“In this age of specialization, I sometimes think of myself as the last ‘generalist’ in economics,” wrote Paul Anthony Samuelson, Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, “with interests that range from mathematical economics down to current financial journalism. My real interests are research and teaching… ” His work in economic theory has…

I was born in Oslo, March 3, 1895, as son of the gold- and silversmith, Anton Frisch, and his wife, Ragna Fredrikke Kittilsen, who has had a great impact on my general outlook and view on life. I was first married in 1920 to Marie Smedal. We had an only child, Ragna, who was married…

I was born 1936 in Waltham, Massachusetts, the son of E. Bright Wilson Jr. and Emily Buckingham Wilson. My father was on the faculty in the Chemistry Department of Harvard University; my mother had one year of graduate work in physics before her marriage. My grandfather on my mother’s side was a professor of mechanical…

I was born in 1911 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the son of John MacLeod Fowler and Jennie Summers Watson Fowler. My parents had two other children, my younger brother, Arthur Watson Fowler and my still younger sister, Nelda Fowler Wood. My paternal grandfather, William Fowler, was a coal miner in Slammannan, near Falkirk, Scotland who emigrated…

Since no biography was printed in 1991, this chronology has been assembled by the editor. 1942: September 6. Marriage of Aung San, commander of the Burma Independence Army, and Ma Khin Kyi (becoming Daw Khin Kyi), senior nurse of Rangoon General Hospital, where he had recovered from the rigours of the march into Burma. 1945:…

Seamus Heaney was born in April 1939, the eldest member of a family which would eventually contain nine children. His father owned and worked a small farm of some fifty acres in County Derry in Northern Ireland, but the father’s real commitment was to cattle-dealing. There was something very congenial to Patrick Heaney about the…

Sin-Itiro Tomonaga was born in Tokyo, Japan, on March 31, 1906, the eldest son of Sanjuro Tomonaga and Hide Tomonaga. In 1913 his family moved to Kyoto when his father was appointed a professor of philosophy at Kyoto Imperial University. From that time he was brought up in Kyoto. He is a graduate of the…

I consider early childhood events as most essential to a man’s scientific and philosophical development. I grew up in the large house and the larger garden of my parents in Altenberg. They were supremely tolerant of my inordinate love for animals. My nurse, Resi Führinger, was the daughter of an old patrician peasant family. She…

My parents, Charles Brovarnik and Pearl Gorinstein, were born in Zhitomir in the Ukraine and came to London in 1908 as part of the vast Jewish immigration in the early part of this century. They were married in London. In 1909 my sister, Ann, was born. I arrived on May 22, 1912. In June 1914…

I was born in 1925, in New York City, the second of three children of Meyer and Ida Blumberg. My grandparents came to the United States from Europe at the end of the 19th century. They were members of an immigrant group who had enormous confidence in the possibilities of their adopted country. I received…