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INTRO

31 January, 2023

Conradin Perner

Conradin Perner is a Swiss humanist, researcher, and author. 

He became known for his work as a literature professor, ethnographer, delegate of the International Committee of the Red Cross as well as through his engagement in South Sudan. As part of his ethnographic work, he lived with the Anyuak tribe in South Sudan for seven years and wrote a comprehensive monograph on the life and culture of the Anyuak. Later, he worked for many years as peace advisor to the Swiss government in the then greater Sudan.

Perner was born in Davos, Switzerland on August 31, 1943. After studying literature in France, Sweden and Zurich, Perner wrote his dissertation in comparative literature on: “Gunnar Ekelöf’s night on the horizon and his encounter with Stephané Mallarmé”. From 1969 to 1971, he taught French language and literature at the University of Kisangani. He then worked for three years as a delegate for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Bangladesh, Vietnam and India. Perner took over the Chair for French literature at the University of Khartoum from the end of 1974 until 1976. That’s when he organized his first trip to South Sudan in preparation for a research project on oral literature. From 1976 to 1983, he conducted research among the Anyuak tribe in South Sudan, sponsored by the University of Zurich and the Swiss National Fund for Scientific Research. The result of his life and work among the Anyuak is an eight-volume monograph, a four-volume dictionary, a Grammar guide, and a collection of Anyuak legends, love songs, satirical verses, and parables. The Anyuak gave him the name of “Kwacakworo”. From 1989 to 1992, Perner resumed working as an ICRC delegate in Sudan and later as the head of the ICRC delegation in Lokichogio, Kenya. Perner is known for his crucial role in the rescue of nearly ten thousand child soldiers, known as the lost boys, in their escape from camps in Ethiopia to South Sudan. From 1993 to 1994, he was an advisor to the ICRC, UNICEF and 45 other organizations active in South Sudan. From 1995 to 2000 he continued with the ICRC and was posted in Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and in the Republic of Congo (Brazzaville). In 2002, Perner was the first commander of the Joint Military Commission in the SPLA sector in the Nuba Mountains in Sudan. He played an instrumental role in the peace efforts in South Sudan and received South Sudan’s first honorary citizenship in 2011.

Perner has worked as a visiting professor at the University of Paris-Nanterre and the Sorbonne University in Paris as well as an advisor to the Swiss Ministry of Foreign Affairs (FDFA) for peacebuilding in South Sudan’s House of Nationalities Project. He wrote extensive documentation for the FDFA on peacebuilding approaches across all South Sudanese tribes. Today he lives in Davos where he still dedicates his time to writing and producing various philosophical essays and stories about his work and his life.

30 January, 2023

Peter Dobereiner

 


Peter Dobereiner studied law at Oxford before following a career as a golf writer he was golf correspondent for The Guardian and The Observer, consultant editor of Golf World (UK) and contributing editor to Golf Digest in the USA. He brought a depth of knowledge to his writing being peppered with a unique mix of keen insight and humour making him one of the most popular golf writers of the twentieth century until his death in 1996.

29 January, 2023

Carl Gustaf Nelson

Carl Gustaf Simon Nelson was a Swedish-American painter and cartoonist .

He was born on January 5, 1898 in Hörby, Skåne, the son of the carriage maker Johan Nilsson and Christina Olsson. Nelson came to America at the age of five and grew up in Sioux City, Iowa. He began studying art around 1920, first for two years at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts and then at the Art Students League in New York for five years. He then undertook a study trip through 15 of Europe's countries. Since 1935 he participated in numerous collective exhibitions in New York, Boston and Philadelphia and in the Swedish-American exhibitions in Chicago. 

He was awarded the Tiffany Foundation Fellowship 1931-1933. Alongside his own creation, he worked as a teacher at the Boris Mirski Gallery in Boston 1945-1947 and the Cambridge School of Design in Cambridge 1948-1952. His art consists of still lifes , figure motifs,landscapes and non-figurative compositions in oil , gouache and tempera . Nelson is represented at the US Department of Labor in Washington, the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Worcester Museum of Art in Massachusetts.

He died in 1988 in Elmhurst, Illinois.

28 January, 2023

Edgar Kennedy

Edgar Livingston Kennedy was an American comedic character actor who appeared in at least 500 films during the silent and sound eras. Professionally, he was known as "Slow Burn", owing to his ability to portray characters whose anger slowly rose in frustrating situations.

In many of his roles, he used exasperated facial expressions and performed very deliberately to convey his rising anger or "burn", often rubbing his hand over his bald head and across his face in an effort to control his temper. One memorable example of his comedy technique can be seen in the 1933 Marx Brothers' film Duck Soup, where he plays a sidewalk lemonade vendor who is harassed and increasingly provoked by Harpo and Chico.

Kennedy was born April 26, 1890, in Monterey County, California, to Canadians Neil Kennedy and Annie Quinn. He attended San Rafael High School before taking up boxing. He was a light-heavyweight and once went 14 rounds with Jack Dempsey. After boxing, he worked as a singer in vaudeville, musical comedy and light opera.

After making his debut in 1911, Kennedy performed with some of Hollywood's biggest comedians, including Roscoe Arbuckle, Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, the Marx Brothers, W.C. Fields, Charley Chase and Our Gang. He was also one of the original Keystone Kops.

Kennedy's burly frame originally suited him for villainous or threatening roles in silent pictures. By the 1920s, he was working for producer Hal Roach, who kept him busy playing supporting roles in short comedies. He starred in one short, A Pair of Tights (1928), where he plays a tightwad determined to spend as little as possible on a date. His antics with comedian Stuart Erwin are reminiscent of Roach's Laurel and Hardy comedies, produced concurrently. Kennedy also directed half a dozen of Roach's two-reel comedies.

In 1930, RKO-Pathe featured Kennedy in a pair of short-subject comedies, Next Door Neighbors and Help Wanted, Female. His characterization of a short-tempered householder was so effective, RKO built a series around him. The "Average Man" comedies starred Kennedy as a blustery, stubborn everyman determined to accomplish a household project or get ahead professionally, despite the meddling of his featherbrained wife (usually Florence Lake), her freeloading brother (originally William Eugene, then Jack Rice) and his dubious mother-in-law (Dot Farley). Kennedy pioneered the kind of domestic situation comedy that later became familiar on television. Each installment ended with Kennedy embarrassed, humbled or defeated, looking at the camera and doing his patent slow burn. The Edgar Kennedy Series, with its theme song "Chopsticks", became a standard part of the moviegoing experience. He made six "Average Man" shorts a year for 17 years. In 1938, he worked as a straight man for British comedian Will Hay in Hey! Hey! USA.

Kennedy became so identified with frustration that practically every studio hired him to play hotheads. He often played dumb cops, detectives, and even a prison warden; sometimes he was a grouchy moving man, truck driver, or blue-collar workman. His character usually lost his temper at least once. In Diplomaniacs, he presides over an international tribunal where Wheeler & Woolsey want to do something about world peace. "Well, ya can't do anything about it here," yells Kennedy, "This is a peace conference!" Kennedy, established as the poster boy for frustration, even starred in an instructional film titled The Other Fellow, where he played a loudmouthed roadhog venting his anger on other drivers (each played by Kennedy as well), little realizing that, to them, he is "the other fellow."

Perhaps his most unusual roles were as a puppeteer in the detective mystery The Falcon Strikes Back, and as a philosophical bartender inspired to create exotic cocktails in Harold Lloyd's last film, The Sin of Harold Diddlebock (1947). He also played comical detectives opposite two titans of acting: John Barrymore, in Twentieth Century (1934); and Rex Harrison, in Unfaithfully Yours (1948). In the latter, he tells Harrison's character, a symphony conductor, "Nobody handles Handel like you handle Handel."

Kennedy died of throat cancer at the Motion Picture Hospital, San Fernando Valley on November 9, 1948.

27 January, 2023

Dante Montanari

 Dante Montanari was an Italian painter .

He was born in Porto Sant'Elpidio, in the province of Fermo, on July 19, 1896. After graduating from the Technical Institute of Osimo, where his father was headmaster, he moved to Milan, initially thinking of attending the Academy of Fine Arts . Abandoning the project, he moved to Ascoli Piceno, where he learned to paint in the studio of a maternal uncle, Salvatore Ferrante, an art teacher.

He took part in the 1915-1918 war , at the end of which he settled in Bergamo , where he lived until 1939 together with his wife Pia (faithful companion, who died in 1985 ), initially sharing the studio with his brother Giuseppe, also a painter. In this period he collaborated with some local newspapers, such as the "Gazzettino Bergamasco" and the "Penna", as a cartoonist and caricaturist, revealing himself to be an attentive and caustic observer, with a fast and concise stroke.

"The city of Bergamo represented the moment of debut of the painter from the Marches: after an initial training essentially as a self-taught one, in 1920 the artist in fact set up his first solo show at the "Scuola dei Tre Passi", reviewed by Pier Maria Bardi ", critic and inseparable friend. "When Dante Montanari arrived in Bergamo, immediately after the First World War, he found a very lively and active artistic environment. The difficult moments for" the troubled class of artists "were over".  He considered Bergamo as his second hometown, cultivating lasting friendships, such as the one with Giacomo Manzù .

In 1925 he achieved his first success, with the first prize in the Competition for the VII Franciscan Centenary, organized by the Angelicum of Milan. In this period you temporarily approached the artistic movement known as the " Novecento ". Among other things, he participated in the Venice Biennale from 1924 to 1950 , appreciated by the critics. In 1932 Ugo Ojetti wrote: "Montanari is part of the group of colorists of lively skill, easy, pleasant and ready to grasp reality directly." 

Among the favorite themes of his painting we remember the landscape: "It is one of the artist's favorite genres for his love for nature which he perceives with acute sensitivity in translating the "memory", the "memory" of the Marche and Umbrian hills into forms , of the valleys and mountains of Bergamo and finds a response in the favor and appreciation of the public...". Another theme is motherhood "...in its various phases, from waiting in which the woman is caught with that typical expression of sweetness, amazement and complacent immobility, to the tenderness of the relationship between mother and children, to children's games outdoors, on the beach and on the street: the early death of his mother and the lack of children make him particularly sensitive, and he tackles these issues with careful study from life, reaching images of great poetry...". 

He participated in the cultural and artistic life of Bergamo, also collaborating at the Teatro delle Novelties between 1938 and 1939 , as a set and costume designer, and on that occasion making friends with the maestro Gianandrea Gavazzeni . His exhibition activity also extended abroad in those years, to Athens , Birmingham , Budapest , Victoria, Berlin , Stuttgart , Leipzig , Cologne and Dresden. "During these years, his feeling for art was becoming clearer...as an intuition and emotion of truth, art as religiosity, art as an operation of synthesis and elimination of any decorative detail to obtain sincerity." 

As far as his position towards fascism is concerned , his letter to his dear friend Fedele Giacobone, dated August 11, 1957 , is illuminating, regarding the events linked to the canvas " San Francesco between the wolf and the lamb", winner of the aforementioned competition for the VII Franciscan Centenary, given by the Friars to Mussolini : "I think back for a moment without rancour on that painting of mine, which marked the beginning of my sorrows for having refused to be present at its delivery into Mussolini's hands. Much more was expected my soul, after a competition was born to allocate the winning work to a religious institute..." 

In 1939 he moved to Milan, but settling in with difficulty; while cultivating new and lasting friendships, he remained extraneous to all worldliness: in an interview given to Mormino, in the 1981 Giornale , he said: "I don't like conventicles, I never come to terms. As a young man I spent hours talking about art and philosophy. But today people are different, the artistic world boasts more jugglers than painters. Frankly, I don't like all of this". 

He collaborated as an art critic with Corriere della Sera and with the Novara magazine Glauco, also participating in numerous exhibitions in private galleries, such as the Milione, the Gianferrari, the Cairola and the Gussoni in Milan , the Permanente in Turin , the Tower of Bergamo and the Art Gallery of Ancona , to mention the main ones. The recognitions continued, such as the first prize at the Biennial of the Marche Region , in Ancona , in 1964 and the Golden Ginestra del Conero , in 1969 ; also awarded in Salsomaggiore ( 1953 ) and inMonferrato (gold medal in 1965 ), obtained in 1976 the medal of the President of the Republic at the Lario Cadorago Prize, in Como .

In Milan he came into contact with the circle of the Bagutta Prize , wanted among others by Orio Vergani , Riccardo Bacchelli and Paolo Monelli . After the war, sacred art occupied a prominent place in his work: we recall the important "Via Crucis" in this regard.

From 1956 his style changed substantially: "The modelling, so well constructed in previous years, becomes soft with a sinuous trend, dissolved in a luminous atmosphere made up of delicate passages...we can speak of fluid modeling or a process of transfiguration... it can be hypothesized about the last Montanari that he was obsessed with the fragility of nature and man...".

He died in Milan on April 16, 1989.

26 January, 2023

Peter Worsley

Peter Maurice Worsley was a noted British sociologist and social anthropologist. He was a major figure in both anthropology and sociology, and is noted for introducing the term Third World into English. He not only made theoretical and ethnographic contributions, but also was regarded as a key founding member of the New Left.

Worsley was born on May 6, 1924 in Birkenhead, Worsley started reading English at Emmanuel College, Cambridge but his studies were interrupted by World War II. He served in the British Army as an officer in Africa and India. During this time he developed his interest in anthropology. After the war he worked on mass education in Tanganyika and then went to study under Max Gluckman at the University of Manchester. He received his PhD from the Australian National University in Canberra.

He lectured in sociology at the University of Hull and then went on to become the first Professor of Sociology at the University of Manchester in 1964.

Worsley died on March 15, 2013.

24 January, 2023

Yevgeniy Dolmatovsky

Yevgeniy Dolmatovsky was a Soviet and Russian poet and lyricist.

Dolmatovsky was born in 1915 in Moscow. His father Aron, who hailed from the family of a merchant of the 1st guild, was a lawyer, and after the Revolution he was a member of the Bar Association and an associate professor at the Moscow Institute of Law. His maternal grandfather, too, had belonged to the merchant class. Both families had come to Moscow from Rostov-on-Don, which lay outside the Jewish "Pale of Settlement".

The stormy Revolutionary period came as a major blow to the Dolmatovskys, and they decided to send their children to live with relatives in Rostov-on-Don. Only in 1924 did Yevgeniy finally return to Moscow.

Already as a school student, Yevgeniy published brief articles in the newspapers The Pioneer, Friendly Fellows, and The Pioneer's Pravda, which were aimed at a young readership. He was highly enthusiastic about the political changes sweeping over the country, extolling them in his sketches. In 1930, Dolmatovsky made his debut as a poet in the pages of The Pioneer's Pravda. On one occasion,he was able to show his poems to the celebrated poet Vladimir Mayakovsky, but the latter criticized them harshly, suggesting that Yevgeniy write on subjects that were truly dear to him. Yevgeniy took this advice to heart, writing poems about the glorious future and the Young Pioneer movement.

After finishing high school, Yevgeniy Dolmatovsky began to attend a pedagogical technikum, but quickly dropped out of it. Fired up with the Komsomol ideals, he went to work in the construction of the Moscow Metro.

In 1933, while still employed in this project, Dolmatovsky became a correspondence student at the Maxim Gorky Literature Institute. His first poetry collections were published shortly thereafter. In 1937, he graduated from the Institute, becoming a member of the Union of Writers of the USSR that same year. He soon received an offer to travel to the Far East of Russia, to set up the local branch of the Union of Writers. This trip resulted in the collection Far Eastern Verses (1939).

The Dolmatovsky family was affected by Stalinist terror. In 1938, while Yevgeniy was away working in the Far East, his father Aron was arrested on false charges, and shot shortly thereafter. The family remained ignorant of his fate until 16 years later, after Stalin's death, when they were notified of Aron Dolmatovsky's posthumous rehabilitation. 

Despite being the son of an "enemy of the people", Yevgeniy Dolmatovsky was included in a group of celebrated Soviet writers who were awarded the Order of the Badge of Honor in January 1939. Stalin was willing to overlook the "sins" of those whom he deemed useful to the system. In those years, the young poet became famous for the songs based on his lyrics. The most celebrated of these was "The Beloved City". Written in collaboration with the composer Nikita Bogoslovsky, it was performed in the cult Soviet film The Fighter Pilots. After achieving fame, Dolmatovsky was offered a job as a military correspondent, and he readily agreed. He was made a 3rd-rank supply officer and sent to the Belorussian Military District.

While there, Dolmatovsky took part in the Red Army invasion of Poland, which resulted in the annexation of the eastern regions of that country by the USSR and their incorporation into Soviet Ukraine and Belorussia. He later covered the events of the Soviet-Finnish "Winter War" of 1939-1940.

In August 1941, two months after the outbreak of the Soviet-German War, Dolmatovsky was captured by the enemy.This happened during the battles near Kiev, in the area of Uman, where thousands of Soviet soldiers were taken prisoner. Yevgeniy was shell-shocked and wounded in the arm. Like thousands of other Red Army POWs, he was locked up in a makeshift concentration camp that had been set up in a clay pit at a brick factory. The inmates of this camp, which was nicknamed the "Uman Pit", were held in terrible conditions, and many of them died. Jews, commissars, the wounded, and the weak were shot.

Miraculously, Dolmatovsky managed to escape, and he was sheltered by a Ukrainian family, who put their own lives at risk by aiding him. As soon as he recovered from his wound, he set out for the front lines. He was rearrested, this time by an Italian patrol, and taken to a POW camp in Belaya Tserkov. Once again, luck was on his side, and he was able to escape, crossing the Dnieper River, passing through the forest, and hiding in occupied territory. In early November 1941, he crossed the front lines in the area of Voronezh. He was able to locate the editorial office of the Red Army newspaper, at which he worked.

Being an energetic man by nature, Dolmatovsky immediately wrote a poem titled "The Dnieper". It was published in frontline newspapers, set to music, and widely performed by military bands.

All this while, Dolmatovsky's colleagues at the Union of Writers believed him dead, and they even held an evening in his memory. His friend, the famous poet Konstantin Simonov, dedicated the poem "I Will Not See You Again" to him.

The time spent by Dolmatovsky in captivity, together with his two escapes, drew the attention of the NKVD (the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs). Yevgeniy underwent a lengthy screening process, and only in January 1942 was he permitted to return to frontline duty, this time in the rank of a battalion commissar.

Dolmatovsky's most celebrated and gut-wrenching work is the long poem "Missing in Action" (the first part of the One Fate trilogy, 1942-1946), which reflected his own wartime experiences.

In February 1943, while he was on the Stalingrad Front, Dolmatovsky learned that Lieutenant-General von Daniels was one of the German commanders who had been taken prisoner. Back in early fall 1941, von Daniels had delivered propaganda speeches to the POWs held in the "Uman Pit", who were humiliatingly forced to listen to him while seated at school desks in the pouring rain. Dolmatovsky convinced Konstantin Rokossovky, commander of the Don Front, to let him meet the captive general and remind him of the events that had transpired two years previously. The humiliating spectacle was recreated – only this time, it was Lieutenant-General von Daniels who was sitting behind the desk. In 1944, against the backdrop of tightening official control over reporting on the events of the war, Dolmatovsky was harshly criticized for alleged "distortions" in his depiction of the Red Army retreat in 1941 – which had, indeed, been utterly chaotic and uncontrollable on many occasions.

In the course of the war, Yevgeniy Dolmatovsky wrote a great number of poems, many of which were subsequently set to music.

In May 1945, Dolmatovsky was present at the signing of the German Instrument of Surrender. His wartime decorations included the Order of the Patriotic War, 1st Class; the Order of the Red Star, and several medals.

After the end of the war, Yevgeniy Dolmatovsky returned to Moscow, where he continued to write and publish poetry. In 1950, he was even awarded the USSR State Prize, which was known as the "State Stalin Prize" at the time.

The poet kept returning to the subjects of war and captivity. Drawing on his own experiences, Dolmatovsky wrote the book Zelyonaya Brama (1979-1989), which contained stories and sketches of combat, captivity, and escape. It also described the unjust treatment of many former POWs by the Stalinist state.

Yevgeniy Dolmatovsky died in 1994, and was buried at the Donskoye Cemetery in Moscow. 

23 January, 2023

David B. Steinman

David Barnard Steinman was an American civil engineer. He was the designer of the Mackinac Bridge and many other notable bridges, and a published author.

David B. Steinman built bridges in the United States, Thailand, England, Portugal, Italy, Brazil, Haiti, Puerto Rico, Canada, Korea, Iraq and Pakistan. He had a literary bent, and was a published author with several books, articles in advancement of his craft, and even had children's books and poetry to his credit.

Steinman was the child of Jewish immigrants. Little is known of his family and early childhood other than that he had 6 siblings. There is some controversy about where and when he was born. Some sources have him born in Chomsk (Хомск חומסק), Brest, Belarus in 1886, and emigrating to the United States with his family in 1890. However other sources, including Ratigan, and Steinman himself have him born in New York on June 11, 1887.

Steinman grew up in New York City, New York, and was raised in the shadows of the Brooklyn Bridge. The Williamsburg Bridge was constructed as he grew up. The late Nineteenth and early Twentieth centuries were a time of significant bridge construction in the area, and he later said this is where he got his first interest in bridges.

Because his family had little money, he worked to put himself through both the City College of New York, graduating summa cum laude in 1906 and then Columbia University, where he completed three additional degrees culminating in a PhD in Civil Engineering. His PhD thesis was on a steel truss arch design for the Henry Hudson Bridge. While he was attending Columbia he did fellowships as well as taught nighttime classes at the City College and Stuyvesant Evening High School. He accepted a teaching position at the University of Idaho in Moscow, Idaho (1910–1914) but longed to return to New York.

After contacting Gustav Lindenthal about working on the Hell Gate Bridge, he returned to New York City to become a special assistant to Lindenthal, along with Othmar Ammann of Switzerland, another young bridge builder. It was said this experience of working together led to their 40-year professional rivalry. Pay was typical for the era, 200-225 USD/month. Lindenthal gave his protégés advice about engineering such as, "Steinman, bridge engineering is easy. It is the financial engineering that is hard" (Petroski 327). While working with Lindenthal, Steinman also worked on the Sciotoville Bridge, a crossing of the Ohio River. After this work Steinman sought other employment, working as assistant engineer on the Rondout Creek Bridge, and as an assistant engineer for the New York Central Railroad.

In May 1920, Holton D. Robinson (b. 1863, Massena, NY, d. 1945, engineer of the Williamsburg Bridge) contacted Steinman and requested that they join forces to create a design for the Florianópolis Bridge (or Hercilio Luz Bridge, 1926) in Florianópolis, Brazil. After getting advice from Charles Fowler, Steinman agreed and they formed the firm of Robinson & Steinman in 1921, a partnership that lasted until the 1940s. They did not win the contract immediately but continued to collaborate on it and other projects. The early 1920s were considered a tough time for bridge construction, so Steinman tried to design his bridges to be economically pleasing rather than artistic, without sacrificing the structural integrity of the bridge. For example, Robinson and Steinman changed the original plans for the Florianopolis bridge, using eyebar chains as the upper chord of the stiffening truss instead of the conventional wire-cable. The new design produced a very stiff bridge with much less material than the original plan. Other bridge engineers would also have to take this new economical design into account when competing with Steinman. Steinman was well regarded in the profession and had a reputation for good presentations and for being politically astute.


The 1920s and 1930s were a relatively busy period for Steinman. His firm was involved in many significant projects including the Hercilio Luz Bridge (or Florianópolis Bridge, 1926), the Carquinez Strait Bridge (1927, at the time the second largest cantilever bridge in the US), the Mount Hope Bridge and Grand Mère Suspension Bridge (both 1929), the St. Johns Bridge and Waldo-Hancock Bridge (both 1931), the Sky Ride (1933 passenger transporter bridge at the Chicago Century of Progress exposition), the Henry Hudson Bridge (1936, particularly gratifying as this bridge realised his PhD thesis proposal), the Wellesley and Hill Islands Bridge, Wellesley Island Suspension Bridge and Georgina Island Bridge (all 1938 and part of the Thousand Islands Bridge System), the Deer Isle Bridge and the Sullivan-Hutsonville Bridge (both 1939).

In addition to the many bridges that Steinman designed, he was consulted on several projects that his firm did not win. Perhaps the most famous of these bridges is "Galloping Gertie," the original Tacoma Narrows Bridge. Steinman consulted extensively with the boosters of the bridge during the 1920s, but his design was not selected. He wrote of his frustration with the design that was chosen, and predicted a failure. He presented his findings at the 1938 meeting of the structural division of the American Society of Civil Engineers. In the audience was the designer of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, which was under construction at the time. The failure did occur and he wrote that it had a profound impact on his design principles; he became even more conservative. It is said that he designed the Mackinac Bridge to withstand winds of 365 mph. It is considered by many to be his most significant work, although, perhaps not by Steinman himself, who expressed a personal preference for the St. Johns bridge, saying, "If you asked me which of the bridges I love best, I believe I would say the St. Johns bridge. I put more of myself into that bridge than any other bridge."

During this period Steinman became president of the American Association of Engineers and campaigned for more stringent educational and ethical standards within the profession. He also founded the National Society of Professional Engineers in 1934, serving as its first president. By the mid-1930s Steinman had a professional reputation as one of the pre-eminent bridge engineers of the US, especially for long span suspension bridges, but his bridges were eclipsed in the public eye by his old rival Ammann's George Washington Bridge (1931) and by Joseph Strauss's Golden Gate Bridge (1937) among others. His plans for a NYC cross harbor bridge (the "Liberty Bridge") came to naught with the 1940 collapse of Tacoma Narrows which cast all long suspension span proposals in doubt.

Steinman and his firm were also in charge of the major rehabilitation of the Brooklyn Bridge commencing 1948. Structurae.de has an image of Steinman jauntily perched in mid air in the cables of the bridge, perhaps one of the best known images of him.

But there were still long span suspension bridges to be built. Steinman was responsible for the Kingston-Rhinecliff Bridge (1957). More importantly, development and planning of the Mackinac Bridge had been contemplated for some time, and Steinman was appointed to the board of engineers based on Michigan State Legislature legislation of 1950, stating "the board of engineers retained by the Mackinac Bridge Authority was to be selected and nominated by the Dean of Engineering at the University of Michigan," and was soon the spokesman for the board. But his health was failing and he suffered heart attacks in 1952, the same year the legislature approved funding. He was nevertheless heavily involved in all aspects of the construction of the bridge from start to finish.

From the beginnings of his work on the Mackinac Bridge, Stewart Woodfill was impressed with Steinman's ethical procedure in addressing his requests. In 1950 new legislation was produced stating "the board of engineers retained by the Mackinac Bridge Authority was to be selected and nominated by the Dean of Engineering at the University of Michigan" (Ratigan 280). This was to make sure that there was no political influence in this decision. Steinman was selected to be a member of the board. Steinman who had been trained since he was young to work well in groups was chosen as the spokesman for the board. When it comes to speaking in front of large audiences Steinman does it naturally. It was said that Steinman spoke "as comfortable before large audiences as he was on tall bridges" (Petroski 332). The stresses of the early stages of the bridge soon took their toll on Steinman. He had heart attacks in 1952, which was the same year that legislation approved the financing and construction of the bridge.

Although he proposed the project of the Strait of Messina Bridge, a grandiose 1524 meter center span crossing of the Sicilian Straits of Messina, the "Mighty Mac," completed in 1957, and at the time the longest suspended span between anchors, was his last major achievement. He was awarded the Franklin Institute's Louis E. Levy Medal in 1957. In 1960, he was elevated as the 16th National Honor Member of Chi Epsilon national civil engineering honor society. 

Steinman died on August 21, 1960.

21 January, 2023

E.J. Paavola

 

Erkki Johannes (EJ) Paavola was a Finnish radio journalist and since 1925 was a professional journalist. In the years 1946–1961, he worked as Yleisradio 's parliamentary press secretary, from 1957–1961 on the television side.

Paavola was born on January 17, 1903 in Mouhijärvi, Finland. He was a Member of Parliament in the years 1962–1970 and a member of the Helsinki City Council 1957–1971. In 1962, he got into the parliament thanks to the electoral alliance with the Coalition and was the only member of parliament of the Liberal League . In the fall of 1965, Paavola opposed the merger of the Liberal Party with the Finnish People's Party . However, the merger took place. From then on, he belonged to the Liberal People's Party.

Paavola worked, among other things, as the written secretary of the Progressive Party , secretary of the parliamentary group 1932–1936, and editor-in-chief of the Progressive Party's organization magazine Nykyjäðin 1938–1939. After that, he worked as the information secretary and presenter of the Ministry of Agriculture 's settlement affairs department - later the settlement board - from 1940 to 1962. He was also the first chairman of the Southern Helsinki Liberals, and in 1962 he was elected as the president's elector. As a schoolboy, Paavola participated in Aunus ' expedition in 1919.

He died on October 21, 1983 in Helsinki.

20 January, 2023

St. Elmo Brady

 Saint Elmo Brady (December 22, 1884 – December 25, 1966) was an American chemist who was the first African American to obtain a Ph.D. in chemistry in the United States. He received his doctorate at the University of Illinois in 1916.[1]



Contents

1 Early life and education

2 Legacy

3 Personal life and death

4 See also

5 References

Early life and education

Saint Elmo Brady was born on December 22, 1884, in Louisville, Kentucky.[1] Greatly influenced by Thomas W. Talley, a pioneer in the teaching of science, Brady received his bachelor's degree from Fisk University in 1908 at the age of 24, and immediately began teaching at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. Brady also had a close relationship with and was mentored by Booker T. Washington and George Washington Carver. In 1912, after his time at Tuskegee University, he was offered a scholarship to the University of Illinois to engage in graduate studies. Saint Elmo Brady was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity [2]


Brady published three scholarly abstracts in Science in 1914-15 on his work with Professor Clarence Derick. He also collaborated with Professor George Beal on a paper published in Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry titled, "The Hydrochloride Method for the Determination of Alkaloids." Professor Brady also authored three monographs on Household Chemistry for Girls.


Brady completed a M.S. in Chemistry in 1914 and carried out his Ph.D. thesis work at Noyes Laboratory under the direction of Derick, writing a dissertation in 1916 titled "The Divalent Oxygen Atom."[3]


Many years later, he told his students that when he went to graduate school, "they began with 20 whites and one other, and ended in 1916 with six whites and one other."


Legacy

Brady was the first African American to receive a Ph.D. in chemistry in the United States, which he received from the University of Illinois in 1916.[3]


During his time at Illinois, Brady became the first African American admitted to the university's chemical honor society, Phi Lambda Upsilon, (1914), and he was one of the first African Americans to be inducted into Sigma Xi, the science honorary society (1915).[4]


In November 1916, The Crisis—monthly magazine of the NAACP—selected Brady for its biographical sketch as "Man of the Month."


After completing his graduate studies, Brady taught at Tuskegee University from 1916 to 1920. Brady accepted a teaching position at Howard University in Washington, D.C., in 1920 and eventually became the Chair of Howard University's Chemistry Department.[3] In 1927 he moved to Fisk University to chair the school's Chemistry department. He remained at Fisk for 25 years until his retirement in 1952. While serving as the chair for the Chemistry department at Fisk University, Brady founded the first ever graduate studies program at a black college or university. After his retirement from Fisk, he taught at Tougaloo College in Jackson, Mississippi.[5]


Brady's legacy was his establishment of strong undergraduate curricula, graduate programs, and fundraising development for four historically black colleges and universities. In conjunction with faculty from the University of Illinois, he established a summer program in infrared spectroscopy, which was open to faculty from all colleges and universities.


Talley-Brady Hall on the Fisk campus is named for Brady and another Fisk alumnus, Thomas Talley.[6]


Personal life and death

Brady married Myrtle Travers and they had two sons, Robert and St. Elmo Brady, Jr. who worked as a physician.[7]


St. Elmo Brady died on December 25, 1966, in Washington, D.C. He was 82 when he passed away.

19 January, 2023

Toscha Seidel

Toscha Seidel was a Russian violin virtuoso.

Seidel was born in Odessa on November 17, 1899, to a Jewish family. A student of Leopold Auer in St. Petersburg, Seidel became known for a lush, romantic tone and unique and free rubato. In the 1930s he emigrated to the United States. Before making his way to Hollywood where he made a career in the studios of motion pictures, he had a show on CBS radio called The Toscha Seidel Program; he was also that radio network's musical director. He was featured (as soloist) in several Hollywood productions, including the movies Intermezzo, Melody for Three, and even The Wizard of Oz. He was also an avid chess player (like Mischa Elman). In 1922, George Gershwin wrote a song about him and his fellow Russian-Jewish virtuoso violinists called, "Mischa, Jascha, Toscha, Sascha."

Seidel had a weekly broadcast on the CBS radio network in the 1930s.

In 1934 Seidel gave violin instruction to Albert Einstein, and received a sketch in return, reportedly diagramming length contraction of his theory of relativity.

He died on November 15, 1962.

18 January, 2023

Ralph Hanan

Josiah Ralph Hanan, known as Ralph Hanan, was a New Zealand politician of the National Party. 

He was Mayor of Invercargill and then represented the Invercargill electorate in Parliament, following in his uncle Josiah Hanan's footsteps. He served in World War II and his injuries ultimately caused his death at age 60. He is best remembered for the abolition of the death penalty, which had been suspended by the Labour Party, but which National was to reintroduce. As Minister of Justice, it was Hanan's role to introduce the legislation to Parliament, but he convinced enough of his party colleagues to vote with the opposition and thus abolished the death penalty in New Zealand.

Hanan was born on June 13, 1909 in Invercargill. He was the son of the draper James Albert Hanan and his wife, Johanna Mary McGill. His uncle and aunt were Josiah and Susanna Hanan. He received his education from Southland Boys' High School, Waitaki Boys' High School, and the University of Otago, from where he obtained an LLB. He returned to Invercargill and practised law from 1935. In 1939, he went into partnership with Ian Arthur, practising as Hanan Arthur and Company. In 1940, he enlisted for war service.

On 3 March 1939, he married Ruby Eirene Anderson, known as Eirene, at Invercargill's St Paul's Presbyterian Church.

Hanan was elected to Invercargill City Council in 1935. Three years later, he was elected Mayor of Invercargill. He relinquished the position in 1941 so that he could participate in the war. His uncle had previously been Mayor of Invercargill (1896–1897).

He served with the 20th Canterbury-Otago Battalion in the Middle East and in Italy. He was wounded at the outbreak of Minquar Qaim. He would have died had it not been for a truck driver who found him unconscious, put him onto the back of the lorry and took him away. The injuries resulted in a serious lung condition that saw him sent home in 1944 as an invalid. He had attained the rank of captain during the war.

He represented the Invercargill electorate in Parliament from 1946 to 1969, as had his uncle before him (1899–1925). He held positions as Minister of Health (1954–1957), Minister of Immigration (1954–1957),[7] Attorney-General (1960–1969), Minister of Justice (1960–1969), Minister of Māori Affairs (1960–1969), and Minister of Island Territories (1963–1969).

In 1961, Hanan and nine other National MPs (Ernest Aderman, Gordon Grieve, Duncan MacIntyre, Robert Muldoon, Lorrie Pickering, Logan Sloane, Brian Talboys, Esme Tombleson and Bert Walker) crossed the floor and voted with Labour to abolish the death penalty for murder in New Zealand. As Minister of Justice, it was his responsibility to introduce the law to Parliament, but he did so by saying that he disagreed with it. He convinced enough of his party colleagues to vote with the opposition and thus abolished the death penalty in New Zealand, which is what he is best remembered for.

In much of his political work, Hanan was able to read the mood of the public well and he was guided by this. On many occasions, he developed policy that was initially not accepted by his party colleagues, but he managed to talk them round to it. One controversial piece of legislation that he introduced was the Maori Affairs Amendment Act 1967, which was bitterly opposed by many Māori, as they feared that it would lead to further loss of land. Hanan was also an early supporter of homosexual law reform, writing to the New Zealand Homosexual Law Reform Society that he commended their goal of "replacing prejudice and emotion by understanding and a rational approach."

Hanan belonged to the powerful inner circle of the Holyoake cabinet. When two of the inner circle, Hanan and Tom Shand (Minister of Labour), died within months of one another, Holyoake's strong position was weakened.

Hanan died on 24 July 1969, aged 60 in Cairns, Australia., after attending the annual conference of state attorneys general in Brisbane.

17 January, 2023

Pavel Antokolsky

Pavel Grigoryevich Antokolsky was a Soviet and Russian poet and theatre director. 

Antokolsky was born on July 1, 1896 in Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire. His father was a nephew of sculptor Mark Antokolsky. In the 1930s, Antokolsky worked as a director in the Vakhtangov Theatre in Moscow. During World War II, he ran a front theatre and was awarded a Stalin Prize for a long poem about the Germans killing his son. After the war, he managed a theatre in Tomsk. His poem, "All we who in his name..." was written in 1956, the year of Nikita Khrushchev's "secret speech" condemning Stalinism, and widely circulated among student groups in the 1950s.

Among other works, Pavel Antokolsky translated in Russian Le Dernier jour d'un condamne and Le roi s'amuse, by Victor Hugo.

Antokolsky died on October 9, 1978 in Moscow, Soviet Union. 

16 January, 2023

J.J. Lankes

Julius John Lankes was an illustrator, a woodcut print artist, author, and college professor.

Lankes was born on August 31, 1884 in Buffalo, New York to parents of German heritage. His father worked in a lumber mill and brought home small scraps of wood. "It was like getting a daily present," wrote Lankes, who played with and learned about all the different kinds of wood, as a child. He graduated from the Buffalo Commercial and Electro-Mechanical Institute in 1902 and worked as a draftsman specializing in patent drawings before continuing his art studies at the Art Students' League of Buffalo and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

Lankes worked primarily in the woodcut medium and had studios, at various times, in both Gardenville, New York and Hilton Village in Newport News, Virginia. His works, numbering about thirteen hundred, helped elevate woodblock prints beyond illustrations in commercial productions to recognition as a fine art. His work was heavily influenced by the Arts and Crafts movement and by William Morris.

He illustrated works for many notable authors, including American poet Robert Frost, American author Sherwood Anderson, and British author Beatrix Potter. Lankes maintained lifelong friendships and collaborations with both Robert Frost and Sherwood Anderson.

Major public collections of his woodcut prints are located at the Rauner Special Collections Library, Dartmouth College; the Mead Art Museum, Amherst College; Special Collections & Archives, Middlebury College; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Burchfield-Penney Art Center, Buffalo State College; the Virginia State Library, Richmond, Virginia; the Muscarelle Museum of Art, College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia; and the Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, California. Other collections include the Congressional Library in D.C.; Newark Public Library in New Jersey; Marsh Museum at University of Richmond, Virginia and the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston. The Pennsylvania Dutch Barn Series is at the Pennsylvania State Museum in Harrisburg and the Doremus Series, designed by Rockwell Kent and engraved by J.J.Lankes, is at Plattsburgh State University in New York.

In 1914, Lankes married Edee Maria Bartlett. In 1915, his first child was born with three more to follow. Having a wife and family to support, he obtained work as foreman of the drafting room at Newton Arms, a rifle factory in Buffalo. In 1917, using a V-cutting tool intended for cross-hatching grips on gunstocks, and a piece of wood from an apple tree blown down by a storm, he cut his first woodblock titled "Flying Gosling."

Lankes received his first opportunity as an illustrator in the woodcut medium from Max Eastman, who edited The Liberator. Lankes found many kindred spirits at the Liberator and was even listed on the masthead as a contributing editor. Like many leftists in the early 20th century, his views grew more moderate later on but he continued to have a great disdain for the bourgeoisie and a deep respect for the working class, which is always evident in his art.

It was Lankes' wife's idea to move to Virginia. Lankes would have a love-hate relationship with the American South for the rest of his life but the move proved to be very fruitful for inspiration and new friends and colleagues. In 1930, Lankes and his Hilton Village neighbor Eager Wood of the Virginia Press, collaborated on Virginia Woodcuts, a folio-sized, limited edition volume of 25 prints of rural Virginia scenes.

Lankes wrote and illustrated A Woodcut Manual, published by Henry Holt in 1932. It was written in a very folksy style and well received by the art and literary community, though not a commercial success in its time. In 2006, The University of Tampa published a new edition of this book with selected letters and other writings, edited by Welford Dunaway Taylor.

Lankes wrote a great many letters, collections of which may be found in Buffalo and Erie County Library, Dartmouth College, Amherst (College and town library), Middlebury College, and Wisconsin State Library. A substantial archive of Lankes' writings are with Professor Taylor at the University of Richmond.

In 1933, Lankes was persuaded by Frost to accept a position as visiting Professor at Wells College in Aurora, New York. He taught at Wells for seven years.

In 1940, Harper & Brothers published an edition of Thomas Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, with thirty woodcut illustrations by Lankes and an introduction by Pulitzer prize-winning poet Robert P. T. Coffin. In 1941 Lankes was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Associate member and became a full Academician in 1954.

Lankes produced 41 woodcut renderings of Pennsylvania Dutch barns, some of which were published in the Journal of the American Institute of Architects. A book was planned but never published, which was a great source of disappointment to Lankes, who considered these works to be his crowning achievement.

Lankes joined the reproduction section, as head of technical illustrating, of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics in 1943, where he remained until 1950. In 1951 Lankes moved to Durham, North Carolina. He suffered a debilitating stroke in 1959 and died on April 22, 1960 in Durham. J. J. Lankes was buried in Buffalo on April 25, 1960.

15 January, 2023

Lev Knipper

Lev Konstantinovich Knipper was a Soviet and Russian composer of partial German descent and an active OGPU/NKVD agent.

Lev Knipper was born on December 3, 1898 in Tiflis to railway engineer Konstantin Leonardovich Knipper and Elena-Luiza Yul’evna Rid. Shortly after his birth, the family relocated to Tsarskoye Selo, then to Yekaterinoslav in 1910, and then Saint Petersburg in 1913. He was greatly influenced by his father's sister, the actress Olga Knipper (wife of the playwright Anton Chekhov), who encouraged his musical interests. He learned to play clarinet, double bass and various brass instruments, and taught himself to play piano out of a book.

Knipper enlisted in the White Army in 1916. Following the Russian Civil War of 1917, he became stranded in Turkey, though was eventually able to reunite with his aunt Olga, who was touring abroad. Upon his return to Soviet Russia in 1922, he was repeatedly interviewed and ultimately recruited by the OGPU foreign department. At their behest, Knipper travelled to Germany in 1922–23, where he made the acquaintance of composers Alois Hába, Philipp Jarnach, and Paul Hindemith. Hindemith's music in particular had a strong influence on Knipper's own compositional language.

Through the connections of his aunt, Knipper made the acquaintance of Elena Gnesina, who hired him as building administrator at the Gnessin Music School in Moscow. Though Knipper was too old to be officially admitted as a student, he was nonetheless able to study with Reinhold Glière and Nikolai Zhilyayev. He wrote his first catalogued composition, the orchestral suite Сказки гипсового божка (Tales of a Plaster God), op. 1, in 1923, a work musicologist Larry Sitsky characterizes as "harsh and chiseled," and somewhat grotesque. Inspired by sculptures of the Buddha by Pavel Tchelitchew, the six-movement suite premiered on 8 March 1925 and was well-received by audiences and critics. Fellow composer Leonid Sabaneyev approached Knipper at the premiere and asked for a copy of the score. In 1929, Knipper was invited by Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko to work as a consultant at the Moscow Art Theatre. This led to the creation of Knipper's most significant work of this early period, his 1930 opera Северный ветер (The North Wind), op. 25, based on the play by Vladimir Kirshon. Musicologist Gerald Abraham describes the opera as "harmonically sophisticated, dry, [and] more than a little Hindemithian." The opera is also noted for its defiance of typical operatic conventions. The North Wind received a total of seventy-eight performances, mostly in Moscow, but following harsh criticism from the Russian Association of Proletarian Musicians it was not staged again until 1974.

Seemingly in response to criticism of his modernist early works, Knipper resigned his post as technical secretary to the Association for Contemporary Music (two years before it was officially disbanded) and abruptly shifted his style towards one more in line with the principals of socialist realism. In 1930–1931, he travelled to Central Asia to study the region's folk music. The music of Tajikistan was apparently a source of great inspiration for him: his list of works reveals eight explicitly Tajik-inspired compositions. The majority of Knipper's works from this period are musically conservative and patriotic and militaristic in tone, most notably his "song-symphonies" (3, 4 and 6). The most notable of these is his Fourth Symphony, "Поэма о бойце-комсомольце (Poem of the Komsomol Fighter)," op. 41 (1934), with lyrics by Viktor Gusev dedicated to Kliment Voroshilov. The central theme of the symphony, the song Полюшко-поле, has become Knipper's most famous work as one of the marching songs of the Red Army Choir. Though in line with Soviet political ideals, these song-symphonies were met with criticism by some of Knipper's fellow composers: Dmitri Shostakovich, for one, lambasted Knipper's Third Symphony (1932) for its "primitiveness" at a meeting of the Union of Soviet Composers in 1935 (fortunately for Shostakovich, this criticism did not deter Knipper from coming to his defense following the famous public denunciation of Shostakovich's opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk in 1936). Dmitry Kabalevsky pointed out the shortcomings of Knipper's approach to combining mass-songs and the surrounding symphonic material. In his Sixth Symphony, op. 47 (1936), Knipper apparently veered too close to his earlier style and was publicly rebuked for it; his Seventh Symphony "Military" (1938) returned to an ideologically safer style.

Knipper continued to compose during the Second World War, though much of his time was devoted to extensive travel for the NKVD, which he continued to serve until 1949. According to secret intelligence documents released in 2002, Knipper and his wife were to play a key role if the Nazis should capture Moscow: Under the elaborate plan, ballerinas and circus acrobats were armed with grenades and pistols and ordered to assassinate German generals if they attempted to organize concerts and other celebrations upon taking the city. Knipper was personally charged with the responsibility of killing Adolf Hitler if he got the opportunity, an opportunity the NKVD suspected might arise due to Knipper's sister, Olga, having social connections with high-ranking Nazis, including Hermann Göring.

Knipper was prolific. He wrote 5 operas (including one on The Little Prince), 20 symphonies, ballets, pieces for piano and other film musics.

The primary publishers of Knipper's works are Muzyka, Kompozitor and Le Chant du Monde. Most of his published compositions are currently out of print, and the majority of his output has yet to be published.

Knipper died on July 30, 1974.

14 January, 2023

Sir Rupert Hart-Davis

Sir Rupert Charles Hart-Davis was an English publisher and editor. He founded the publishing company Rupert Hart-Davis Ltd. As a biographer, he is remembered for his Hugh Walpole (1952), as an editor, for his Collected Letters of Oscar Wilde (1962), and, as both editor and part-author, for the Lyttelton/Hart-Davis Letters.

Working at a publishing firm before the Second World War, Hart-Davis began to forge literary relationships that would be important later in his career. Founding his publishing company in 1946, Hart-Davis was praised for the quality of the firm's publications and production; but he refused to cater to public tastes, and the firm eventually lost money. After relinquishing control of the firm, Hart-Davis concentrated on writing and editing, producing collections of letters and other works which brought him the sobriquet "the king of editors".

Hart-Davis was born on August 28, 1907 in Kensington, London. Hart-Davis was educated at Eton and Balliol College, Oxford, though he found university life not to his taste and left after less than a year.

Hart-Davis decided to become an actor, and he studied at The Old Vic, where he came to realise that he was not a talented enough actor to succeed, and he turned instead to publishing in 1929, joining William Heinemann Ltd. as an office boy and assistant to the managing director Charley Evans. He spent two years with Heinemann and a year as manager of the Book Society. During this period, he built up good relationships with a number of authors and was able to negotiate a directorship for himself at Jonathan Cape Ltd.

In his seven years with Cape, Hart-Davis recruited a successful group of authors ranging from the poets William Plomer, Cecil Day-Lewis, Edmund Blunden and Robert Frost, to the humorist Beachcomber. He was well placed to secure Duff Cooper's life of Talleyrand, as Cooper was his uncle. As the junior partner at Cape, he had to handle their difficult authors including Robert Graves, Wyndham Lewis and Arthur Ransome, the last being seen as difficult because of his wife Genia, with her "distrustfulness, venom and guile". Hart-Davis was a close friend of Ransome, sharing an enthusiasm for cricket and rugby. After Herbert Jonathan Cape's death in 1960 he commented to George Lyttelton that Cape had been "one of the tightest-fisted old bastards I've ever encountered". The second partner, Wren Howard, was "even tighter" than Cape, and neither of them liked fraternising with authors, which they left to Hart-Davis.

In World War II Hart-Davis volunteered for military service as a private soldier, but was soon commissioned into the Coldstream Guards. He did not see active service, never being stationed more than 25 miles from London.

After the war, Hart-Davis was unable to obtain satisfactory terms from Jonathan Cape to return to the company, and in 1946 he struck out on his own, founding Rupert Hart-Davis Ltd, in partnership with David Garnett and Teddy Young and with financial backing from Eric Linklater, Arthur Ransome, H. E. Bates, Geoffrey Keynes, and Celia and Peter Fleming. His own literary tastes dictated which books were accepted and which were rejected. Frequently he turned down commercial successes because he thought little of the works' literary merit. He later said, "I usually found that the sales of the books I published were in inverse ratio to my opinion of them. That's why I established some sort of reputation without making any money."

In 1946 paper was still rationed; the firm used Garnett's ex-serviceman's ration, but as only one ex-serviceman's ration could be used per firm it could not use that of Hart-Davis. However, the firm was given the allocation at cost of a Glasgow bookseller and occasional pre-war publisher, Alan Jackson. The partners decided to start initially with reprints of dead authors, as if a new book became a best-seller the firm would not have paper for a reprint and the author might leave. They made an exception for Stephen Potter's Gamesmanship which was a short book, collected every ream of paper they could buy and printed 25,000 copies. Likewise 25,000 copies of Eric Linklater's Sealskin Trousers (five short stories) were printed.

The firm had best-sellers such as Gamesmanship and Heinrich Harrer's Seven Years in Tibet, which sold more than 200,000 copies. Also in the early years Hart-Davis secured Ray Bradbury for his firm, recognising the quality of a science fiction author who also wrote poetry. Other good sellers were Peter Fleming, Eric Linklater and Gerald Durrell; but best-sellers were too few, and though the output of Rupert-Hart-Davis Ltd was regularly praised for the high quality of its printing and binding, that too was an expense that weighed the company down. A further expense was added when G. M. Young's biography of Stanley Baldwin was published in 1952; both Winston Churchill and Lord Beaverbrook threatened to sue if certain passages were not removed or amended. With the help of the lawyer Arnold Goodman an agreement was reached to replace the offending sentences, but the firm had the "hideously expensive" job of removing and replacing seven leaves from 7,580 copies.

By the mid-fifties, Rupert Hart-Davis Ltd could no longer sustain an independent existence and in 1956 it was absorbed into the Heinemann group. Heinemann sold the imprint to the American firm Harcourt Brace in 1961, who sold it to the Granada Group in 1963, when Hart-Davis retired from publishing, though remaining as non-executive chairman until 1968. Granada merged Rupert Hart-Davis Ltd with sister imprint MacGibbon & Kee in 1972 to form Hart-Davis, MacGibbon.

The Rupert Hart-Davis Ltd logo was a woodcut of a fox, with a background of oak leaves. The company was based at No. 36 Soho Square, London W1. Reprint series published over the years were the Reynard Library of great English writers and the Mariners Library of nautical books.

As Hugh Walpole's literary executor, and being unable to find a potential biographer who would tackle the job to his satisfaction, Hart-Davis proposed to Walpole's publishers, Macmillan, that he should write the biography himself, to which Harold Macmillan replied that he couldn't think of a better person to do it. When Hugh Walpole was published in 1952, it was praised as "among the half dozen best biographies of the century". It has been reissued several times.

Hart-Davis wrote no more books until after his retirement from publishing, but between 1955 and 1962, he wrote about a quarter of a million words to his old schoolmaster George Lyttelton, which, together with Lyttelton's similar contribution, made up the six volumes of the Lyttelton/Hart-Davis Letters, published between 1978 and 1984 after Lyttelton's death. Although he spent much of his life researching old letters, Hart-Davis destroyed the originals of the letters after his edited versions of them had been printed. He was equally unscholarly about his uncle Duff Cooper's diaries, whose frankness shocked him so much that he wanted to destroy them.

In retirement, Hart-Davis wrote three volumes of autobiography entitled The Arms of Time (1979), The Power of Chance (1991) and, Halfway to Heaven (1998). The first, a particularly cherished project, was a memoir of his beloved mother Sybil, who died young, to her son's desolation.

Hart-Davis was described by The Times as "the king of editors". He edited volumes of the letters of the playwright Oscar Wilde, the writer and caricaturist Max Beerbohm, and the writer George Moore, as well as the diaries of the poet Siegfried Sassoon and the autobiography of Arthur Ransome. A Beggar in Purple, his commonplace book, was published in 1983. Praise from the Past, a collection of tributes to writers, was published in 1996.

His Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde, compiled over the same period as Hart-Davis's correspondence with George Lyttelton, was described in a review of the latter as "a mammoth undertaking whose difficulties and challenges are documented in great detail in the letters, giving a satisfying portrayal of what dedication in literary scholarship looks like from the inside". Wilde's grandson, Merlin Holland, wrote, "It was his decision fifty years ago to publish the first edition of Oscar Wilde's letters which helped to put my grandfather back into the position which he lost in 1895 as one of the most charismatic and fascinating figures in English literary history."

In his last memoir, Hart-Davis listed the books he had edited as: The Second Omnibus Book (Heinemann) 1930; Then and Now (Cape) 1935; The Essential Neville Cardus (Cape) 1949; Cricket All His Life by E.V. Lucas (RHD Ltd) 1950; All in Due Time by Humphry House (RHD Ltd) 1955; George Moore: Letters to Lady Cunard 1895–1933 (RHD Ltd) 1957; The Letters of Oscar Wilde (RHD Ltd) 1962; Max Beerbohm: Letters to Reggie Turner (RHD Ltd) 1964; More Theatres by Max Beerbohm (RHD Ltd) 1969; Last Theatres by Max Beerbohm (RHD Ltd) 1970; A Peep into the Past by Max Beerbohm (Heinemann) 1972; A Catalogue of the Caricatures of Max Beerbohm (Macmillan) 1972 ; The Autobiography of Arthur Ransome (Cape) 1976; Electric Delights by William Plomer (Cape) 1978; Selected Letters of Oscar Wilde (Oxford) 1979; Two Men of Letters (Michael Joseph) 1979; Siegfried Sassoon: Diaries 1920–1922 3 vols. (Faber) 1981–85; War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon (Faber) 1983; More Letters of Oscar Wilde (Murray) 1985; Siegfried Sassoon: Letters to Max Beerbohm (Faber) 1986; Letters of Max Beerbohm (Murray) 1986.

After the war and until his retirement, Hart-Davis lived during the week in a flat above his publishing business in Soho Square, returning to his main home at Bromsden Farm, Oxfordshire, at weekends. He retired to Marske in North Yorkshire, where he died at the age of 92.

Hart-Davis died on December 8, 1999.

13 January, 2023

CJ van Ledden Hulsebosch

Christiaan Jacobus van Ledden Hulsebosch was a Dutch pharmacist , forensic chemist and researcher. He introduced forensic light sources to police work and thus played a major role in the European and global development of criminalistics .

His father Marius Louis Quirin van Ledden Hulsebosch (1849-1930) was a famous chemist. After schooling in Amsterdam and Tiel in the Netherlands, Christiaan Jacobus van Ledden Hulsebosch studied pharmacy at the University of Amsterdam from 1897 to 1902 .

In December 1902 he received his diploma, was appointed health inspector in The Hague and took over his father's pharmacy Nieuwendijk, which he ran rather half-heartedly. From 1902 to 1910 he studied chemistry, physics and criminology in Lausanne, Berlin, Dresden and Vienna. The pharmacy had been carrying out various forensic research assignments since January 1883, and since 1885 his father has repeatedly been charged for forensic investigations.

In early March 1902, a request for investigations into a sex crime was sent by telegraph from the Alkmaar public prosecutor 's office to his father, who was attending a conference in Brussels at the time; the then 24-year-old student Christiaan Jacobus van Ledden Hulsebosch was able to successfully complete the order and calculate it independently. Thus began his career as a forensic examiner.

His father notably conducted forensic investigations into poisoning and crime involving the use of ink, but he also worked on other clues left by burglars. In the beginning, Christiaan Jacobus van Ledden Hulsebosch was also involved in similar cases - in addition to his work in the pharmacy - but over time he expanded his range of research: He investigated plane crashes, arson and murders of all kinds. For further training he studied on that of Professor Dr. Archibald Rudolph Reiss at the Institut de police scientifique founded at the University of Lausanne. 

In 1910, much to his father's chagrin, he gave up all pharmacy activities and devoted himself entirely to "scientific research for industry, individuals and law". In his laboratory, he bought special equipment from abroad or pieces of equipment that he developed for himself. He achieved great fame and was the first to use ultraviolet light in police investigations. In 1914 he founded the first school for scientific police research (the theory of tracks), and his work and teaching soon found recognition. From 1916 until his retirement on July 1, 1950 he was a scientific adviser to the police in Amsterdam and in 1923 he became a lecturer in the law faculty of the University of Amsterdam and taught the "Lectures on the Detection of Offenses". In addition, Van Ledden Hulsebosch was a guest lecturer at the Police Vocational School (MPVS) in Hilversum. In 1929, CJ van Ledden founded Hulsebosch with the Swiss criminalist Marc Bischoff, the French Edmond Locard , the Austrian Siegfried Türkel and the German Georg Popp in Lausannethe Vienna-based Académie Internationale de Criminalistique (International Academy for Criminalistics). 

In 1945 his autobiographical book Forty Years of Detective Work was published in Utrecht.

In 1952 he died of a heart attack in his hometown at the age of seventy-five

12 January, 2023

Karl Zimmer

Karl Günter Zimmer was a German physicist and radiation biologist, known for his work on the effects of ionizing radiation on DNA. 

In 1935, he published the major work, Über die Natur der Genmutation und der Genstruktur, with N. V. Timofeev-Resovskij, and Max Delbrück; it was considered to be a major advance in understanding the nature of gene mutation and gene structure. In 1945, he was sent to the Soviet Union to work on their atomic bomb project. 

In 1955, he left Russia and eventually went to West Germany.



11 January, 2023

Hans Lehmkuhl

Johannes (Hans) Ludwig Lehmkuhl was a German painter and restorer .

Lehmkuhl was born on March 19, 1883 and grew up in Bremen and, after graduating from school, initially worked in a commercial position for nine years. He received his first painting lessons from the Bremen painter Karl Windels. In 1908 he moved to Munich and studied for two months at Walter Thor 's private school . He then received private painting lessons from Julius Exter . At the same time he was engaged as a tenor in the choir of the Munich Court Opera and toured Spain and Portugal.

From 1910 to 1914 Lehmkuhl studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich with Carl Johann Becker-Gundahl , Hermann Groeber , Hugo von Habermann , Ludwig von Herterich , Angelo Jank and Max Doerner . He traveled to Feldwies , Chiemsee with Julius Exter to paint plein air nudes and landscapes.

During World War I he served as a lieutenant in the 9th Bavarian Field Artillery Regiment Landsberg and was stationed in France in 1914. In 1916 he was awarded the Iron Cross I by Kaiser Wilhelm II as a senior lieutenant in charge of the battery .

Lehmkuhl's serious war injuries resulted in a one and a half year hospital stay in Munich. In 1920 he resumed his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. There he became vice chairman of the Academics Committee. Until 1922 he painted numerous pictures of officers in Munich, e.g. Lieutenant Philipp Bouhler , a later Reichsleiter .

In 1923 he moved back to Bremen and joined the Bremen Artists' Association, where he became second chairman. Lehmkuhl exhibited there and directed artist festivals.

In 1927 Lehmkuhl moved to Nassauische Strasse 53 in Berlin-Wilmersdorf because Berlin was "the cheaper art center". From 1930 to 1940 he was deputy chairman of the Wilmersdorf Artists' Association. In 1930 he painted i.a. Ludwig Quidde, winner of the 1927 Nobel Peace Prize, whose picture now hangs in the Focke Museum in Bremen. In 1932, Lehmkuhl was the last painter to receive permission to portray the then President of the Reich, Paul von Hindenburg. In 1933 he painted all of the city councils of Wilmersdorf.

In 1935 he was the only painter to receive permission from Hauptmann Wolfgang Fürstner , commander of the Olympic Village , to paint pictures and views in the Olympic Village in Elstal near Berlin. From April to July he painted about 30 pictures there, which were later to be sold to the athletes.

In 1935 Lehmkuhl joined the Nazi exhibition association "Frontkampferbund of visual artists". Due to the disadvantages for "non-party artists", Lehmkuhl was active again from 1936 onwards, but without pecuniary success, which is why the employment was short-lived. During this time, many portraits, landscapes and still lifes were created. He also received commissions for restoration work. In 1936, Oberbaurat Dölle commissioned the army administration to paint a four-meter-high picture of Adolf Hitler, as well as a Werner von Blomberg picture for the small hall of the General Command building in Berlin. In December Lehmkuhl was commissioned by Military District Command 3 to paint a Hindenburg portrait for General Wilhelm Adam 's representative rooms. In the same year he was admitted as a restorer by the Reichskunstkammer.

Lehmkuhl was a member of the Nazi Schutzstaffel SA and took part in e.g. 1942 in Dresden with the picture of a sports rider at the art exhibition of the SA. 

In 1939 and 1940, some of his paintings were accepted for the Great German Art Exhibition in Munich. After more than three weeks of negotiations with the Ministry of Propaganda and the High Command of the Wehrmacht (OKW), Lehmkuhl painted 50 large and small studies in the Luckenwalde POW camp in the winter of 1940/1941. In addition, five large views of military buildings in and around Berlin were created for the Todt organization , which were shown in a closed exhibition in the Berlin Art Gallery. This was followed by the appointment as titular professor "for very good achievements in portrait painting".

In 1942, Lehmkuhl was the only artist who received permission to paint pictures of prisoners in the Dreilinden and Großbeeren prison camps, 25 studies of which were exhibited in the Berlin Arsenal. At the beginning of 1943 he painted a portrait of Rear Admiral a. D. Hermann Lorey , then director of the Berlin Arsenal .

In 1943 he moved with his wife to Millstatt am See , Austria. During this time, Lehmkuhl was able to secure his living through restoration work, watercolors and portrait commissions - mostly from English officers.

In 1946 he returned to Bremen; since the Berlin apartment and studio had been bombed out, he moved into a small studio building at Mendestrasse 13a and was given a heated studio in the Reich House , where he portrayed many Americans and politicians.

In 1947, Sergeant Wouralis commissioned Lehmkuhl to decorate the American exhibition hall in the Reich House with American landscapes. Ten 4 × 2 m large pictures were taken. Lehmkuhl later portrayed General Lucius D. Clay , General Karting, and Mr. Murphy during a lecture. From July 9th to 31st of the same year he worked in St. Hülfe (now Diepholz), where he painted portraits and landscapes.

In 1948, Friedrich Hilken, curator of the Kunsthalle Bremen , arranged for Lehmkuhl to commission a number of restoration projects, e.g. Pictures of the councilor von Aschen (Tilemann-Schenck, 1645) and the mayor Dr. Alfred Dominicus Pauli (Konrad von Kardorff) for the Güldenkammer in Bremen City Hall . In winter, more pictures were taken for the exhibition rooms in the House of the Reich.

From 1949 Lehmkuhl documented views of the bombed-out north aisle in St. Petri Cathedral in Bremen and in the course of this also made pictures in the lead cellar . Lehmkuhl discovered two paintings by Lucas Cranach in the cathedral : a Luther and a Philipp Melanchthon picture, which he restored. The restoration work in the Bremen town hall lasted until 1950. A total of around 25 paintings were restored, with the large painting of "Alt-Bremen" and the dismembered painting of the "Hansehaus in Antwerpen" being the most labour-intensive. Both pictures still hang in the upper town hall. In the same year, Lehmkuhl portrayed Pastor Adzomada from Togo/West Africa during his stay in Bremen.

On March 9, 1950, Federal President Theodor Heuss traveled to Bremen. Lehmkuhl received permission from Mayor Wilhelm Kaisen to sketch at the receptions and, after exchanging letters with Heuss about the sketches that had been sent, made several portraits. In the same year he portrayed Rear Admiral Charles Richardson Jeffs , the military governor and state commissioner of the USA in Bremen, at the Reich House. In 1951 several portraits of well-known personalities from Bremen were created. The opening of Lehmkuhl's exhibition at the Wilhelmshaven Art Association took place on October 21st.

From May to July 1952, the Portrait Art Exhibition in Bremen followed in the Bremen Art Gallery. In 1953 the restoration work on the picture of the Hansehaus in Antwerp continued. In August, the painting was completely reassembled and hung in Bremen City Hall. In 1954 a portrait of the actor Werner Krauss was created, which was exhibited in the Theater am Goetheplatz.

In 1955, Lehmkuhl painted a portrait of Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie and sent it to Addis Ababa as a gift . In the same year work began on the pictures "Bremen 1937" - before the destruction in World War II. Hans Lehmkuhl continued to work in Bremen until his death.

Lehmkuhl died on February 24, 1969.

10 January, 2023

Olinto Cristina

Olinto Cristina was an Italian actor and voice actor.

Cristina was born on February 5, 1888 in Florence to actors Raffaello Cristina and Cesira Sabatini, he began acting on stage as a child. His sisters Ines Cristina Zacconi, Jone Frigerio and Ada Cristina Almirante were also actresses. His sister Ines was the mother of actress Margherita Bagni and the grandmother of actress Nora Ricci, she married secondly Ermete Zacconi. On screen, he appeared in more than 75 films between 1932 and 1957. He also was a renowned dubber in Italian post-synchronized versions of foreign films, providing his voice for actors such as C. Aubrey Smith, Sig Ruman, Frank Morgan or Lionel Barrymore. As far as animated films are concerned, he dubbed Doc in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Friend Owl in Bambi and others.

Cristina died on June 17, 1962.

09 January, 2023

Trygve Lindeman

Trygve Henrik Lindeman was a Norwegian cellist and the head of the Oslo Conservatory of Music for two generations.

Lindeman was born on November 3, 1896 in Kristiania (now Oslo). After passing his university qualifying exam, he studied civil engineering at the Norwegian Institute of Technology, and then he switched to studying music in 1916 at the Oslo Conservatory of Music under Gustav Fredrik Lange. He also studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen under Carl Nielsen. He debuted as a cellist in 1925, and in 1928 he took over leadership of the Oslo Conservatory of Music from his father, Peter Brynie Lindeman. He headed the conservatory until 1969. Lindeman and his wife, Marie Louise née Swensen, had no children and so they established the Lindeman Foundation (Norwegian: Lindemans Legat) and turned over the directorship of the conservatory to Anfinn Øien, who headed the school until it was closed and succeeded by the Norwegian Academy of Music in 1973. The "Lindeman tradition" in Norwegian music was cultivated by Trygve Lindeman, who believed that everyone is capable of playing, composing, and understanding music theory and practicing pedagogy.

Lindeman died on October 24, 1979.

08 January, 2023

Stu Keate

James Stuart Keate was a Canadian journalist who rose through the ranks to become publisher of the Victoria Times from 1950 to 1964 and the Vancouver Sun from 1964 until his retirement in 1979. He also served as president of The Canadian Press and the Canadian Daily Newspaper Publishers Association. He was elected to the Canadian News Hall of Fame in 1974.

Keate was born in Vancouver, B.C. on  October 13, 1913, the son of William Lewis Keate, a timber broker on Vancouver Island. After high school, Keate attended University of British Columbia, where he began his journalism career writing for the student newspaper Ubyssey.

After he graduated in 1935, Keate worked as a sportswriter for The Province, and then became a feature writer for the Toronto Star. He met and married Letha Meilicke in 1939, and they had two children, Richard and Kathryn.

During the Second World War, Keate served in the Royal Canadian Navy as a war correspondent. He first was stationed on the East Coast of Canada, writing articles about Canada's new Tribal class destroyers. Keate was then assigned to the Canadian Naval Mission Overseas in London. In 1943, he served as information officer on HMCS Calgary in the North Atlantic. He was then posted to St. John's, Newfoundland for ten months before being transferred to Canada's first cruiser, HMCS Uganda, which sailed for the South Pacific.

Following the war, Keate worked for Time and Life, first in New York, and then as bureau chief in Montreal. On one assignment, he tried to track down Louis St. Laurent, then the Prime Minister of Canada, for an interview. When no one answered his knock at St. Laurent's home in Quebec City, he let himself in and left a note for St. Laurent on the front hall table.

In 1950, Canadian newspaper magnate Max Bell, through his company FP Publications, bought control of both the Victoria Colonist and the Victoria Times. Although Bell merged many of the business and production functions, he left the two newsrooms separate. He created the post of publisher in each newsroom, and hired Stu Keate to be the first publisher of the Victoria Daily Times.

In 1955, a storm erupted in the BC Legislature when Gordon Gibson, a member of the Liberal opposition, accused Robert Sommers, Social Credit Minister of Lands, Forests and Mines, of improperly awarding a forest management contract to E. P. Taylor's British Columbia Forest Products (BCFP). Keate and the Victoria Daily Times added fuel to the scandal with many articles exposing the close relationship between Sommers and BCFP, including the acceptance of gifts and services. As the scandal continued to grow, Sommers rose in the Legislature on February 27, 1956 and delivered a blistering attack on Keate, calling the continual stream of stories, "the most dirty and slanted coverage in the history of B.C., principally by Mr. Stuart Keate, the publisher of the Victoria Times." Sommers stated that the attacks on himself and his ministry by Stu Keate had occupied too much of the legislature's time, and in consequence, offered his resignation as cabinet minister to Premier W.A.C. Bennett. In their book about the scandal, Betty O'Keefe and Ian MacDonald related that "Urbane Victoria Times publisher Stu Keate was unrepentant, taking the resignation as a compliment to him and his paper."

Eight months after resigning from cabinet, Sommers was arrested and charged with bribery. He was found guilty on five of seven charges of receiving bribes, making him the first person in the British Commonwealth found guilty of conspiring to accept bribes while serving as a cabinet minister. He was sentenced to five years in jail and served 28 months.

Under Keate's management, the Times sponsored several publicity events. In 1954 the paper offered $7500 to English Channel swimmer Florence Chadwick to attempt the 18.5 mi (29.8 km) crossing of the Juan de Fuca Strait, with a $2500 bonus if she succeeded. Chadwick tried and failed in August 1954. The Times continued to offer a reward of $1000 for the first swimmer to succeed, and the following summer, Bert O. Thomas, an ex-U.S. Marine, claimed the prize. (A local businessman and the Port Angeles Chamber of Commerce added another $2500, bringing Thomas's reward to $3500.)

In 1955, Keate came up with the idea of creating the world's tallest free-standing totem pole, financed by the sale of 50-cent shares. The 127 foot 7 inch (38.73m) pole was subsequently carved by Kwakwaka’wakw artist Mungo Martin, his son David, and Henry Hunt. On the day of the unveiling in Beacon Hill Park in June 1956, the Victoria Daily Times published a 14-page "Totem Souvenir Edition" that listed the names of more than 10,000 people who had bought 50-cent shares, including Winston S. Churchill and Bing Crosby.

In 1964, Max Bell asked Keate to move to Vancouver to became publisher of another FP Publications newspaper, the Vancouver Sun. When Keate took the helm, he characterized the Sun as "yeasty and aggressive, but nonetheless erratic and strongly partisan." He set out to temper this, writing in his memoirs that "The challenge was nothing less than a complete change in its character and personality."

Keate knew that creating a quality newspaper required money to hire good reporters; this caused disagreements with the general manager of FP Publications, who was more concerned with the bottom line than with improving the quality of the syndicate's newspapers. During his time with the Sun, Keate hired many notable journalists, including Allan Fotheringham, Denny Boyd, Bob Hunter (later a co-founder of Greenpeace), and Marjorie Nichols.

In the spring of 1966, a dispute arose between the CBC and the Toronto Producers' Association concerning the popular but controversial investigative news television program This Hour Has Seven Days. The program was known for ambushing prominent politicians and asking them hard-hitting questions. One of the most well-known of these was the unscheduled interview Larry Zolf conducted on the front doorstep of former federal Minister of Defence Pierre Sévigny concerning the Munsinger Affair. Concerned about the show's approach to the news, the CBC directors fired hosts Patrick Watson and Laurier LaPierre in April 1966, just before the end of the TV season, but without consulting with the program's executive producer Doug Leiterman. The resultant uproar resulted in a federal parliamentary committee being convened, and Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson invited Stu Keate to act as a neutral mediator to resolve the dispute.

Following two weeks of mediation, Keate said it was clear that there had been "mistakes made on both sides" and recommended that the CBC board of directors do a better job of explaining to the public its decision to fire Watson and LaPierre.

The CBC directors immediately reaffirmed the firing of Watson and LaPierre, while admitting that the way the two were fired had been a mistake. (Two months later, the dispute heated up again, Leiterman was fired, and This Hour Has Seven Days was cancelled.)

From 1963 to 1969, Keate served on the Canada Council. In 1964 and again in 1965, Keate served as president of The Canadian Press. He also served as president of the Canadian Daily Newspapers Association during this time. He was founding chair of the Canadian Coimmittee of the International Press Institute, and was a director of the Freedom of the Press Committee of the Inter-American Press Association.

In 1966, he turned down the offer of an appointment to the Canadian Senate made by the Liberal government of Lester B. Pearson, saying that if he accepted, it would compromise the Sun's independence.

Keate retired in 1979 after 15 years at the Sun. The following year he published his memoirs of the newspaper business in a book titled Paper Boy. 

He died on March 1, 1987 after a long battle with Parkinson's disease.