first British and Allied jet aircraft.

Even before the Pioneer flew, the Air Ministry encouraged Carter to design a practical jet fighter since the Pioneer was not suitable because it was unlikely that an engine of at least 2,000 lbf (8.9 kN) thrust would be available in the near future. Carter therefore decided that the design would require two engines. The result was designated the F.9/40 which first flew on 5 March 1943 and would find worldwide fame as the Gloster Meteor. His later designs included the E.1/44. He supervised the design of the Gloster GA-5 delta-wing fighter (later the Gloster Javelin which first flew in 1951 from RAF Moreton Valence south of Gloucester), which was designed by Richard Walker (Gloster's chief designer) and powered by Armstrong Siddeley Sapphire engines.

Willard Van Orman Quine

Willard Van Orman Quine was an American philosopher and logician in the analytic tradition, recognized as "one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century."

From 1930 until his death 70 years later, Quine was continually affiliated with Harvard University in one way or another, first as a student, then as a professor. He filled the Edgar Pierce Chair of Philosophy at Harvard from 1956 to 1978.

Quine grew up in Akron, Ohio, where he lived with his parents and older brother Robert Cloyd. His father, Cloyd Robert, was a manufacturing entrepreneur (founder of the Akron Equipment Company, which produced tire molds) and his mother, Harriett E., was a schoolteacher and later a housewife. 

Quine received his B.A. summa cum laude in mathematics from Oberlin College in 1930, and his Ph.D. in philosophy from Harvard University in 1932. His thesis supervisor was Alfred North Whitehead. He was then appointed a Harvard Junior Fellow, which excused him from having to teach for four years. During the academic year 1932–33, he travelled in Europe thanks to a Sheldon fellowship, meeting Polish logicians (including Stanislaw Lesniewski and Alfred Tarski) and members of the Vienna Circle (including Rudolf Carnap), as well as the logical positivist A. J. Ayer.

Quine arranged for Tarski to be invited to the September 1939 Unity of Science Congress in Cambridge, for which the Jewish Tarski sailed on the last ship to leave Danzig before Nazi Germany invaded Poland and triggered World War II. Tarski survived the war and worked another 44 years in the US. During the war, Quine lectured on logic in Brazil, in Portuguese, and served in the United States Navy in a military intelligence role, deciphering messages from German submarines, and reaching the rank of lieutenant commander. Quine could lecture in French, Spanish, Portuguese and German, as well as his native English.

Quine was politically conservative, but the bulk of his writing was in technical areas of philosophy removed from direct political issues. He did, however, write in defense of several conservative positions: for example, he wrote in defense of moral censorship; while, in his autobiography, he made some criticisms of American postwar academics.

At Harvard, Quine helped supervise the Harvard graduate theses of, among others, David Lewis, Gilbert Harman, Dagfinn Føllesdal, Hao Wang, Hugues LeBlanc, Henry Hiz and George Myro. For the academic year 1964–1965, Quine was a fellow on the faculty in the Center for Advanced Studies at Wesleyan University.[24] In 1980 Quine received an honorary doctorate from the Faculty of Humanities at Uppsala University, Sweden.

Quine's student Dagfinn Føllesdal noted that Quine began to lose his memory toward the end of his life. The deterioration of his short-term memory was so severe that he struggled to continue following arguments. Quine also had considerable difficulty in his project to make the desired revisions to Word and Object. Before passing away, Quine noted to Morton White: "I do not remember what my illness is called, Althusser or Alzheimer, but since I cannot remember it, it must be Alzheimer." He died from the illness on Christmas Day in 2000.

John Crowe Ransom

John Crowe Ransom was an American educator, scholar, literary critic, poet, essayist and editor. 

He is considered to be a founder of the New Criticism school of literary criticism. As a faculty member at Kenyon College, he was the first editor of the widely regarded Kenyon Review. Highly respected as a teacher and mentor to a generation of accomplished students, he also was a prize-winning poet and essayist.

John Crowe Ransom was born on April 30, 1888, in Pulaski, Tennessee. His father, John James Ransom (1853–1934) was a Methodist minister. His mother was Sara Ella (Crowe) Ransom (1859–1947). He had two sisters, Annie Phillips and Ella Irene, and one brother, Richard. He grew up in Spring Hill, Franklin, Springfield, and Nashville, Tennessee. He was homeschooled until age ten. From 1899 to 1903, he attended the Bowen School, a public school whose headmaster was Vanderbilt alumnus Angus Gordon Bowen.

He entered Vanderbilt University in Nashville at the age of fifteen, graduating first in his class in 1909. His philosophy professor was Collins Denny, later a Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. Ransom interrupted his studies for two years to teach sixth and seventh grades at the Taylorsville High School in Taylorsville, Mississippi, followed by teaching Latin and Greek at the Haynes-McLean School in Lewisburg, Tennessee. After teaching one more year in Lewisburg, he was selected as a Rhodes Scholar. He attended Christ Church, Oxford, 1910–13, where he read Greats.

Ransom taught Latin for one year at the Hotchkiss School alongside Samuel Claggett Chew. He was then appointed to the English department at Vanderbilt University in 1914. During the First World War, he served as an artillery officer in France. After the war, he returned to Vanderbilt. He was a founding member of the Fugitives, a Southern literary group of sixteen writers that functioned primarily as a kind of poetry workshop and included Donald Davidson, Allen Tate, and Robert Penn Warren. Under their influence, Ransom, whose first interest had been philosophy (specifically John Dewey and American pragmatism) began writing poetry. His first volume of poems, Poems about God (1919), was praised by Robert Frost and Robert Graves. The Fugitive Group had a special interest in Modernist poetry and, under Ransom's editorship, started a short-lived but highly influential magazine, called The Fugitive, which published American Modernist poets, mainly from the South (though they also published Northerners like Hart Crane). Out of all the Fugitive poets, Norton poetry editors Richard Ellmann and Robert O'Clair opined that, "[Ransom's poems were] among the most remarkable," characterizing his poetry as "quirky" and "at times eccentric."

In 1930, alongside eleven other Southern Agrarians, he published the conservative, Agrarian manifesto I'll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition, which assailed the tide of industrialism that appeared to be sweeping away traditional Southern culture. The Agrarians believed that the Southern tradition, rooted in the pre-Civil War agricultural model, was the answer to the South's economic and cultural problems. His contribution to I'll Take My Stand is his essay Reconstructed but Unregenerate which starts the book and lays out the Southern Agrarians' basic argument. In various essays influenced by his Agrarian beliefs, Ransom defended the manifesto's assertion that modern industrial capitalism was a dehumanizing force that the South should reject in favor of an agrarian economic model. However, by the late 1930s he began to distance himself from the movement, and in 1945, he publicly criticized it. He remained an active essayist until his death even though, by the 1970s, the popularity and influence of the New Critics had seriously diminished.

In 1937, he accepted a position at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio. He was the founding editor of the Kenyon Review, and continued as editor until his retirement in 1959. In 1966, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

He has few peers among twentieth-century American university teachers of humanities; his distinguished students included Donald Davidson, Randall Jarrell, George Lanning, Robert Lowell, Andrew Lytle, Allen Tate, Peter Taylor, Robie Macauley, Robert Penn Warren, E.L. Doctorow, Cleanth Brooks, Richard M. Weaver, James Wright, and Constantinos Patrides (himself a Rhodes Scholar, who dedicated his monograph on John Milton's Lycidas to Ransom's memory). His literary reputation is based chiefly on two collections of poetry, Chills and Fever (1924) and Two Gentlemen in Bonds (1927). Believing he had no new themes upon which to write, his subsequent poetic activity consisted almost entirely of revising ("tinkering", he called it) his earlier poems. Hence Ransom's reputation as a poet is based on the fewer than 160 poems he wrote and published between 1916 and 1927. In 1963, the poet/critic and former Ransom student Randall Jarrell published an essay in which he highly praised Ransom's poetry:

In John Crowe Ransom's best poems every part is subordinated to the whole, and the whole is accomplished with astonishing exactness and thoroughness. Their economy, precision, and restraint gives the poems, sometimes, an original yet impersonal perfection . . . And sometimes their phrasing is magical—light as air, soft as dew, the real old-fashioned enchantment. The poems satisfy our nostalgia for the past, yet themselves have none. They are reports . . . of our world's old war between power and love, between those who efficiently and practically know and those who are "content to feel/ What others understand." And these reports of battles are, somehow, bewitching . . . Ransom's poems profess their limitations so candidly, almost as a principle of style, that it is hardly necessary to say they are not poems of the largest scope or the greatest intensity. But they are some of the most original poems ever written, just as Ransom is one of the best, most original, and most sympathetic poets alive; it is easy to see that his poetry will always be cared for, since he has written poems that are perfectly realized and occasionally almost perfect."

Despite the brevity of his poetic career and output, Ransom won the Bollingen Prize for Poetry in 1951. His 1963 Selected Poems received the National Book Award the following year.

He primarily wrote short poems examining the ironic and unsentimental nature of life (with domestic life in the American South being a major theme). An example of his Southern style is his poem "Janet Waking", which "mixes modernist with old-fashioned country rhetoric." He was noted as a strict formalist, using both regular rhyme and meter in almost all of his poems. He also occasionally employed archaic diction. Ellman and O'Clair note that "[Ransom] defends formalism because he sees in it a check on bluntness, on brutality. Without formalism, he insists, poets simply rape or murder their subjects." 

He was a leading figure of the school of literary criticism known as the New Criticism, which gained its name from his 1941 volume of essays The New Criticism. The New Critical theory, which dominated American literary thought throughout the middle 20th century, emphasized close reading, and criticism based on the texts themselves rather than on non-textual bias or non-textual history. In his seminal 1937 essay, "Criticism, Inc." Ransom laid out his ideal form of literary criticism stating that, "criticism must become more scientific, or precise and systematic." To this end, he argued that personal responses to literature, historical scholarship, linguistic scholarship, and what he termed "moral studies" should not influence literary criticism. He also argued that literary critics should regard a poem as an aesthetic object. Many of the ideas he explained in this essay would become very important in the development of The New Criticism. "Criticism, Inc." and a number of Ransom's other theoretical essays set forth some of the guiding principles that the New Critics would build upon. Still, his former students, specifically Allen Tate, Cleanth Brooks, and Robert Penn Warren, had a greater hand in developing many of the key concepts (like "close reading") that later came to define the New Criticism.

In 1951, he was awarded the Russell Loines Award for Poetry from the National Institute of Arts and Letters.

In 1920, he married Robb Reavill, a well-educated young woman who shared his interest in sports and games. Together they raised three children: a daughter, Helen, and two sons, David and John.

Ransom died on July 3, 1974, in Gambier at the age of eighty-six. He was buried at the Kenyon College Cemetery in Gambier.

James Reston

James Barrett Reston, nicknamed "Scotty", was an American journalist whose career spanned the mid-1930s to the early 1990s. He was associated for many years with The New York Times.

Reston was born on November 3, 1909 in Clydebank, Scotland, into a poor, devout Scottish Presbyterian family that emigrated to the United States in 1920. He sailed with his mother and sister to New York as steerage passengers on board SS Mobile, and they were inspected at Ellis Island on September 28, 1920.

The family settled in the Dayton, Ohio area, and Reston graduated from Oakwood High School. In 1927, he was a medalist in the first Ohio High School Golf Championship. He was Ohio Public Links champion in 1931 and in 1932 was a member of the University of Illinois' Big Ten championship team.

After working briefly for the Springfield, Ohio Daily News, he joined the Associated Press in 1934. He moved to the London bureau of The New York Times in 1939, but returned to New York in 1940. In 1942, he took leave of absence to establish a U.S. Office of War Information in London. Rejoining the Times in 1945, Reston was assigned to Washington, D.C., as national correspondent. In 1948, he was appointed diplomatic correspondent. (During the August 27, 1948, radio broadcast over which he presided, his title is Pulitzer Prize–winning bureau chief.) In 1953, he became bureau chief and columnist.

In subsequent years, Reston served as associate editor of the Times from 1964 to 1968, executive editor from 1968 to 1969, and vice president from 1969 to 1974. He wrote a nationally syndicated column from 1974 until 1987, when he became a senior columnist. During the Nixon administration, he was on the master list of Nixon political opponents. Reston retired from the Times in 1989. Reston was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1980.

Reston interviewed many of the world's leaders and wrote extensively about the leading events and issues of his time. He interviewed President John F. Kennedy immediately after the 1961 Vienna summit with Nikita Khrushchev on the heels of the Bay of Pigs invasion. Stephen Kinzer's 2013 book The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War portrayed Reston as a key contact of former CIA chief Allen Dulles who had collaborated with the CIA in Operation Mockingbird, in which the agency sought to influence global reporting and journalism.

Reston married his wife, Sally (born Sarah Jane Fulton), on December 24, 1935, after meeting her at the University of Illinois. He also was a member of Sigma Pi fraternity's Phi Chapter at Illinois. They had three sons; James, a journalist, non-fiction writer and playwright; Thomas, formerly Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for public affairs and the deputy spokesman for the State Department; and Richard, the retired publisher of the Vineyard Gazette, a newspaper on Martha's Vineyard purchased by the elder Reston in 1968.

While at Illinois, he was roommates with John C. Evans, who was also a Sigma Pi brother.

He died on December 6, 1995at age 86 in Washington, D.C.

Albert Sabin

Albert Bruce Sabin was a Polish-American medical researcher, best known for developing the oral polio vaccine, which has played a key role in nearly eradicating the disease. In 1969–72, he served as the president of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel.

Abram Saperstejn, later Albert Sabin, was born on August 26, 1906 in Białystok, Russian Empire, to Polish-Jewish parents, Jacob Saperstejn and Tillie Krugman. In 1921, he emigrated with his family on the SS Lapland which sailed from Antwerp, Belgium, to the Port of New York. In 1930, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States and changed his name to Sabin, as well as assuming the middle name Bruce. He graduated from high school in Paterson, New Jersey.

Sabin began university in a dentistry program, but was interested in virology and changed majors. He received a bachelor's degree in science in 1928 and a medical degree in 1931 from New York University.

Sabin trained in internal medicine, pathology, and surgery at Bellevue Hospital in New York City from 1931 to 1933. In 1934, he conducted research at The Lister Institute for Preventive Medicine in England, then joined the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research (now Rockefeller University). During this time, he developed an intense interest in research, especially in the area of infectious diseases.

In 1939, he moved to Cincinnati Children's Hospital in Cincinnati, Ohio. During World War II, he was a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Medical Corps and helped develop a vaccine against Japanese encephalitis. Maintaining his association with Children's Hospital, by 1946, he had also become the head of Pediatric Research at the University of Cincinnati. At Cincinnati's Children's Hospital, Sabin supervised the fellowship of Robert M. Chanock, whom he called his "star scientific son."

Sabin went on a fact-finding trip to Cuba in 1967 to discuss with Cuban officials the possibility of establishing a collaborative relationship between the United States and Cuba through their respective national academies of sciences, in spite of the fact that the two countries did not have formal diplomatic ties.

In 1969–72, he lived in Israel, serving as President of Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot. After his return to the United States, he worked (1974–82) as a research professor at the Medical University of South Carolina. He later moved to Washington, D.C. area, where he was a resident scholar at the John E. Fogarty International Center on the NIH campus in Bethesda, Maryland.

In 1983, Sabin developed calcification of the cervical spine, which caused paralysis and intense pain. Sabin revealed in a television interview that the experience had made him decide to spend the rest of his life working on alleviating pain. This condition was successfully treated by surgery conducted at Johns Hopkins Hospital in 1992 when Sabin was 86. A year later, Sabin died in Washington, D.C., from heart failure.

Siegfried Sassoon

Siegfried Loraine Sassoon (8 September 1886 – 1 September 1967) was an English war poet, writer, and soldier. 

Decorated for bravery on the Western Front, he became one of the leading poets of the First World War. His poetry both described the horrors of the trenches and satirised the patriotic pretensions of those who, in Sassoon's view, were responsible for a jingoism-fuelled war. Sassoon became a focal point for dissent within the armed forces when he made a lone protest against the continuation of the war in his "Soldier's Declaration" of 1917, culminating in his admission to a military psychiatric hospital; this resulted in his forming a friendship with Wilfred Owen, who was greatly influenced by him. Sassoon later won acclaim for his prose work, notably his three-volume fictionalised autobiography, collectively known as the "Sherston trilogy".

Karl Shapiro

Karl Jay Shapiro was an American poet. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1945 for his collection V-Letter and Other Poems. He was appointed the fifth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1946.

Karl Shapiro was born on November 10, 1913 and initially raised in Baltimore, Maryland. After spending much of his childhood and adolescence in Chicago, Illinois, the family returned to Baltimore, where he completed his secondary education at Baltimore City College. He briefly attended the University of Virginia during the 1932-1933 academic year, and immortalized it in a scathing poem called "University", which noted that "to hurt the Negro and avoid the Jew is the curriculum." His first volume of poetry was published by a family friend at the behest of his uncle in 1935. After continuing his studies at the Peabody Institute (where he majored in piano performance), he attended Johns Hopkins University on a scholarship from 1937 to 1939. In 1940, he enrolled in a library science school associated with Baltimore's Enoch Pratt Free Library, where he was also employed.

Shapiro wrote poetry in the Pacific Theater while he served there as a United States Army company clerk during World War II. Throughout the conflict, he engaged in near-daily correspondence with his fiancée and first wife, Evalyn Katz (m. 1945-1967), who moved to New York City to act as his literary agent in 1942. In this capacity, Katz facilitated the publication of much of his early oeuvre. His collection V-Letter and Other Poems, written while Shapiro was stationed in New Guinea, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1945, while Shapiro was still in the military. From 1946 to 1947, he served as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, succeeding Louise Bogan; this position was reclassified by Congress in 1985 as the Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress.

Poems from his earlier books display a mastery of formal verse with a modern sensibility that viewed such topics as automobiles, house flies, and drug stores as worthy of attention. In 1963, the poet/critic Randall Jarrell praised Shapiro's work:

Karl Shapiro's poems are fresh and young and rash and live; their hard clear outlines, their flat bold colors create a world like that of a knowing and skillful neo-primitive painting, without any of the confusion or profundity of atmosphere, of aerial perspective, but with notable visual and satiric force. The poet early perfected a style, derived from Auden but decidedly individual, which he has not developed in later life but has temporarily replaced with the clear Rilke-like rhetoric of his Adam and Eve poems, the frankly Whitmanesque convolutions of his latest work. His best poem--poems like "The Leg", "Waitress", "Scyros", "Going to School", "Cadillac"--have a real precision, a memorable exactness of realization, yet they plainly come out of life's raw hubbub, out of the disgraceful foundations, the exciting and disgraceful surfaces of existence.

In his later work, he repudiated the epochal influence of Ezra Pound (whom he voted against in the inaugural Bollingen Prize deliberations in 1949, citing the poet's antisemitism) and T.S. Eliot, drawing instead upon the stylistic innovations of the Beat Generation and its progenitors, including Walt Whitman, D.H. Lawrence, Dylan Thomas, Henry Miller and William Carlos Williams. However, Morris Dickstein would later opine that his "maverick role seemed strictly literary" vis-à-vis the alternative lifestyles of such Sixties "culture heroes" as Norman Mailer and Allen Ginsberg. Nevertheless, this immersion led to experimentation with more open forms, beginning with The Bourgeois Poet (1964) and continuing with White-Haired Lover (1968). His interest in formal verse and prosody led to his writing multiple books on the subject, including the long poem Essay on Rime (1945), A Bibliography of Modern Prosody (1948), and A Prosody Handbook (with Robert Beum, 1965; reissued 2006). His Selected Poems appeared in 1968. Shapiro also published one novel, Edsel (1971), and a two-volume memoir (1988–1990).

Although he never completed his undergraduate degree, Shapiro returned to Johns Hopkins as an associate professor of writing from 1947 to 1950. Based again in Chicago, he served as the full-time editor of Poetry from 1950 to 1956. During this period, he served as a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley (1955–1956) and as a visiting fellow at Indiana University (1956–1957). Thereafter, he returned to academia in earnest, serving as a professor of English and editor of Prairie Schooner at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln for a decade (1956-1966). After briefly joining the faculty of the University of Illinois Chicago from 1966 to 1968, he moved to the University of California, Davis, where he became professor emeritus of English in 1985.

His other works include Person, Place and Thing (1942), the libretto to Hugo Weisgall's opera The Tenor (1950; with Ernst Lert), To Abolish Children (1968) and The Old Horsefly (1993). Shapiro also received the 1969 Bollingen Prize, sharing the award with John Berryman.

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By 1984, Shapiro began to divide his time between California and an apartment in the Manhattan Valley section of the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where he initially spent at least half the year. He became a full-time resident of New York in 1994. In 1985, Richard Tillinghast of The New York Times Book Review asserted that Shapiro had become "more a name than a presence," and he obtained a settlement from the American Medical Association after the organization "mistakenly included him in a list of writers who had committed suicide." As early as 1978, Shapiro had been erroneously characterized as a "late U.S. poet" in a New York Times crossword puzzle clue.

He died at a New York City hospice, aged 86, on May 14, 2000.

Jack Cannot

John Valentine Cannot, better known as Jack Cannot (1883–1929), was an English-Australian comic of stage and screen.

He was born in England and eventually went to South Africa where he toured for two years in various stage productions, including The Merry Widow. He then moved to Australia in 1910 under contract to J. C. Williamson Ltd. They used him in pantomimes such as Jack and the Beanstalk as well as various musical comedies.

The advent of talking films made it more difficult for him to find work and he was in financial distress. Cannot later killed himself with strychnine at Maroubra Beach.

William E. Simon

William Edward Simon was an American businessman and philanthropist who served as the 63rd United States Secretary of the Treasury. He became the Secretary of the Treasury on May 9, 1974, during the Nixon administration. After Nixon resigned, Simon was reappointed by President Gerald Ford and served until 1977 when President Jimmy Carter took office. Outside of government, he was a successful businessman and philanthropist. The William E. Simon Foundation carries on this legacy. 

Simon was born in Paterson, New Jersey, on November 27, 1927, the son of Eleanor (née Kearns) and Charles Simon, Jr., an insurance executive. He attended Blair Academy and graduated from Newark Academy, where he focused more on sports than scholastic pursuits. After service in the infantry of the US Army, he received his B.A. in 1952 from Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania. There, he was a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity (Rho Chapter). In his later life, Simon was a member of the board of trustees from 1972 to 1973.

He began his career with Union Securities in 1952. He served as vice president of Weeden & Co. before he became the senior partner in charge of the Government and Municipal Bond Departments at Salomon Brothers, where he was a member of the firm's seven-man Executive Committee.

A meeting of Nixon Administration economic advisors and cabinet members on May 7, 1974. Clockwise from Richard Nixon: George Shultz, James T. Lynn, Alexander Haig, Roy Ash, Herbert Stein, and William E. Simon.

At the time of his nomination as Treasury Secretary, Simon was serving as Deputy Secretary of the Treasury, a post he had held from January 22, 1973. As Deputy Secretary, he supervised the Nixon administration's program to restructure and improve U.S. financial institutions. He also served as the first Administrator of the Federal Energy Office. From December 4, 1973, Simon simultaneously launched and administered the Federal Energy Administration at the height of the oil embargo. As such he became known as the high-profile "Energy Czar", and represented a revitalization of the "czar" term in U.S. politics. He also chaired the President's Oil Policy Committee and was instrumental in revising the mandatory oil import program in April 1973. Simon was a member of the President's Energy Resources Council and continued to have major responsibility for coordinating both domestic and international energy policy.

In August 1974, only three months after Simon became Secretary of the Treasury, President Nixon resigned. Simon was asked to continue to serve at Treasury by President Gerald R. Ford, Jr., who shortly afterward appointed him chairman of the Economic Policy Board and chief spokesman for the administration on economic issues. On April 8, 1975, President Ford also named him chairman of the newly created East-West Foreign Trade Board, established under the authority of the Trade Act of 1974.

In 1977, Simon received the Alexander Hamilton Award, the Treasury Department's highest honor. In 1976, while serving as Secretary of the Treasury, President Anwar Sadat of Egypt presented Simon with the Collar of the Republic/Order of the Nile. Simon's term as Secretary of the Treasury ended on January 20, 1977.

As Treasury Secretary, Simon claimed to support free markets and to spurn government policies that either subsidized or penalized businesses. 

Simon attempted to purchase controlling interest in the Baltimore Orioles from Jerold Hoffberger for $12 million, but it aroused fears that he was going to move the franchise to Washington, D.C. Negotiations which began in the summer of 1978 ended when he withdrew his offer on February 5, 1979. He bitterly complained, "Mr. Hoffberger wants to play both ends against the middle. Well, he can forget this end. I think at this point and at this time the game is over. He has damaged the merchandise and acted in bad faith. I think I've been played dirty pool everywhere to Sunday." The Orioles were acquired at the same price six months later on August 2 by Edward Bennett Williams who had represented Simon in those negotiations.

Simon was a pioneer of the leveraged buyout (LBO) in the 1980s. Following government service, Simon was a Vice Chairman at Blyth Eastman Dillon for three years, He and his partner, then co-founded with Ray Chambers, a tax accountant, Wesray Capital Corporation (Simon contributing the "Wes" and Chambers contributing the "ray" based on his initials), an LBO firm that bought and sold, among others, the Gibson Greeting Card Company, Anchor Glass, and the Simmons Mattress Company, typically investing tiny fractions of their own money and including significant debt to complete the purchase from prior shareholders, and then selling the companies whole or piecemeal after making changes that "often included job cutbacks and other short-term cost-reduction measures." In 1982, Wesray invested approximately $1 million in equity capital (with Simon contributing $330,000) and borrowed another $79 million to take private a Cincinnati-based greeting card company, Gibson Greetings, for $80 million. Eighteen months later, the company was taken public again, with a value of $290 million, and Simon's $330,000 investment was worth $66 million.

In 1984, he launched WSGP International, which concentrated on investments in real estate and financial service organizations in the western United States and on the Pacific Rim. In 1988, together with sons William E. Simon Jr. and J. Peter Simon, he founded William E. Simon & Sons, a global merchant bank with offices in New Jersey, Los Angeles, and Hong Kong. In 1990, he partnered with several investors to form Catterton-Simon Partners, a private equity firm focused on beverages and other consumer products, which today is known as Catterton Partners.

In the Anchor Glass case, Simon made millions more through deals with the company wherein the company leased its land, buildings, and equipment from Simon. Wesray also received banking fees for handling the subsequent purchase by Anchor of Midland Glass Company. Anchor Glass also bought casualty, liability, employee health and benefit insurance from a brokerage firm partially owned by Simon. The Anchor Glass corporate headquarters in Tampa was leased from Simon. Anchor Glass later admitted in an SEC filing, that "these arrangements ... were not the result of arm's length bargaining ... [and] were not ... favorable to the company". Anchor Glass was finally bought by a Mexican company, Vitro, S.A. 

Simmons Mattress Company, a company founded in 1886, was bought by Wesray and partners bought in 1986 for $120 million and sold it in 1989 for $241 million.

By the late 1980s, Forbes magazine was estimating Simon's wealth at $300 million. During his business career, Simon served on the boards of over thirty companies including Xerox, Citibank, Halliburton, Dart & Kraft, and United Technologies. In 2017, William E. Simon & Sons merged with Massy Quick & Company in an all-equity transaction.

Simon was a resident of Harding Township, New Jersey. The superyacht Itasca was owned by Simon, the first such yacht to pass through the Northwest Passage, followed by a visit to Antarctica.

He was married first to Carol Girard in 1950. William and Carol Simon had two sons and five daughters (Bill, J. Peter, Mary Beth, Carol Leigh, Aimee, Julie Ann and Johanna) and 27 grandchildren. She died in 1995. Simon married his second wife, Tonia Adams Donnelley in 1996.

Simon died of complications of pulmonary fibrosis at the age of 72, on June 3, 2000 in Santa Barbara, California. 

Sam Spiegel

Samuel P. Spiegel was an American independent film producer born in the Galician area of Austria-Hungary. Financially responsible for some of the most critically acclaimed motion pictures of the 20th century, Spiegel produced films that won the Academy Award for Best Picture three times, a Hollywood first for a sole independent producer.

Spiegel was born on November 11, 1901 to a German-speaking Jewish family in Jarosław, Galicia, Austria-Hungary (until 1772 in Polish Crown, now in Poland). His parents were Regina and Simon Spiegel, a tobacco wholesaler. He received his education at the University of Vienna. He had an older brother, Shalom Spiegel (1899-c. 1984), who was a professor of medieval Hebrew poetry.

Spiegel worked briefly in Hollywood in 1927 following a stint serving with Hashomer Hatzair in Palestine. He then went to Berlin to produce German and French adaptations of Universal films. In 1933 he fled Germany following the election of the Nazi party and increased antisemitism. As an independent producer, Spiegel helped produce a number of European films.

In 1938, he emigrated to Mexico and subsequently the United States. Between 1935 and 1954, Spiegel billed himself as S. P. Eagle; after that he used his real name. His nickname was the "velvet octopus" after his propensity to entwine himself with women in the back of taxis and manage Hollywood with a velvet touch according to Billy Wilder. He loved London and admired the British, as is reflected in his films The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) and Lawrence of Arabia (1962), both of which won seven Academy Awards including Best Picture. Starting with the 1951 film The African Queen, he produced films through his British-based production company Horizon Pictures.

In a review in Variety of Natasha Fraser-Cavassoni's biography of Spiegel, Wendy Smith notes: "It's all here: the sleazy financial maneuvers and creepy taste for underage girls that make Spiegel a decidedly flawed protagonist, as well as the wit, sophistication, and Old World charm that make him a titanic figure the likes of which the movie industry will not see again"

Spiegel won the Academy Award for Best Picture for Elia Kazan's On the Waterfront as well as for The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) and Lawrence of Arabia (1962), both directed by Briton David Lean. In 1963, he was awarded the Irving Thalberg Memorial Award at that year's Academy Awards for his many contributions to cinema.

Spiegel died on December 31, 1985.

William Siri

William E. Siri was an American biophysicist, mountaineer and environmentalist.

He was born on January 2, 1919 in Audubon, New Jersey where he attended Audubon High School.

Siri graduated from the University of Chicago with a bachelor's degree in physics in 1942. He joined the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (then called the Radiation Laboratory) in 1943 and spent his entire career there. He was assigned to the Manhattan Project from 1943 to 1945. His post-war scientific work was in the field of nuclear medicine, with an emphasis on the use of radioisotopes to study red blood cells in humans. He edited the Handbook of Radioactivity and Tracer Methodology, published by the Army Air Corps in 1948. He developed an interest in how red blood cells respond to physiological stress, such as exposure to high elevations. He was a member of a research team headed by John H. Lawrence.

In 1954, he led a ten-man Sierra Club expedition that unsuccessfully attempted to climb Makalu. They were turned back by bad weather at 23,000 feet. This was the first American expedition to the Himalaya.

In 1957, he participated in a joint American-British Antarctic expedition which studied the effects of extreme cold on human blood.

He was deputy leader and scientific coordinator of the successful American expedition to Mount Everest in 1963 that put five Americans and a Sherpa on the summit, although Siri himself did not make it to the summit. About Everest, Siri wrote, "Other mountains share with Everest a history of adventure, glory and tragedy, but only Everest is the highest place on earth. More than two-thirds of the earth's atmosphere lies below its summit, and for an unacclimatized man without oxygen, the top of the mountain is more endurable than outer space by only two or three minutes. The primitive, often brutal struggle to reach its top is an irresistible challenge to our built-in need for adventure."

Siri served on the board of directors of the Sierra Club from 1956 to 1974. He served as president of the Sierra Club from 1964 to 1966. He was the winner of the Sierra Club's Francis P. Farquhar Mountaineering Award for 1979.

Siri died on August 24, 2004 of pneumonia at his home in Berkeley, California after suffering from Alzheimer's disease for a decade.

Percy D. Hanson

Percy D. Hanson was a Forester.

Percy “Pete” Hanson was born in 1901 in New Brunswick, Canada. He graduated from the University of California Forestry School in 1924, and spent the following year at that institution as Associate Professor in Forestry. He joined the Forest Service in 1926 and spent the next 18 years in the California region.

In 1935, Hanson became the Forest Supervisor of the Lassen National Forest . From 1938 to 1940, he headed the forest fire replanning project for Region 5, responsible for setting up fire prevention and suppression plans. He returned to the Lassen as Forest Supervisor a short time and then became Assistant Regional Forester in charge of Timber Management until his promotion to Regional Forester of Region 1 in Missoula, Montana. In 1956, Hanson transferred to Juneau, Alaska, to become Regional

Forester in the Alaska Region. Hanson continued the process of moving from forest protection to forest management. New mills were established and timber production increased. Hanson had funds for infrastructure improvement. New facilities, including ranger stations and warehouses, replaced substandard units which were torn down. Portage Glacier Highway, Hope Road, Sitka-Henry Cove Road,

Mitkof Highway, and roads in Yakutat were finally built. Cabins and trails were built for hunters. Recreational planning was emphasized, and the Visitor Information Center and nature trails at Mendenhall Glacier were constructed. Hanson saw Alaska become the 49th state in 1959, and this increased the need for improved cooperation between the state and federal agencies.

Hanson passed away in 1988.

James V. Forrestal

James Vincent Forrestal was the last Cabinet-level United States Secretary of the Navy and the first United States Secretary of Defense.

Forrestal was born on February 15, 1892 to a very strict middle-class Irish Catholic family. He was a successful financier on Wall Street before becoming Undersecretary of the Navy in 1940, shortly before the United States entered the Second World War. He became Secretary of the Navy in May 1944 upon the death of his superior, Frank Knox. President Franklin D. Roosevelt requested that Forrestal take the lead in building up the Navy. In 1947, after the end of the war, President Harry S. Truman appointed him the first secretary of the newly created Department of Defense. Forrestal was intensely hostile to the Soviet Union, fearing Communist expansion in Europe and the Middle East. Along with Secretary of State George C. Marshall, he strongly opposed the United States' support for the establishment of the State of Israel, fearing that this would alienate Arab nations which were needed as allies, and whose petroleum reserves were vital for both military and civilian industrial expansion.

Forrestal was a supporter of naval battle groups centered on aircraft carriers. He tried to weaken the proposed Department of Defense for the Navy's benefit, but was hard pressed to run it from 1947 to 1949 after Truman named him Secretary of Defense. The two men were often at odds, and Truman forced Forrestal's resignation.

Thereafter, Forrestal's mental health rapidly deteriorated, declining to the point in which he underwent medical care for depression. While a patient at Bethesda Naval Hospital, Forrestal died on May 22, 1949 by suicide from fatal injuries sustained after falling out a sixteenth floor window.

In 1954, the USN's new supercarrier was named USS Forrestal in his honor, as is the James V. Forrestal Building, which houses the headquarters of the United States Department of Energy. He is the namesake of the Forrestal Lecture Series at the United States Naval Academy and of the James Forrestal Campus of his alma mater Princeton University.

Maxwell Anderson

James Maxwell Anderson was an American playwright, author, poet, journalist, and lyricist.

Anderson was born on December 15, 1888, in Atlantic, Pennsylvania, the second of eight children to William Lincoln "Link" Anderson, a Baptist minister, and Charlotte Perrimela ('Premely') Stephenson, both of Scotch-Irish descent. His family initially lived on his maternal grandmother Sheperd's farm in Atlantic, then moved to Andover, Ohio, where his father became a railroad fireman while studying to become a minister. They moved often, to follow their father's ministerial posts, and Maxwell was frequently sick, missing a great deal of school. He used his time sick in bed to read voraciously, and both his parents and Aunt Emma were storytellers, which contributed to Anderson's love of literature.

During a visit to his grandmother's house in Atlantic, at age 11, he met the first love of his life, Hallie Loomis, a slightly older girl from a wealthier family. His autobiographical tale, Morning, Winter and Night told of rape, incest and sadomasochism on the farm. It was published under a pseudonym, John Nairne Michealson, to prevent offending family. The Andersons bounced between Andover, Ohio, Richmond Center, Ohio, Townville, Pa., Edinboro, Pa., McKeesport, Pa., New Brighton, Pa., Harrisburg, Pa., to Jamestown, North Dakota in 1907, where Anderson attended Jamestown High School, graduating in 1908.

As an undergraduate, he waited tables and worked at the night copy desk of the Grand Forks Herald, and was active in the school's literary and dramatic societies. He obtained a BA in English Literature from the University of North Dakota in 1911. He became the principal of a high school in Minnewaukan, North Dakota, also teaching English there, but was fired in 1913 for making pacifist statements to his students. He then entered Stanford University, obtaining an M.A. in English Literature in 1914. He became a high school English teacher in San Francisco: after three years he became chairman of the English department at Whittier College in 1917. He was fired after a year for public statements supporting Arthur Camp, a jailed student seeking status as a conscientious objector.

Anderson moved to Palo Alto to write for the San Francisco Evening Bulletin, but was fired for writing an editorial stating that it would be impossible for Germany to pay off its war debt. So he moved to San Francisco to write for the San Francisco Chronicle, but was fired after contracting the Spanish flu and missing work. Alvin Johnson hired Anderson to move to New York City and write about politics for The New Republic in 1918, but he was fired after an argument with Editor-in-Chief Herbert David Croly.

Anderson found work at The New York Globe, and the New York World. In 1921, he founded The Measure: A Journal of Poetry, a magazine devoted to verse. He wrote his first play, White Desert, in 1923; it ran only twelve performances, but was well-reviewed by the book reviewer for the New York World, Laurence Stallings, who collaborated with him on his next play, What Price Glory?, which was successfully produced in 1924 in New York City. Afterwards he resigned from the World, launching his career as a dramatist.

His plays are in widely varying styles, and Anderson was one of the few modern playwrights to make extensive use of blank verse. Some of these were adapted as films, and Anderson wrote the screenplays of other authors' plays and novels – All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) and Death Takes a Holiday (1934) – in addition to books of poetry and essays. His first Broadway hit was the 1924 World War I comedy-drama, What Price Glory, written with Laurence Stallings. The play made use of profanity, which caused censors to protest. But when the chief censor (Rear Admiral Charles Peshall Plunkett) was found to have written far more obscene letters to General Chamberlaine, he was discredited: soldiers really did speak that way.

The only one of his plays that he himself adapted to the screen was Joan of Lorraine, which became the film Joan of Arc (1948) starring Ingrid Bergman, with a screenplay by Anderson and Andrew Solt. When Bergman and her director changed much of his dialogue to make Joan "a plaster saint" he called her a "big, dumb, goddamn Swede!" Anderson was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1933 for his political drama Both Your Houses, and twice received the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, for Winterset, and High Tor.

Anderson enjoyed great commercial success with a series of plays set during the reign of the Tudor family, who ruled England, Wales and Ireland from 1485 until 1603. One play in particular – Anne of the Thousand Days – the story of Henry VIII's marriage to Anne Boleyn – was a hit on the stage in 1948, but did not reach movie screens for 21 years. It opened on Broadway starring Rex Harrison and Joyce Redman, and became a 1969 movie with Richard Burton and Geneviève Bujold. Margaret Furse won an Oscar for the film's costume designs.

Another of his Tudor plays, Elizabeth the Queen opened in 1930 with Lynn Fontanne as Elizabeth and Alfred Lunt as Lord Essex. It was later adapted to the screen as The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939), starring Bette Davis and Errol Flynn. Directed by John Ford, Mary of Scotland (1936) was an adaptation of his play of the same name involving Elizabeth I, starring Katharine Hepburn as Mary, Queen of Scots, Fredric March as the Earl of Bothwell, and Florence Eldridge as Elizabeth. The original play had been a hit on Broadway starring Helen Hayes in the title role.

His play The Wingless Victory was written in verse and premiered in 1936 with Broadway actress Katharine Cornell in the lead role. It received mixed reviews.

Two of Anderson's other historical plays, Valley Forge, about George Washington's winter there with the Continental Army, and Barefoot in Athens, concerning the trial of Socrates, were adapted for television. Valley Forge was adapted for television on three occasions – in 1950, 1951 and 1975. Anderson wrote book and lyrics for two successful musicals with composer Kurt Weill. Knickerbocker Holiday, about the early Dutch settlers of New York, featured Walter Huston as Peter Stuyvesant. The show's standout number, "September Song", became a popular standard. So did the title song of Anderson and Weill's Lost in the Stars, a story of South Africa based on the Alan Paton novel Cry, The Beloved Country. In 1950, Anderson and Weill began collaboration on a musical adaptation of Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn, but Weill died when only a few songs had been completed for it.

Anderson's long-running 1927 comedy-drama about married life, Saturday's Children, in which Humphrey Bogart made an early appearance, was filmed three times – in 1929 as a part-talkie, in 1935 (in almost unrecognizable form) as a B-film Maybe It's Love and once again in 1940 under its original title, starring John Garfield in one of his few romantic comedies, along with Anne Shirley and Claude Rains. The play was also adapted for television in three condensed versions in 1950, 1952 and 1962.

His last successful Broadway stage play was 1954's The Bad Seed, Anderson's adaption of the William March novel. He was hired by Alfred Hitchcock to write the screenplay for Hitchcock's The Wrong Man (1957). Hitchcock also contracted with Anderson to write the screenplay for what became Vertigo (1958), but Hitchcock rejected his screenplay Darkling, I Listen.

Anderson married Margaret Haskett, a classmate, on August 1, 1911 in Bottineau, North Dakota. They had three sons, Quentin, Alan, and Terence.

In 1929, Anderson wrote what would prove to be a prophetic play, Gypsy, about a vain, neurotic liar who cheats on her husband then commits suicide by inhaling gas after he catches her. It is around this same time, circa 1930, that Anderson began a relationship with a married actress, Gertrude Higger (married name, Mab Maynard, stage name Mab Anthony). The affair led Anderson to split with Haskett, who later died in 1931 following a car accident and stroke.

Mab divorced her husband, singer Charles V. Maynard, and moved in with Anderson. She was a significant help with clerical duties, but had expensive tastes and spent Anderson's money freely. Their daughter, Hesper, was born August 1934. Anderson left Maynard following the discovery of her affair with Max's friend, TV producer Jerry Stagg. The combination of losing Anderson, their massive tax debt, and the loss of her home proved too much for Mab, who on March 21, 1953, after several unsuccessful attempts, committed suicide by breathing car exhaust. Hesper wrote a book, South Mountain Road: A Daughter's Journey of Discovery describing how following her mother's suicide, she unearthed the fact that her parents never married.

Anderson married once more, to ABC's TV Celanese Theater Production Assistant, Gilda Hazard, on June 6, 1954. This final marriage was a happy one, lasting until Anderson's 1959 death.

Anderson died in Stamford, Connecticut, on February 28, 1959, two days after suffering a stroke, aged 70. He was cremated.