Joseph O. Baylen

Joseph O. Baylen was a professor and an expert on Victorian and Edwardian Britain and Anglo-Russian relations, Baylen was the author of over 130 articles, chapters, and monographs. A favorite subject was British journalist and reformer W.T. Stead; he wrote 22 scholarly articles on Stead alone. Never a narrow specialist, however, Baylen’s publications included topics in Russian, American, French, and Latin American history.

Baylen was born in Chicago, Illinois on February 12, 1920, he earned a BA degree from Northern Illinois University in 1941.  He then entered the US Army just prior to Pearl Harbor and served on active duty in the cavalry, medical administration, intelligence, and the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) until he left active duty as a Captain in 1946.  He married Army Nurse Corp Second Lieutenant Louise Pharr of Atlanta, GA in 1943. 

After the War, he returned to graduate school and received an MA in history at Emory University (1947) and a PhD in history from the University of New Mexico (1949).  Between 1949 and 1982, when he retired as Regents Professor of history at Georgia State University, Professor Baylen taught at Highlands University in New Mexico, Delta State University, Mississippi State University, the University of Mississippi, and Georgia State.  He chaired the departments of history at Delta State, Mississippi, and Georgia State.  During his academic career, Professor Baylen received frequent honors and recognition and was regarded as an international expert on Victorian and Edwardian Britain.  He was awarded two Fulbright-Hays Lectureships; one to University College of Wales (1961-1962) and another to the University of York (1972-1973).  In 1958, he received the prestigious John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship for research in Anglo-Soviet relations (1958-1959).  He was a research fellow at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Studies in 1966-1967 where he worked with the renowned historian and diplomat, George Kennan.  In 1972, Baylen was elected to the Executive Council of the American Historical Association.  During his career, he published more than 130 articles, monographs, and chapters in scholarly publications and was co-editor of the Biographical Dictionary of Modern British Radicals, 3 volumes.  

Baylen died June 18, 2009 in Eastbourne. England.

Josep Carner

Josep Carner i Puigoriol was a Spanish poet, journalist, playwright and translator. 

He was also known as the Prince of Catalan Poets. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature seven times.

Carner was born on February 9, 1884 in Barcelona, In 1897, Carner entered the University of Barcelona, where he studied law and philosophy, and developed an interest in Catalan nationalism. He likewise worked on a number of literary journals, including Montserrat and L'Atlàntida, among others. Carner went on to direct Catalunya2 (from 1903 to 1905), Empori (from 1907 to 1908) and Catalunya (from 1913 to 1914). In 1911, he became a member of the Philological Section of the Institut d'Estudis Catalans (the "Institute of Catalan Studies," akin to a "Royal Academy" for the Catalan language). There he collaborated with another well-known Catalan linguist, Pompeu Fabra, in standardizing and enriching Catalan.

At the beginning of the 20th century, he joined La Veu de Catalunya (The Voice of Catalonia), where he wrote until 1928. In 1915 he married a Chilean, Carmen de Ossa, who died in Lebanon in 1935. They had two children together, Anna Maria and Josep.

Carner was quite innovative in his use of language, in both poetry and prose. He created a new style of political journalism. Along with Prat de la Riba, then president of the Commonwealth of Catalonia, he fought for the professionalization of the Catalan literature, which he considered to be in an "adolescent" stage. After Prat de la Riba's death in 1920, Carner took the civil service examination for the Consular Corps. In March 1921, he began a diplomatic career, and left Catalonia to go to Genoa. Carner settled there with his family as Vice-Consul of Spain. Thereafter he held positions in Genoa, San José, Le Havre, Hendaye, Beirut, Brussels and Paris. During the Spanish Civil War, Carner was one of the few diplomats who remained loyal to the Republic and, therefore, could never return to Spain.

He married a Belgian teacher and literary critic Émilie Noulet; together they set out for a new life in Mexico. Carner lived there from 1939 to 1945, teaching at the Colegio de México. He later moved to Belgium. He died on June 4, 1970 in Brussels. 

William Campbell James Meredith

William Campbell James Meredith, often referred to as W. C. J. Meredith, was a Canadian lawyer, the author of three legal books, and Dean of the McGill University Faculty of Law (1950–1960). In 1951, he was noted for the prescient hiring of John Cobb Cooper to head up the new department he created, McGill's Institute of Air Space Law.

Meredith was born on February 6, 1904, in Montreal, Quebec, the only son of Frederick Edmund Meredith and Anne Madeleine VanKoughnet. The jurist William Collis Meredith was his grandfather. He was educated in England at Summer Fields School; Wellington College, Berkshire; and, Trinity College, Cambridge. He also studied for a year at the University of Grenoble in France. Considered an expert in litigation, he became a senior partner in his father's law firm and was made a King's Counsel in 1942. He was selected by the government to be the special federal prosecutor at the trial of Fred Rose. He was governor of Selwyn House School and Bishop's University. In 1950, John Wilson McConnell, Governor of McGill University, persuaded him to take up the position of Dean at Law at McGill. He held this position until his death.

In 1935, he married Marie-Berthe-Louise-Francoise, daughter of Louis de Lotbiniere-Harwood. They were the parents of one son, but divorced 14 November 1949. Privately, he was an amateur radio enthusiast who enjoyed tennis and skiing and had in his early years been a member of the Montreal Hunt. He died in 1960 in Montreal, and is buried at Mount Royal Cemetery. The Meredith Memorial Lectures at McGill University are named in his memory.

Keri Hulme

 

Keri Ann Ruhi Hulme was a New Zealand novelist, poet and short-story writer. She also wrote under the pen name Kai Tainui. Her novel The Bone People won the Booker Prize in 1985; she was the first New Zealander to win the award, and also the first writer to win the prize for their debut novel. Hulme's writing explores themes of isolation, postcolonial and multicultural identity, and Maori, Celtic, and Norse mythology.

Hulme was born on March 9, 1947 in Burwood Hospital, Christchurch, New Zealand. The daughter of John William Hulme, a carpenter, and Mary Ann Miller, a credit manager, she was the eldest of six children. Her father was a first-generation New Zealander whose parents were from Lancashire, England, and her mother came from Oamaru, of Orkney Scots and Māori descent (Kāi Tahu and Kāti Māmoe). "Our family comes from diverse people: Kāi Tahu, Kāti Māmoe (South Island Māori iwi); Orkney islanders; Lancashire folk; Faroese and/or Norwegian migrants," Hulme stated.

Hulme grew up in Christchurch at 160 Leaver Terrace, New Brighton, where she attended North New Brighton Primary School and Aranui High School. She described herself as a "very definite and determined child who inherently hate[d] assumed authority". In 1958, when she was 11, her father died. Hulme remembered herself as being interested in writing from a young age. She rewrote Enid Blyton stories the way she thought they should have been written, wrote poetry from the age of 12, and composed short stories; her mother organised the side front porch into a study for her after her father's death. Some of her poems and short stories were published in Aranui High School's magazine. The family spent their holidays with her mother's family at Moeraki, on the Otago East Coast, and Hulme identified Moeraki as her turangawaewae-ngakau, "the standing-place of my heart".

After high school, Hulme worked as a tobacco picker in Motueka. She began studying for an honours law degree at the University of Canterbury in 1967, but left after four terms—feeling "estranged/out-of-place"—and returned to tobacco picking, although she continued to write.

By 1972, Hulme had accumulated a large quantity of notes and drawings and decided to begin writing full-time, but, despite financial support from her family, she returned to work nine months later. She worked in a range of jobs, including in retail, as a fish-and-chips cook, a winder at a woollen mill, and as a mail deliverer in Greymouth, on the West Coast of the South Island. She was also a pharmacist's assistant at Grey Hospital, a proofreader and journalist at the Grey Evening Star, and an assistant television director on the shows Country Calendar, Dig This and Play School. She continued writing, and had her work published in journals and magazines; some appeared under the pseudonym Kai Tainui.

Hulme received Literary Fund grants in 1973, 1977, and 1979, and in 1979 she was a guest at the East-West Center in Hawaii as a visiting poet. Hulme held the 1977 Robert Burns Fellowship and became writer-in-residence at the University of Otago in 1978. During this time, she continued working on her novel, the bone people.

Hulme submitted the manuscript for the bone people to several publishers over a period of 12 years, until it was accepted for publication by the Spiral Collective, a feminist literary and arts collective in New Zealand. The book was published in February 1984 and won the 1984 New Zealand Book Award for Fiction and the Booker Prize in 1985. Hulme was the first New Zealander to win the Booker Prize and also the first writer to win the prize for their debut novel. The ceremony was broadcast on Channel 4 and as Hulme was unable to attend she asked three women from Spiral – Irihapeti Ramsden, Marian Evans and Miriama Evans – to accept the award on her behalf. Ramsden and Miriama Evans walked up to the podium wearing Maori korowai, arm in arm with Marian Evans in a tuxedo, and chanted a Maori karanga as they went.

In 1985, Hulme was writer-in-residence at the University of Canterbury and in 1990 she was awarded the 1990 Scholarship in Letters from the Queen Elizabeth Arts Council Literature Committee for two years. Also in 1990, she was awarded the New Zealand 1990 Commemoration Medal. In 1996 she became the patron of New Zealand Republic. Hulme also served on the Literary Fund Advisory Committee (1985–1989) and New Zealand's Indecent Publications Tribunal (1985–1990).

Around 1986 Hulme began working on a second novel, BAIT, about fishing and death. She also worked on a third novel, On the Shadow Side; these two works were referred to by Hulme as "twinned novels".

Common themes in Hulme's writing are identity and isolation. Inspiration for her characters and stories also often came to her in dreams; she first dreamt of a mute, long-haired boy when she was 18, and wrote a short story about him called Simon Peter’s Shell. The boy continued to appear in her dreams and eventually became the main character of the bone people.

In 1973, Hulme won a land ballot and became the owner of a plot in the remote coastal settlement of Ōkārito in south Westland, on the South Island of New Zealand. She built an octagonal house on the land and spent most of her adult life (almost 40 years) there. She vocally opposed plans to develop the settlement with additional housing or tourist facilities and believed it deserved special government protection. In late 2011, Hulme announced that she was leaving the area as local body rates (property taxes) meant she could no longer afford to live there. She identified as atheist, aromantic, and asexual.

Hulme's given name was recorded at birth as Kerry, although her family used the name Keri; she officially changed her name to Keri in 2001.

She died from dementia at a care home in Waimate on December 27, 2021, at the age of 74.

John H. Humphrey

John Herbert Humphrey was a British bacteriologist and immunologist.

He was born on December 16, 1915 and was educated at Winchester School, and Trinity College, Cambridge. He graduated from University College Hospital medical school in 1940.

He was a houseman at the Hammersmith Hospital, and was the Jenner research student at the Lister Institute from 1941 to 1942. He was assistant pathologist at the Central Middlesex Hospital from 1943 to 1946, then joined the external staff of the Medical Research Council as a bacteriologist at University College Hospital in 1946. Humphrey joined the staff of the National Institute for Medical Research in 1949, working in the Division of Biological Standards. 

With James Lightbown he established international standards for antibiotics and enzymes, and later developed a long-standing association with the WHO Expert Committee on Biological Standards. In November 1956 Humphrey founded the British Society for Immunology alongside Robin Coombs, Bob White, and Avrion Mitchison. He was president of the International Union of Immunological Societies. In 1957 he became head of the Institute's new Division of Immunology. From 1961 to 1976 Humphrey was Deputy Director of NIMR, and became acting director in 1969. In 1975, Humphrey left NIMR to be Professor of Immunology at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School, Hammersmith. He retired in 1981.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1963. He delivered the 1981 Croonian Lecture to the Royal College of Physicians on The Value of Immunological Concepts in Medicine.

Humphrey died on December 25, 1987.

Lammot du Pont II

Lammot du Pont II was an American businessman who was the head of the du Pont family's E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company for 22 years.

Lammot was born on October 12, 1880, in Wilmington, Delaware. He was the ninth, and youngest boy, of eleven children born to chemist Lammot du Pont (1831–1884), and his wife, Mary (née Belin) du Pont (1839–1913). Among his siblings were brothers Pierre S. du Pont and Irénée du Pont, who were both involved in the Du Pont Company. His father died during a nitroglycerin explosion in 1884.

His maternal grandparents were Henry Hedrick Belin and Isabella (née d'Andelot) Belin and his paternal grandparents were Alfred Victor DuPont and Margaretta Elizabeth (née Lammot) DuPont. His was also a great-grandson of the French-born Éleuthère Irénée du Pont, the founder of E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company.

On March 15, 1926, Lammot du Pont was elected President of E.I. du Pont de Nemours Co., succeeding elder brother Irénée du Pont, who was elected Chairman of the Board of Directors.

Lammot served as president until May 20, 1940, when he was succeeded by Walter S. Carpenter Jr. At the same time, Lammot replaced another brother, Pierre S. du Pont, as chairman of the board.

Du Pont died on July 24, 1952, in New London, Connecticut of heart disease at age 71.

Sir Julian Huxley

Sir Julian Sorell Huxley (22 June 1887 – 14 February 1975) was an English evolutionary biologist, eugenicist, and internationalist. He was a proponent of natural selection, and a leading figure in the mid-twentieth century modern synthesis. He was secretary of the Zoological Society of London (1935–1942), the first Director of UNESCO, a founding member of the World Wildlife Fund, the president of the British Eugenics Society (1959-1962), and the first President of the British Humanist Association.

Huxley was well known for his presentation of science in books and articles, and on radio and television. He directed an Oscar-winning wildlife film. He was awarded UNESCO's Kalinga Prize for the popularisation of science in 1953, the Darwin Medal of the Royal Society in 1956, and the Darwin–Wallace Medal of the Linnaean Society in 1958. He was also knighted in that same year, 1958, a hundred years after Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace announced the theory of evolution by natural selection. In 1959 he received a Special Award from the Lasker Foundation in the category Planned Parenthood – World Population.

Henry Røsoch

Henry Røsoch was a Norwegian journalist and author .

Røsoch was born on November 30, 1894 and studied architecture at NTH in Trondheim , where he was one of the founders of the student newspaper Under Dusken . He then became a journalist in Adresseavisen , Nationen and Nidaros , before being employed in Aftenposten in 1930 . In 1930, he was also a radio journalist for a few months in the newly opened Trøndelag broadcaster. 

Røsoch wrote several books with historical subjects, such as Trondheim's history (1939). After his death, a book about old Christiania was also published , På vandring i Christiania (1953), which was completed by Arno Berg.

He was married to the actress Erna Nicolaysen from Bergen (1891–1971).

He died on September 17, 1950.