English Half of my book Istanbul is about the city; the other half chronicles the first 22 years of my life. I remember my huge disillusionment when it was finished. Of all the things I had wanted to express about my life, of all the memories that I considered the most crucial, only a few…

I was born on June 16, 1934 in Boston, Massachusetts. At that time my parents had completed their undergraduate educations – my father in English literature, my mother in science. My father was then employed at Harvard University, working in the placement office. In 1940, world events led to the activation of my father’s National…

I was born in 1928, June 25, in Moscow, USSR (now Russia). My parents were physicians. I graduated from high school in 1943 and was accepted as student of the Institute for Power Engineers. In 1945 I transferred to the Physics Department of the Moscow State University, from which I graduated in 1948 with a…

Derek Walcott was born in 1930 in the town of Castries in Saint Lucia, one of the Windward Islands in the Lesser Antilles. The experience of growing up on the isolated volcanic island, an ex-British colony, has had a strong influence on Walcott’s life and work. Both his grandmothers were said to have been the…

Born: Neudorf, Saskatchewan, Canada, 1915; naturalized U.S. citizen, 1942.   Education B.S.: 1935, University of Saskatchewan M.S.: 1937, University of Saskatchewan (Research Supervisor, Prof. J.W.T. Spinks) Ph.D.: 1940, University of California, Berkeley (Research Supervisor, Prof. W.C. Bray) Professional Experience Instructor, University of California, Berkeley, 1940-41 Instructor and Assistant Professor, Cornell University, 1941-46 Assistant Professor, Associate…

Ernest Rutherford was born on August 30, 1871, in Nelson, New Zealand, the fourth child and second son in a family of seven sons and five daughters. His father James Rutherford, a Scottish wheelwright, immigrated to New Zealand with Ernest’s grandfather and the whole family in 1842. His mother, née Martha Thompson, was an English…

My father, Georg, had studied law at the Universität Berlin for some years, and in the first World War had been an artillery officer. He was of a philosophical bend of mind and a man of independent opinions. In the depth of the depression he just managed to make a living in real estate. When…

Frederick Soddy, the son of Benjamin Soddy, a London merchant, was born at Eastbourne, Sussex, England, on September 2, 1877. He was educated at Eastbourne College and the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth. In 1895 he obtained a scholarship at Merton College, Oxford, from which University he graduated in 1898 with first class honours in…

I was born in Budapest, Hungary, on May 22, 1927 the son of Julius Olah and Magda Krasznai. My father was a lawyer and to my best knowledge nobody in my family before had interest in science. I grew up between the two world wars and received a rather solid general education, the kind middle…

Selma Lagerlöf (1858-1940) was born in Östra Emterwik, Värmland, Sweden. She was brought up on Mårbacka, the family estate, which she did not leave until 1881, when she went to a teachers’ college at Stockholm. In 1885 she became a teacher at the girls’ secondary school in Landskrona. She had been writing poetry ever since…